It's been a breathless couple of days for Nokia, with new handsets, accessories and of course an new operating system update in Symbian Belle. It's enough to overwhelm anyone, so we thought we'd nail down the facts worth knowing about Symbian Belle. 

Say hello to Symbian Belle, Nokia's new smartphone OS

Symbian Belle is the latest evolution of the Symbian operating system for Nokia smartphones, and follows in the footsteps of Symbian Anna, which itself is the successor to Symbian^3.

That much is straightforward enough, but let's look at things in a bit more detail:

It's just an announcement
It may seem strange that we're the Symbian Anna update has only just been released and here we are talking about Symbian Belle. But rest assured, Symbian Anna is very much at the forefront for the time being; Nokia has simply shown us what's coming next.

The upgrade path is open
While the three new handsets Nokia announced this week – the Nokia 600, Nokia 700 and Nokia 701 – will all have Symbian Belle when they go on sale, Nokia will also be issuing a software update for all Symbian Anna handsets. That includes the four Symbian ^3 handsets that have just been updated to Symbian Anna, as well as the Nokia E6, Nokia X7 and Nokia 500, which have Anna on board out of the box.

And then there were 10
That makes for a formidable lineup of 10 smartphones with Symbian Belle on board, and that's not even taking into account any other upcoming Symbian releases Nokia has in the pipelines.

It's all about widgets
Of the new features introduced by Symbian Belle, probably the most noticeable is the introduction of free-form widgets. This gives you the flexibility and freedom to arrange your homescreens exactly as you want them, using the five different widget size options to make commonly used functions or services more prominent.

More homescreens
And to go with this newfound flexibility are more homescreens for you to play about with – there are now six in total. That means you can place more commonly used tasks right on the surface level of your phone, instead of having to delve throught menus.

Status bar
A feature in Symbian Belle that has already attracted plenty of praise is the new Status bar that runs across the top of the screen. This contains a Notification tab you can pull down to get an overview of missed calls, messages and the like.

Live multitasking previews
It may not seem like a big deal, but the live multitasking view is actually extremely useful. It gives you a real-time view of what's going on in your apps directly from the multitasking view, allowing you to get a quick overview without going into the app itself.

New lock screen
The Symbian Anna lock screen has also been given an upgrade in graduating to Symbian Belle. It now shows details of missed calls, incoming messages and the like, so you can get check the basics without having to unlock your phone.

NFC
Nokia has really been pushing its Near Field Communcation (NFC) ecosystem in recent months, so it's no surprise to see NFC playing a prominent role in Symbian Belle. It allows for one-tap pairing or data transfer from one NFC-equipped device to another, and with a steadily increasing range of NFC-compatible Nokia kit to choose from, it looks like NFC is finally ready for the big time.

When will it be here?
We couldn't in all fairness cover 10 things you need to know about Symbian Belle without dealing with the all-important question of when it will be released. At this stage, all Nokia has said is that it'll be with us by the end of they year.

Are you impressed by what you've seen in Symbian Belle so far? Then let us know – drop us a line in the Comments box