Nokia launches three new smartphones with Symbian Belle and built-in NFC functionality

jasonblack | 24 August, 2011 16:45

Nokia today announced the launch of the Nokia 700, Nokia 701 and Nokia 600, extending the range of available designs, features and functionality among Nokia Symbian smartphones. All three phones are powered by Symbian Belle, and include single-tap NFC sharing and pairing capabilities extending the addressable market of NFC-enabled applications on Nokia smartphones.  

Symbian Belle

Symbian Belle is the latest in a series of planned updates to the Symbian platform, which started with Symbian Anna earlier this year and will continue into 2012. Belle increases the number of home screens from three to six, and includes re-sizable live widgets, so the user can determine which content to prioritise and bring to the home screen. It also includes a pull-down menu and taskbar to access notifications from any of the home screens, as well as Nokia’s fastest and most powerful Symbian browser ever, with three times faster content rendering.

“We are now driving the platform even further with our most competitive Symbian user experience ever,” said Ilari Nurmi, Vice President at Nokia. “Symbian Belle and the three new handsets we are launching today show our commitment to continue Symbian products that allow people to choose what is most important to them in terms of user experience, design, functionality and price. These will not be last products or updates we will deliver on Symbian.”  

One of Symbian Belle’s most interesting features is the built-in NFC capability. This allows contacts, videos and images to be shared with other NFC-enabled devices and smartphones, as well as pairing with NFC-enabled accessories such as the Nokia Essence Bluetooth Stereo Headset.

Developing with NFC

Nokia is going to introduce the NFC APIs into the Qt SDK with the forthcoming QtMobility 1.2. (for Symbian) upgrade. The Qt SDK enables the most efficient creation of mobile applications for Symbian and MeeGo smartphones. For easy testing and development purposes, Developers of NFC applications are going to be able to access the global distribution and monetization opportunity of Nokia’s Ovi Store, which recently topped nine million downloads per day.

For more information on how to get started developing NFC applications, please visit developer.nokia.com/NFC.

Three new Nokia smartphones with NFC capabilities

The Nokia 700 weighs only 96gm and at 110 x 50.7 x 9.7 mm it is not only Nokia’s most compact smartphone in the Symbian range, it is the most compact touch monoblock smartphone in the world. While small in size, it is pack with functionality, including: single-tap NFC capabilities, a 1Ghz processor, 3.2 inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, 2GB of internal memory (with the option of up to 32GB using a microSD card), HD video capture and 5MP full focus camera with LED flash. The Nokia 700 is also Nokia’s most eco-friendly smartphone, with long battery life, extensive use of eco-friendly materials, and the Ovi Green app preloaded to update users on health and eco related topics.

The Nokia 701 is a sleek, slim, light-weight smartphone incorporating the world’s brightest ever mobile phone display, based on a 3.5 inch ClearBlack display that makes it perfect for indoor and outdoor use. Based on the popular Nokia C7 design, the Nokia 701 has a 1GHz processor, 8MP full focus camera with dual LED flash and 2 X digital zoom, 2nd front-facing camera and HD video capture. It comes with 8GB internal memory and the possibility to increase to 32GB using a microSD card. The Nokia 701 also has active noise cancellation for the clearest sound quality and, like the other new Nokia smartphones, provides single-tap NFC pairing and sharing capabilities, allowing content to be shared and sound to be streamed wirelessly to headphones and NFC-enabled speakers.

The Nokia 600 also delivers big features in a small package. Available at a lower price point than the Nokia 700 and Nokia 701, the Nokia 600 includes a 1 GHz processor; 5MP full-focus camera with LED flash and HD video capture, and 2GB of internal memory with memory card support (up to 32GB). This smartphone also has a built-in FM radio antenna for listening to radio without headphones, 60 hours of music playback time, an incredibly powerful external loudspeaker and the ability to stream music wirelessly to NFC-enabled speakers such as the Nokia Play 360o speakers.

NOTE: Symbian Belle devices will be available to Nokia Developer PRO members as prototype loans. In addition, Nokia Software Update PRO (available to Nokia Developer Pro members) can install Belle images for the Nokia N8, Nokia E6, Nokia E7, Nokia X7, Nokia C7, Nokia C6-01 and Nokia Oro. And, in the near future, developers can access Symbian Belle firmware via Remote Device Access.

Hardware , Devices , NFC , Symbian | Next | Previous | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

RSSComments

GPU?

codedivine | 24/08/2011, 16:58

Do you have any info on the GPU chip vendor and specifications and graphics memory?

Symbian^3 SDK update likely?

mgroeber9110 | 25/08/2011, 09:56

As this is a developer site, it would also be interesting to know about any plans to update the Symbian^3 to include Belle as well.

Presumably there are new APIs, and being able to debug in an emulator version that is as close as possible to the "real thing" (say, with regards to the behavior of the UI when using the split-screen Qwerty keyboard) would definitely be very helpful, too.

Thanks for any insights...

thx

kaushalbeladiya | 26/08/2011, 17:56

nice info thx jason

RE: Symbian^3 SDK update likely?

jasonblack | 26/08/2011, 20:32

jasonblack

@mgroeber9110 - I have been told there will be updates to both Qt SDK and Symbian emulators for developing on Belle software coming around the end of September. In the meantime, there are updated style guidelines that can offer some background and guidance: http://www.developer.nokia.com/Resources/Library/Symbian_Design_Guidelines/

I hope that is helpful! - jason

@jasonblack

MoritzJT | 09/09/2011, 14:31

One Question, will Belle fully implement all of the UI guideline changes? I can still see a lot of AVKON heritage, especially for the fallback notification popups. They still block UI interaction. Also QT Components uses smaller, more polished components. A big example is the text selection magnifier. Where is that in Belle?

Do we have to wait for yet another update to see these improvements sytemwide?

Do you plan to rewrite the native app suite so that no AVKON fallback is used but all of the new QT Components are employed?

Thanks for your time

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