A while back, I had a bit of a moment when I ranted on about how flawed the E7 was. However, with the new Symbian Belle update, it's a lot better now. Finally, it starts to make a lot more sense. However, rumors are abound that the next Symbian update, Carla might not make it to the E7, as it doesn't have enough firepower to handle it. Or more likely, a lite version of Carla will be available for the E7. And this is pretty monumentous news, as the Carla update is a big overhaul and it refreshes Symbian^3 altogether.

This is all a bit mysterious. Either Nokia's product management team screwed up, or the rate at which the smartphone market grew messed up Nokias' product strategy. The Nokia N8, and the E7, flagship devices of the Symbian range are too old and weak to support a Symbian^3 upgrade that even models much lower in the hierarchy such as the 701(which have better(4x)processing power) to support. The 701 can even support Windows Phone 7 or Android 4.0, if it comes to that.

Nokia E7 with Symbian Belle

However, Nokia has specifically listed the flagship devices as N8-00, and E7-00. So there might be future models based, if we are to believe the nomenclature followed by the other phones in the Nokia family. Hopefully the N8-01, or E7-01 might just bring Nokia up to speed in the smartphone war.

Windows Phone 7

I honestly do not consider the Windows Phone 7 OS to be any better than Symbian^3. The Windows interface is too cluttered and it is frustrating when scrolling through the menues. It is a great idea to have the 'tiles', but they haven't thought the idea through. It is counter-productive, and it is an eyesore with all those tiles and idiotic contrast, and the colour scheme is awful as well. God help you if want to navigate through the menues and pull up something. It's a bloody maze. Although, technically it is a better platform than Symbian, but Symbian with its user friendly interface and properly segmented menues and its well chosen colours makes it so much nice to use. Android is downright boring, but productive. And yes, iOS is still the best mobile OS out there. The iPhone 4 used a 680+(upper limit is supposedly 780Mhz or so) Mhz processor with average RAM. Similar specs to the E7. But there's a huge chasm in the user experiences of both the mobiles. The iPhone is a class apart, and the E7 lags behind. iOS, with its fantastically structured menues, and inherent intuitiveness of the OS and it's fantastic display feels so fluid(very efficient) and effortless compared to the halty, and jerky Symbian^3. iOS is extremely efficient, and I highly doubt Android which is nothing more than an open-source clone of it, will ever catch up. Windows 7 is just hopeless. Nokia needs to develop a new OS with ARM(instead if Intel) and get its best designers on the job. Something along the lines of MeeGo, and possibly even better. MeeGo was the only OS that got close to iOS.

Apple iPhone 4

Good luck and Godspeed Nokia.