Well, sorry about the delay, some (minor) health issues kept me from posting. So. Onwards.

First, the summary: If you are alone at night crying yourself to sleep because Anna isn't on your device then good news, everyone. It's not what is cracked up to be. Anna seems more like a fork of Belle, to keep us happy and ease the transition. You might as well have it and not know, save for a few things that jump up.

The nice thing is Nokia keeps going forward. There might not be groundbreaking things in it, but at least it's all(ish) good.

Improved Icons
Well, kinda. All icons are now fat squares, with back solid color fill and icons. I like the idea of icons rather than little pictures, it gives it an intuitive feel, but personally I rather hate them. It looks like they wanted to be like icons on other OSs but they are late to the party.

The best looking ones are still the iOS, since they got there first. Nice rounded squares, well proportioned. Then Android got there and made them squarer and a little fatter, and now Nokia is left with these obese things.

Still, it's a matter of taste, frankly, if you like the new icons you're all set. Because they're staying.


Better browser
It's slightly faster. It has a top address bar that incorporates the stop/go button at the end. Seems small but it's easy to hit.

It is always full screen, no more of that silly thick bar on the right. The horrendousness has been replaced by a small round anchor (N900 style) that, when clicked, pops up the menu. This allows settings, switching windows, viewing images, etc. It still lacks a source viewer.

In portrait, the keyboard only covers half of a screen, so you can see what you type, instead of the normal opaque keyboard. Same old in landscape, though in landscape you probably gonna go hardware.

It finally has a back button! Yeeey! The back button is still an anchor and it still pops the animated history, BUT now there's a setting that allows you to use the on-screen button as a directly-back which is something I assume you will want to. Ye old history is still available via menu, only 2 clicks away instead of one. It presents itself as a list of visited links, in order (hence the name).

It feels overall faster, but not by much, and it still has no keyboard shortcuts. But with always-full screen there is more much-needed realestate and, with a normal back button you may not need the menu after all. So, improvement.

Oh, and better HTML5 support. And better CSS support. And improved hardware acceleration. Yes, folks this one really is better. It has also gained tap-and-hold menu.

Refreshed Ovi Maps
Search is better - split search tabs make for a better UI.

You can now share places better (Nokia says SMS and e-mail - never tried it).

It has more layers, basically. Nokia lists this as a transport route enhancement thingy. It now has a later of POIs and lines that includes transport. No magic here.

It also lists update over wlan which is confusing because I could already do that. But, since Maps can be downloaded separately I might have had a newer version.

Also, as preview of things to come, this is the last one that will work this way. In Belle (or now if you are feeling adventurous with Beta) Maps will be split in separate apps. Check In will be separate, Places will be separate, Update, etc. They may separate driving app from normal maps. Not a bad idea for development, but not as bright for us. The decision is final, says one Nokia employee, so, if you don't like it, tough.

Still, it's not bad, because you can have shortcuts to driving and to check in separately and use a folder to group them. I already do that, so it's not too bad.

Again, the separation will be mandatory in Belle.

Better Ovi Store
In the sense that a turd is better if you spray some aftershave over it. I'm gonna need a stiffer drink.

That's got it.

It's not agony to use OVI, but it has a few things that annoy me, like that bug that makes items disappear when scrolling long lists (they part-fixed it. Hint: Exit OVI, start again, then go directly for the list. Fiddling with login and profile windows trigger the bug).

So, what's improved?

Nokia says: Improved search (like THAT was a problem), including auto-complete (why?), spell-checking (oh yeah, baby!) and Internet search engine optimization and error fixes (again with optimizations I don't care about)

Also, an "increased file size limits for downloading over WLAN". Whoop-dee-doo.

Social Media Enhanced
Now we're getting somewhere.

The social app is better. It now reliably gets updates, no longer coughs when booting up the phone, is faster, better.

It has now grown a "home" button (look for a button that looks like a settings button - that's home) in the top right. Yeah. No more 25 "back" buttons.

It also has status updates in contact cards. Also, apparently you can retweet and view follower list in Twitter (I wouldn't know, I hate Twitter), higher resolution image uploads, ability to add caption to images.

Cutting through marketing, let me make it clear: It's faster, better, more reliable and it has a few more things it should have had from the beginning, like captioning an image.

It still needs to download an entire album to view an image that has been posted, though. It's still a rather poor viewer.

But, better. The direction is more important then speed.

Enhanced Ovi Suite
Why this is listed as Anna improvements is beyond me. Maybe it relies on Anna fixes on phone side.

OVI suite has received several updates, and now works right with maps, music, sync is OK. I still have a bug where some messages read from the PC are stuck as unread in the database.

But there is a fix where you can use a db editor to mark them read. As N900 owners, this should be second nature to you by now. Fix it yourself.

They did address the bug, in the sense that Nokia says it stopped from happening. No word on already-stuck messages. Still, it is an annoyance rather than a problem because this is in the local PC storage, not on phone.

Messaging Enhanced
Microsoft Communicator Mobile

If above word make you swell with joy, rejoice. If you have no idea what it does, you don't need it.

Other stuff
There are other things that come with Anna that are not listed above, mainly because I stole the headers off an article I found to keep me in line.

So, new stuff not above:

* Calendar has split screen. Calendar now uses what's left from the square calendar month view to list what's going on today, so you don't have to switch views.

N900-style color for each calendar bar at the beginning, followed by the description. Todo notes are shown in the current day as if they were scheduled today, instead of every day or some other nonsense. This happens in portrait and landscape alike.

They kept the swipe to change month, also, clicking date allows jump to date. Basically, there is no need to leave moth view any more. Useful.

