What better place to start than with the phones that Belle comes on, and with the All About Symbian team (they are all about the Symbian, after all). Steve Litchfield got his hands on the Nokia 700 and as part of his excellent review took a look at the guts of the phone.
The Nokia 701 with Belle – ‘a big step up’
He reckons that Belle has come on ‘leaps and bounds in terms of compatibility (and in terms of performance)’ – a good sign as an opening sentence. He also says Belle has taken the UI ‘significantly’ towards its Android rival, and is a ‘big step up’. He does think that Belle is geared more towards new users and Symbian old-timers will take a while to get used to the new layout, but that shouldn’t take long as far as he’s concerned.
Next up, Hannah Bouckley has posted her thoughts on the Nokia 700 on Recombu. Again, as part of an overall phone review she takes a look at Belle and a more top line view of what’s changed. She mentions the automatic formatting of the text when viewing a web page, saying that this uses the space available on the screen in ‘a much more efficient way’. But she bemoaned the lack of Flash support, however, and reckoned simple commands took ‘too long’.
The guys at TechTree, as well as producing the short video demo below, say that what Anna ‘ironed out’ of Symbian^3, Belle completes and folds (that’s my extension of the analogy). The stand out line for me was when they mentioned that ‘swiping across the six homescreens is smoother than in most droids’.
Belle on the Nokia 701, a quick video demo from TechTree
So what do you think? Have you had a chance to have a hands on with Belle yet? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment, or by sharing your thoughts @Nokia_Connects