Nokia pulled the cover off Symbian Belle, which will debut with the three new models (600, 700 and 701). It succeeds Anna and brings more improvements to the Symbian OS to quote the press release, "All in all, Symbian Belle provides Nokia most competitive, seamless and intuitive Symbian experience so far."

By the sound of it, this new version brings more improvements to the homescreen than Anna did. The homescreen now consists of up to six rather than three panes and the widgets that live on those panes will be available in five different sizes. The widgets can be resized too, which gives you even more flexibility.

The way multitasking works has changed too instead of the old task switcher, you can now flick between live images of your open apps. Unfortunately, we did not see a screenshot of that, it sounds pretty cool. The main menu is now flat its vertically scrollable and all the shortcuts are placed on the same screen, no more folders.

Video Below!

Color us surprised! It was only last week that Nokia was done with the i-dotting and t-crossing of the Symbian Anna update and now they are ready to unveil the next Symbian iteration. Called Belle, the next Symbian version will be announced in just a couple of days, when the timer set up on the Nokia Facebook page reaches zero.

The Finnish company was obviously trying to build up some hype, suggesting that we held our collective breaths as the next big thing in Symbian approaches. However, someone forgot to rename the flash presentation and it was going by "Belle teaser" initially, so there won't be many surprises when the curtain is lifted.

Of course, Nokia could always surprise us by garnishing the Symbian Belle announcement with a new Symbian handset. There have been plenty of those in the rumor mill recently, but the 1GHz Nokia 700 seems like the most likely candidate if a new handset is to be unveiled on Wednesday.

Plus, we still do not know when the Belle update will actually be seeded to users so we would be looking forward to finding that out too. So stay tuned and we will keep you updated.

The first Symbian Anna phones, the Nokia E6 and the Nokia X7, are now shipping. Announced back in April, these two have been on pre-order for a while and now you can buy one, if you do not mind a stretched out delivery date.

The touchscreen/QWERTY E-series messenger, the Nokia E6, will be available in Europe, Eurasia, Asia/Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Nokia Germany online store still have it on pre-order for €429 while Italians can pre-order it for €399. The Nokia UK online store still lists it as available on pre-order for £349 (€400) SIM-free.

It is shipping now if you want to get it on a contract (phone is free with a £25/month contract with Vodafone or T-Mobile) or on pre-paid for £339 with Vodafone, T-Mobile or Orange. There is a note saying you should allow 11 days for delivery.

The Nokia X7 and its 4-inch AMOLED screen will be headed to Europe, Eurasia, China, India and other Asia/Pacific countries. Its pre-order price in Germany is €459 and €429 in Italy, which is quite steep despite all of Symbian Anna improvements. Its missing from the UK store right now.

Nokia Has Announced that it will take over Symbian Foundation and developing by buying all Shares from the Market,Nokia says that its still "strongly committed" to the platform, it just will not be the Foundation throwing it together. Interestingly, the Symbian Exposition is this week in Amsterdam, so we suspect we will be hearing a lot more about this over the next few days. Is it just us, or is Mr. Elop making his presence felt very, very quickly? For what its worth, the Foundation is explaining that a board meeting held just today played a big role in this decision and sudden announcement though there was a call for media.

Press Release

Nokia commits to make the Symbian platform available under an alternative open model

AMSTERDAM, SYMBIAN EXCHANGE & EXPOSITION (SEE), NOVEMBER 8, 2010 – Following a strategy review, the board of the Symbian Foundation has today decided to transition the role of the non-profit organisation. The foundation will become a legal entity responsible for licensing software and other intellectual property, such as the Symbian trademark. Nokia has committed to make the future development of the Symbian platform available to the ecosystem via an alternative direct and open model.

"The founding board members took a bold strategic step in setting up the foundation, which was absolutely the right decision at the time," says Tim Holbrow, executive director, Symbian Foundation. "There has since been a seismic change in the mobile market but also more generally in the economy, which has led to a change in focus for some of our funding board members. The result of this is that the current governance structure for the Symbian platform – the foundation - is no longer appropriate.

"However, the platform enjoys strong support from some of the largest and most innovative device creators in the world. And we continue to see solid momentum behind the platform, with 25 percent of all Symbian-based devices shipping in the last 12 months.*

"I'm immensely proud of the work we've done at the Symbian Foundation. Perhaps most notably, in the last year we've delivered the biggest open source project ever in releasing the entire Symbian codebase under an open source license, and we did it four months ahead of schedule."

The first phase of the foundation's transition will involve a reduction in operations and staff numbers. By April 2011, the Symbian Foundation will be governed by a group of non-executive directors tasked with overseeing the organisation's licensing function.

"Nokia remains committed to Symbian as the most used smartphone platform around the world," said Jo Harlow, senior vice president, Smartphones, Nokia. "The Nokia N8 generated the highest online pre-orders we've ever experienced and we have a family of Symbian^3 smartphones including the Nokia N8, Nokia C7, and Nokia C6-01 which are available now, as well as the Nokia E7 which is expected to ship before the end of 2010. Nokia expects to sell more than 50 million Symbian^3 smartphones."

The Symbian Foundation leadership team will work together with Nokia to ensure that the reduction in operations of the foundation will bring as little disruption to the ecosystem as possible. Further details of this process will be shared at a later date.

Today's announcement does not affect the Symbian Exchange & Exposition (SEE 2010), which will commence on November 9th in Amsterdam. SEE 2010 will bring together attendees from over 55 countries to engage, exchange and explore opportunities offered by the Symbian platform. For more information about the event, visit www.see2010.org.