Symbian Anna,
also known as the PR2.0 update to Symbian^3, brings a lot of new
features and reworks the system visuals, but is it enough to extinguish
the fire on the "burning platform?” Nokia's plans to transition to
Windows Phone as its main mobile OS reveal everything when it comes to
the company's long term strategy, but in the short term it's still
Symbian that keeps Nokia afloat. And Symbian Anna contributes to this,
but it still fails to bring Nokia's platform to a contemporary level.
The
update makes its debut on the media-centric Nokia X7 and the
business-oriented Nokia E6. But with full legacy support, you might want
to wait for the fall when it will arrive on previous Symbian^3
handsets. Below is a breakdown of the most important features of the
Symbian Anna update.
Visuals:
The new set of icons is on the right
Anna comes with a set of new rounded icons which freshens up the menus of the updated Symbian^3. It also pleases the eye with real-time scrolling as
it basically means that you can gradually scroll between home panes.
The transitional animations will follow your finger in real-time, just
like in iOS and Android.
Functionality:
The
slowish stock browser on Nokia's platform has been one of our main
critiques and Nokia's has promised an update months ago. Is the long
wait worth it? With partial HTML5 support,
hardware acceleration for smooth CSS animations and a new clean UI
(with always visible back button and support for searches straight from
the address bar), Browser version 7.3
is a breath of fresh air for Symbian. But while it does support Flash
Lite, choppy performance was often an issue. The reworked browser
supports multitouch, which works well.
Nokia's Browser 7.3 is on the right
Up
until the Symbian Anna update was announced, owners of Symbian^3 had to
make do with the triple tap numeric keypad in portrait mode. Finally,
Anna brought a full-QWERTY portrait virtual keyboard.
You might find it hard to get used to Nokia's positioning of the
numbers in a couple of rows instead of just one like on other systems,
but except for that there's nothing fancy about this keyboard which just
works. The maps application
in its latest version has the familiar interface, but more
functionality as it now integrates new public transportation routes and
allows quicker searches. You can also download full country maps
directly without using a computer.
With its dual-pane layout in the monthly view, the Calendar application
in Anna becomes even more useful. You can tap on any day on the left
panel, while on the right all of your appointments are shown. You can
also use multitouch to zoom in/out switching between monthly and weekly
views. Finally, the email application
has remained largely the same at its core, but now you have more space
to view your mails and you can select multiple mails to manipulate.
Those
novelties, are certainly important, but while they touch on some of
Symbian's core issues, they don't completely solve them and Browser 7.3
is just one example. Some of the issues remain unaddressed – the
confusing navigation, outdated homescreen widgets and overall
sluggishness of the platform. But even before this first major update
has rolled out, Nokia sets the bar high for Symbian Belle, the second
important overhaul of the platform, by mentioning: "if you like Android
then you’ll love Symbian Belle." There's no clear release date for the
update, but after those words, we can only hope that it's sooner rather
than later.