Nokia Belle launched last week and we managed to snap it up on our Nokia N8 pretty much straightaway. With seven days of the new OS under our belt we're pretty confident we've got the handle of what's on offer. With that in mind, heck out our living with Nokia Belle on Nokia N8 review.
The Nokia N8 continues to be the king of camera phones some 18 months after its launch and with the arrival of the Nokia Belle update it truly feels like a new smartphone in your hand. The update can only be had through the Nokia Suite updater and with just over 286MB of firmware update to get ahold of we were surprised how quickly and smoothly the whole process took.
The update took around 15 minutes and then we were up and running. While the update went super smoothly, we did find that once up and running there were another couple of apps that needed to be downloaded through the updater, such as Social and the Search widget.
Nokia Suite v3.3.84 Beta preps for Nokia Belle update
As Nokia Belle on the Nokia N8 is a full new install you will find that you'll need to re-install pretty much all your apps and favourite software. Thankfully, we found that text messages, contacts and music and video files were still intact, so getting up and running isn't too troublesome.
The first time we fired up Nokia Store, to get all our apps from the account, we found a new update was ready and waiting. This took about five minutes to update and then we were getting our favourite apps back on the Nokia N8.
With four homescreens by default and the option to add another two, there is plenty of space for everything you regularly tap in to. Nokia Belle has moved away from banks of widgets, allowing you to personalise each homescreen easier and more intuitively.
Having access to all your apps on the homescreen does mean you'll rarely need to tap into the one page menu system, making the single button on the front of the Nokia N8 all but redundant. That said, we have found ourselves digging about in the back room for settings changes, for example.
One thing we definitely like is the new turn of speed the Nokia N8 seems to have developed under Nokia Belle. At first we thought this might have just been our imagination but the whole system does seem to load and run a lot smoother.
It's the little flourishes of Nokia belle, such as the pull down page for Mobile Data, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and mode settings that really help you make the most of your Nokia smartphone on the move. In fact, we've been hard pushed to find anyone who hasn't been impressed with the look and feel of Nokia Belle on our Nokia N8 since it landed.
Now, it's over to you, let us know what you think have been the main advantages of switching to Nokia Belle. Let us know your thoughts in the Comments below.
Check out our 24 hours living with Nokia Belle on Nokia N8 photo gallery:
