Nokia Belle Symbian Upgrade Not Coming to U.S. T-Mobile Astound

The Nokia Astound, which was launched on T-Mobile USA’s network as a variant of the Nokia C7 smartphone, won’t be getting a major software upgrade to Nokia Belle. Nokia Belle, which follows Symbian^3 Anna, adds a number of new features and visual changes to the Symbian^3 platform, giving it additional widgets, a slide-down notification tray, and brings the platform closer in appearance to iOS 5 and Android.

On a message on Twitter, Nokia US (@NokiaUS) responded to a user’s enquiry and stated that “unfortunately, the Nokia Astound on T-Mobile will not be updated to Nokia Belle.”

As the international variant of the Nokia Astound, known as the Nokia C7, is getting the Nokia Belle update pushed to it at this time, the decision to not offer Nokia Belle on the C7 probably originated with T-Mobile USA and not with Nokia. With carrier-branded devices, the update must be tested and pushed out by the carrier to ensure that it offers an optimum user experience on the network, T-Mobile USA probably does not want to spend the necessary resources to deploy the update given that Symbian has not gained much traction in the U.S. and Nokia is now transitioning to Windows Phone 7.

In fact, the device that succeeds the Nokia Astound on T-Mobile USA’s portfolio is the Windows Phone 7 Mango-powered Nokia Lumia 710 smartphone, which has been available since the beginning of the year.

Users of Nokia’s Symbian devices who have not updated to Nokia Belle and are curious as to what the update brings or enables can visit My Nokia Blog to see what the latest update brings and looks like on the Nokia N8.