Nokia Symbian Anna is available now

FINNISH PHONE MAKER Nokia has announced that its Symbian Anna operating system (OS) is available to download.

Owners of Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and E7 phones can update their handsets to the latest version of Symbian. Depending on your country and operator the software can be downloaded over the air or via a PC from today onwards.

Nokia VP Ilari Nurmi said, "Symbian Anna represents a significant update to the experience those users have and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to Symbian, which will see up to 10 more phones introduced over the next 12 months, further updates to the user experience and support for the software until at least 2016."

Nokia's blog confirmed that the UK is one of the countries that will receive the update this week along with Sweden, Germany and Finland.

The update brings a few fairly unimpressive features including a revamped user interface with new icons, updated Nokia Maps, better web browsing and a split screen mode for messaging. It also includes better data encryption and enables near field communications (NFC) for the C7.

Nokia has vowed to support the OS until 2016 through the IT management consulting firm Accenture. In the meantime the company will shift its focus to selling handsets running Microsoft's Windows Phone OS.

We were quite excited by the prospect of the Nokia N9 that runs the Meego OS, but currently Nokia has no plans to market the N9 in the UK. µ