What You Need To Know About The Symbian Anna Update For Nokia N8

The long wait for the Symbian Anna firmware update for Nokia N8 is over. Nokia has been rolling out the new update for more than a week now. First announced on Nokia’s official blog, the Symbian Anna update targets N8 users in Europe and Asia. Countries where the update was already released include the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia.

The Updating Process

You can update your device in two ways: either directly through the smartphone via OTA (over the air) or through the Ovi software suite for computers. At 27MB, the update will take between 15 to 20 minutes to install. If you happen to be on the road while doing the update, Nokia recommends that you find a Wi-Fi connection and wait for the whole update to be completed.

Nokia guarantees that all your user data will be safe during and after the update. Even so, it’s better if you do a quick back-up of your essential data before downloading the update.

Note that Nokia has warned that if your N8 firmware is not up-to-date, you will have to download and install first the latest version that supports the update, before Symbian Anna can be installed. If you notice that the firmware update takes longer than expected don’t worry: it may be the other update. Just to be safe, assign about 40 minutes or even 60 minutes if your connection is slow for the updating process.

Notable Improvements Included in the Update

Nokia has been gathering feedback from N8 users for quite a while now, and the Symbian Anna update seems to address the biggest issues raised by users. Overall, it makes the smartphone more functional, and it adds a few new features long-awaited by some users.

• A virtual keypad has been introduced in portrait mode. Designed for writing text quickly, the keypad comes with a split-screen text feature, which lets you do something else in the background while texting.

• The icon set has been changed, and it’s safe to say that many icons are more attractive now than they used to be.

• The web browser has been updated as well, with quite a few small yet helpful tweaks being made. Also, Nokia has said that the new version of the web browser is much more secure than the last. Only time will tell if this is true.

• Maps have been improved too. The core of the improvements aims to make them more functional.

• And then there’s the camera updates. N8, with its powerful 12-megapixel camera, is considered by many the best camera phone currently on the market. If you appreciate N8 for its camera you’ll be glad to hear that Symbian Anna brings many new improvements, mostly to video recording. Now there’s also a better red-eye reduction feature, many interface tweaks aiming to improve functionality, and an exposure compensation control.

Symbian Anna makes N8 more functional and easy to use and a better smartphone all-round. It consolidates N8’s position as the top camera phone currently available. After making the update make sure to check the new camera tweaks and improvements – you’ll notice some excellent stuff.

Guest article written by a TechPatio reader!