* Portrait keyboard has QWERTY. Yes, folks, if you ever saw a QWERTY crammed in a portrait phone and thought "I gotta get me some of THAT", you're in luck. Fortunately for sane people, you cans switch back and forth with T9 at will so you can type with a single hand. On the brighter side, numbers are spread so it's not as bad as other people's. Also, some (rather large) news sites report that the T9 has been ditched in favor of QWERTY. Don't believe the hype.

* Email is faster. Email app is faster to load mails and is more lively. It also followed Browser in the UI cleanup. Now some of the UI elements slide with the view to make more room, buttons were collapsed, fat was lost. Same mail app, but better, in line with Anna so far.

* Home screen better. When starting, each tile has a "preview" generated by the OS, composed of the icon of the app, on the left, and a sign that it's "refreshing" on the right. As each one redraws, they are replaced, so no more empty places. Also, it gives a sense it's actually doing something, instead of empty seconds staring at the screen wondering.

* Bootup time slashed. Old OS took a shower (literally) to start up. This one is way, way faster. It has been improved, but a lot of it is because instead of waiting for each widget to draw/update, it now just displays the placeholder and moves on.

* Widgets are better managed. I have already outlined above, but this is actually an improvement. They are better managed, there is less slowdown when one misbehaves, there's the placeholder thing to interact with it before it's fully loaded (like remove and re-add).

* Better management of features. This has no place in QWERTY portrait or Browser sections, so I made one. When QWERTY/T9 Portrait keyboard fires up, it goes in split screen. In browser, the input box is scrolled into view. In home screen, the widget accepting input (like Search) is brought into view. The background is cleared of widgets (except Search) and the input point is moved into view, like the screen only had this widget and it was placed perfectly. It's neat and it reminds of that attention to detail that made Nokia a big name. Good to see someone kicked someone in the behind.

* Image gallery better. Same incredible speed, but the side buttons now have a button that enters select mode. In this mode, tapping an image selects it. With nice, large, visible checkboxes overlayed. Finally. That tap-and-hold 50 images was getting old.

It has also gained a "mode" button that allows choice of "all" (boasts "multi-select button and share), "Album mode" (Boasts add to album and sort by buttons) and "Tags mode" (boasts tag management button and sort by size or alpha).

* Camera minor improvements. Several improvements have been claimed but all I can see is a new Anna-like UI finish, with actual iconic icons, and zoom is finally smooth (old camera has steps when zooming in). Same camera though, double tap to zoom in and out, multi-touch to change resolution)

* New app: Internet radio. Internet radio from N900 is back with a vengeance. Boasts thousands of stations built-in, can add more. Works in background. Stream info. No stutters that I could induce. Has bandwidth setting. Cool by any standards.

* New app: Shazam. Not a fan, but many people cried for it on N900, so it's here. On E7.

* Improved speed: Videos. It seems faster. No new features. Could be indexing is faster/better, all multimedia stuff feels more lively accessing on-device content.

* Better user feedback. Now the phone displays the "wait" animation when a (larger) program is being launched, so no more of that "did I press it" wondering. Still no "exit" feedback, exiting large apps leaves the phone sluggish for a few seconds with no feedback.

Well, that's it, really. If it seems that is a lot, that's because it is. And this is just a step up to Belle, which is the thick slice.

Yeah, and that stuff about not noticing having Anna installed, I lied. It's great. I didn't want to add to your grief, but can't help it. Most apps have new UI, most are faster, better, or at least not worse. Worth every penny. (haha, it's funny because it's free!)

There is already a section called "Battery" in my review (Note it's split in 2-3 posts, it didn't fit in the TMO's constraints). But the short answer is, yes, much. Anywhere from the same to 3 times as much, depending on what you do. I get about twice the autonomy, same usage. Gets savings from better screen technology and slimmer OS.

That's a pain. Still, you get more clarity from further away than from close up, you don't really see it on screen, but from about 80-100 cm away I can read the text if there is good light. Still, pain.

I've been looking at those, and most if not all have been caused by the widgets locking up. It happens rarely on mine, so it's hard to tell which, but, sometimes the phone resets my desktop to default because even a quick restart doesn't fix it. (once since I have it, before Anna)

OTOH, I've ran a poll through several honest phone owners and found it to be no more restarty than others. It's more stable than my N900. This is rather subjective, because I reboot it if I feel wifi is sluggish, others keep them running for weeks. Still, not a big issue on E7. I could lower my widget count, but I'm not going to.

At least one has been caused by me launching Maps several times, because the first instance was hooked trying to get a lock. It's odd, though, it rarely happens. Whether it's the GPS thing locking up or a bug in Maps I can't tell. Or a bug in connectivity, since A-GPS tries to get online. Most of the time it's smooth, sometimes it gets choked up and needs a restart.

I also noticed that when it happens the apps no longer have previews in task manager - and I'm wondering if it is not a simple, yet hard to find bug in the UI. The screen still locks, menus work, lantern fires up, so the OS is still there. Looks a lot like the hang of GFX driver on N900, only less severe.

It must be said, though, even choked up it still powers down politely, menu works, didn't have to pull battery.

That being said, my 8110 self-restarted, and so did 7110, 7650, 7610, and so on and so forth. It's not like it's a new problem. Better to have it self-restart than to wonder for 2 days why nobody has called.

[/QUOTE]Here in the US it would seem we're waaaaay down on the release list for Anna, but I'm patient. I hope Anna fixes those bugs that make it freeze though.[/QUOTE]

I tried to make it sound less juicy but I couldn't. It's cool. And yes, it is less restarty. I average one a week. It's not good, but, frankly, N900 needed one every 48 hours because of Python leaks.

Your wait has come to an end.