Thanks for your patience @bittersw8regene. Unfortunately the Nokia Astound on T-Mobile will not be updated to Nokia Belle.
— Nokia US (@NokiaUS) February 8, 2012
Owners of the T-Mobile version of the Nokia C7-00 Symbian smartphone are set to experience what owners of the Dell Streak 7 4G version did, as the carrier is actively refusing to provide the Nokia Belle update for the phone, citing the expense of additional carrier testing for the update. The refusal to provide the updates also underscores the financial position the fourth largest carrier is in following the terminated AT&T/T-Mobile merger.
The Nokia Astound is currently the last carrier subsidized current generation Nokia Symbian smartphone available in the US and formed part of T-Mobile’s renewed agreement with Nokia when it was launched in 2011 with Symbian Anna and is based off of the C7 which has received its expected update to Symbian Belle on an international level.
The lack of timely updates for the T-Mobile version also serves to exacerbate the carrier’s issues with providing timely updates for phones and devices after initial launch if sales did not meet expectations, as it also refused to update its variant of the Dell Streak 7 Android tablet despite Dell updating its own variant twice in the span of one year, also citing cost issues for additional testing as the culprit for not providing updates while the tablet floundered sales-wise in the marketplace compared to alternatives from Samsung.
Even though Symbian is considered a dead end in terms of developme and supportnt, the small but incredibly devoted international userbase is ensuring that the phone is actively updated despite the shrinking userbase for the operating system. Active Symbian development has since been spun off to international consulting conglomerate Accenture, who is managing the core development team after Nokia spun off the assets last year ahead of announcing its move to Windows Phone as its smartphone platform going forward, killing both Symbian and MeeGo in the process.
The C7/Astound was launched last April and features video calling via Qik through its front facing camera, a 3.5 inch capacitive AMOLED display at 640×360 resolution, an 8.0 megapixel camera with 720p HD video capture, flash and autofocus, as well as a microSDHC slot, Bluetooth and Ovi access. The phone can currently be purchased for free after a new agreement directly from T-Mobile or as low as $100 as a prepaid phone.
