17th and 18th Aug would be one of the happiest day for Symbian^3 users. Most awaited Symbian Anna became available on 17th Evening (IST) via Nokia Care Suite only but later next morning, it was available via OTA as posted here: http://l.ksg91.com/paas0N
Nokia, along with N8, released Symbian Anna for other first generation Symbian^3 phones – C7, E7 and C6-01. It is available in European and Asian markets including the UK, France, Russia, Indonesia, China and India and more countries in upcoming three weeks.
Well, now back to the topic, Symbian Anna update was 25 MB in size.
Symbian Anna update was followed by the four updates from SW Update.
Symbian Anna brings several updates visible to end users as well as over 100 of “under the hood” improvements and bugfixes providing faster and smoother experience. Here are most of the improvements and changes compared to PR1.2
1. New Icon Set:
Symbian Anna comes with new Icon Sets with rounded corner which gives nice look and feel.
2. Draggable Homescreen and load-on-need basis Widgets:
Homescreens are now draggable making transition between two homescreens more attractive. Widgets are loaded on-needed basis, i.e. when a homescreen becomes active then only its widgets becomes active and start loading. This can be seen in second screenshot below. This provides better memory managements and efficiency.
3. New Loading Notation:
Whenever you start any app, unlike previous version where phone pauses for couple of seconds and screen goes blank and then app start, a rotating symbol comes up darkening the screen and notifying loading. Its gives better visual to user that something is happening.
4. Portrait QWERTY and Split Screen Input
One of the most exciting features of Symbian Anna is new Text Input. Symbian^3 was criticized by gadget geeks a lot for not having a portrait qwerty KB which is indeed “a must have feature” for any smartphone. But new Text Input has Portrait QWERTY. Now swype can be used in portrait mode as well. Default portrait qwerty is better but I still prefer using swype KB than it. You can switch between QWERTY and Alphanumeric KB in portrait mode.
Another cool feature of this new text input is split screen input. Now you can actually see where you are typing while typing it unlike previously where you have to type blindly and you have no idea where text is being written and what events are fired!
5. New Browser
One of the most important improvements is to Browser. Symbian Anna updates browser to 7.3 which bring few improvements and missing features. New browser comes with a address bar at top. You can see new menu with new icons. Old browser supported the multiple tab but it was not possible to start a new tab manually. People has requested to Nokia about this so many times. Finally, this new browsers allow user to start a new tab. You can open a new tab by going to windows from menu and by clicking on icon in right bottom corner.
New browser is improved a lot in html code rendering and includes Flickable effect in scrolling. Browser scores 4x better points in HTML5 test compared to old browser but its lower than the score of Android and iOS browser. But overall, browser has received a lot of improvement than its predecessor.
6. Email
Symbian Anna has changed email client’s UI and made few changes. Changes can be seen in screenshots below.
7. Calender
Now calender includes split screen for month/day view with tap to add entry.
8. Camera
Camera UI is revamped little with new icons and some minor changes. Damina Dinning on Twitter said
PhoneDaz Damian Dinning
10. Photo Gallery
Now, by entering photo gallery, you do not have to select album, tag or all photo option but you directly reach to grid of all photos. You can later go to albums or tags.
11. New Apps
Some new apps are added as well as some new versions of third party apps. Some may be available after downloading initial updates. Some of them are :
- Intranet : Allows you to connect to your company’s Intranet using IPSec or SSL VPN enablers.
- Microsoft Communicator
- QuickOffice Premium 6.4
- Adobe Reader 10
- New Search with portrait qwerty and split screen enabled
- Ovi Social’s new build
- Ovi Store’s new build
- Ovi Map’s new version include public transport routes and quicker search with qwerty.
- FlashLite 4, Java Runtime 2.2, Qt Mobility 1.1, Qt 4.7 up-to-date for developers.
12. NFC
Symbian Anna enable the NFC chip in Nokia C7 and which enables a new way of connectivity!
13. qtAppBooster
Well, I don’t know what exactly this is but after Symbian Anna update, I saw this process running. This seems to be some helper process to boost the performance of Qt apps.
Symbian Anna is suppose to improve battery life. Performance upgrades a lot and sluggishness of phone eliminates or rudes much. Phone has become smoother and sexy after upgrading to Symbian Anna.
I have tried to cover all the features and improvements done in Symbian Anna, I discovered or came to know about. Actual improvements are much more under the hood.
If you find I missed anything or wrote something wrong, feel free to comment.
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August 21st, 2011 4:43 pm
Well anothr reasn 2 b a happy n8 user:)
August 21st, 2011 4:45 pm
lol yeah! 🙂
August 23rd, 2011 2:51 pm
I learned a lot from this post, much appreciated! 🙂
August 23rd, 2011 6:49 pm
thanks 🙂
September 3rd, 2011 12:43 pm
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