From the press release:
Nokia also restated its commitment to Symbian. This July, Nokia will start shipping Nokia N8s, E7s, C7s and C6-01s with the new Symbian Anna software update, which includes a number of user experience improvements. By the end of August, existing owners of these devices can also download Symbian Anna. And over the next 12 months Nokia plans to bring up to 10 new Symbian-based smartphones to market.
We covered most of the Anna improvements in the first part of our review of the Nokia X7 yesterday, but there's much more to come in the next few weeks, including a review of the Nokia E6, also Symbian Anna-powered.
The gaps between shipping Anna on the X7 and E6, and then to shipping on new N8s, E7s, etc., and then to the firmware being available for existing devices, are consistent with previous patterns. It's not so much that Nokia is trying to force early adopters to pick up the new devices, more that the X7 and E6, and then Symbian Anna on the N8s, E7s, etc, may throw up small issues with Anna in the real world that can be fed back into the 'gold' builds of the OS for the tens of millions of older Symbian^3 phones.
The "end of August" phrase sounds like a catch-all to cover network variants - we're expecting SIM-free phones to get the update significantly earlier.
"10 new Symbian-based devices" will surprise many commentators, but is a welcome statement of intent from Nokia. These will span a wide price range of course, but we can certainly still expect several high end (read N8 and E7-like) models among the ten. "12 months" takes us to mid 2012, for new Symbian-powered devices still being launched, reinforcing Elop's previous statements about supporting Symbian until at least 2016. To use the cliche again - rumours of Symbian's 'death' have indeed been greatly exagerated?
Rafe, Steve, for AAS, 21 June 2011
