The N8 Symbian Belle build was finally released a couple of days ago (2/7), and wow, it really does blow Anna and all the other Symbian releases before it away. There's now a nice status bar drag down available with built-in toggles for Mobile data, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the Silent profile. In addition, you can see statuses on each of those things along with a voicemail indicator, sms messages, emails messages, music player, connected networks, and bluetooth-connected devices. Pushing on any one of those launches the expected activities.

The new Belle update actually makes widgets more useful on the N8 as well. Other than the better camera, this is probably one of the biggest advantages the N8 has over the n9. The old widget functionality was very limited: all widgets had to fit the width of the screen and 1/6th of the height of the screen in portrait mode or half the width of the screen and 1/3rd of the height of the screen in landscape mode, basically giving you 6 slots. The order in which you put the widgets in one mode directly affected where they sat in the other mode. The new widget functionality allows widgets to be much more arbitrary in width and height with the maximum size being about half the screen (so it fits in either orientation). Additionally, the placement of the widgets for each orientation is much more granular. In fact, it's about 4 times more granular than you can do on Android, but doesn't compare to Maemo's pixel granularity nor it's ability to overlap items.

Belle also ships with 4 home screens, but allows you to add or remove home screens as well. Though I haven't tested it, I believe you can have as little as one home screen and as many as six home screens, each with their own wallpapers, their own sets of widgets, and their own set of portrait and landscape configurations.

More thoughts:
* The N8's horizontal scrolling thumbnails of active apps doesn't compare with the N9's grid thumbnails with limited zoom functionality.
* Having to hold down the home button to see the active app thumbnails on the N8 sucks in comparison to the N9's simple swipe.
* The N8 doesn't have a well integrated, single place to see all your messages, emails, rss feeds, and such. You have to basically launch an app (several finger presses) to get the same information.

All-in-all though, Belle is a huge step forward in usability, and as other's have said, I'd likely consider getting the next/last N8 successor as a result (though I'm still hoping for a good n900 successor... *sigh*)