Nokia N9 running on MeeGo OS review, specification, features, ratings and price

Nokia N9 specifications

MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan OS
8 MP Carl Zeiss Camera with 4x Zoom
16GB internal memory (expandable up to 64GB)
2.5D Curved Gorilla Glass
720p HD Recording
1 GHz Processor
1 GB RAM
Standby time of 380 hours
Talktime of 660 mins
Weight: 135g
3.9 inch Capacitive AMOLED touchscreen
3264×2448 pixels resolution
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi, 3G, Edge connectivity
Nokia N9 comes in 3 colors – Black, Cyan & Magenta
AMOLED screen with 16million colors
HD video recording at 1280×720 30 fps
Camera: Touch-to-focus and exposure lock,Automatic Motion Blur Reduction
Dolby Headphone and Dolby Digital Plus support
USB Mass storage facility
Unique swipe interface
Nokia N9 images

Nokia N9 review and ratings

Nokia N9 is the first Nokia mobile with Meego operating system and I seriously hope that it does not become their last as this is really an impressive piece of technology.

The chassis is made of polycarbonate which gives a touch feel of common plastic. The 3.9 inch OLED screen seamlessly joins its chassis and uses ClearBlack display technology to make the dark areas on screen darker and colored areas more vivid.

The screen is very close to the glass like in Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc which makes it look totally blacked out when the light on the screen turns off. The chassis has only two buttons that of power and volume rocker. Even the home button is not present and instead you have to rely on a unique swipe gesture to navigate on the phone.

Surprisingly there is no micro-SD card on this set and instead you have to choose from a 16 or 64 GB storage capacity that is being provided in-built of the phone. Other ports of the set are headphone jack, a micro-USB connection port and a pop-up tray for the microSIM.

Something that attracts my attention is the placement of the front VGA camera on Nokia N9. It is placed at the bottom if the front, so if you are using it for video calling what the other person is going to see will be more of your mouth rather than your eyes. Don't know what they were thinking here!

According to Nokia, the back side of Nokia N9 is 'pillowed' which means that its plasticky body sits rather nicely in the hand. The back camera is located in the bang middle of the back side of Nokia N9 which means that while taking photos you will feel like you are using your normal compact camera. The resolution of camera in Nokia N9 is 8MP which is covered in Carl Ziess optics and has an f 2.2 aperture which is good for dimly lit conditions.

Sadly Nokia N9 does not have a dedicate camera key which I honestly love for the ease it offers and the shake it prevents as we don't have disturb the focus much to use the right key. Nokia N9 features a touch to focus option but I did not see much improvement in the picture quality when I used this.

Nokia N9 MeeGo 1.2 comes with 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP 3630 processor, PowerVR SGX530 graphics and 1GB of RAM which gives a smoother functioning than Symbian. Earlier Nokia N8 received lot flak for the problem of OS Symbian with respect to its touch responsiveness. However with MeeGo, Nokia N9 gives fluid, seamless and flawless response to swiping and movement. Nokia will soon be introducing Symbian Anna which is expected to have these errors corrected.

The mobile phone can be switched on by using the power button or by double tapping on the screen. A simple swipe on the screen unlocks the screen and a small swipe of about a centimeter will open a small menu of most use applications like the camera and internet browser.

The main home screen menu contains a long list of applications to scroll through which will keep on getting bigger as you download more apps from the Ovi store. Speaking of Meego apps, Nokia has given no clear indication how many MeeGo based apps will be available however you can just download the apps for the Symbian version to this as both operating systems are QT based.

The only question will be how much leverage Nokia will give to developers to make apps for this OS, however with very few MeeGo phones to be expected in market I expect Nokia will try to streamline the process as much as possible.

Going to the next right pane from the app list pane you reach the multi-tasking pane where you see your recently used apps in a list of four or nine and scrolling down you can see all the apps running in the background. A long press on any of the app gives you the option o close the app or either you can also select the option to close down all the apps which will save your 1450mAh battery although with Nokia's reputation for good battery life efficiency you can expect some god performance from this Li-ion battery.

On the left pane we have the notification list which is basically as list of all missed calls, unread messages as well as Facebook and Twitter updates if you keep it activated to update periodically.

I seriously wanted to try out the web browser of Nokia N9 as it comes with WebKit2 which is supposed to offer better browsing speed and stability. Disappointingly, there was not much improvement in web browsing speed over Nokia N9 than it is in Nokia N8. Over my HSDPA connection it loaded web pages slowly and with the absent text reflow technology the words did not look clear when I tried to make them clear while keeping the whole text visible on the screen. However with the new font style and rounded text there was some improvement in the visibility.

Typing messages was not an enjoyable experience with QWERTY keyboard offered as standard unlike the T9 in Nokia N8. The graphics of Nokia N9 are powered by PowerVR SGX530 graphics chip which seems to be working perfectly well as was obvious with the video playing razor sharp on the ClearBlack display. Don't expect HD video screening on this smartphone as there is no HDMI out port on Nokia N9 however Nokia maps loaded very quickly with buildings in 3D coming up quickly and navigation similarly quick.

Angry birds played perfectly on Nokia N9 with N9 being one of the first phones to feature NFC integration which allows you to play higher levels of Angry birds. The NFC capabilities on the phone have high potential with Bluetooth pairing very simple thanks to some cool accessories directly from the company.

Nokia Play 360 speakers look to be an attraction to me and I expect it to be a big selling point. This shows that when the Finnish giant finally comes down to innovation it can even beat the best.

Final verdict on Nokia N9

Nokia doesn't seem to be much advertising the fact that N9 runs on MeeGo which seems quite intelligent keeping in mind the fact that after Symbian here is Meego, and soon we will be getting Symbian Anna and in future Nokia is also expected to join hands with Microsoft with Windows phone 7.

The new screen design is innovative but yet simple and it is difficult to predict the consumer response. The looks are good except for the plasticky feel part where the screen is size just right with clarity and the chassis fitting nicely in the hand.

MeeGo clearly is a better operating system than Symbian ever was and I kind of feel sorry considering the fact that Nokia is not much excited about its potential and not having any plan for many smartphones on MeeGo operating system in future. The obvious reasons are Nokia's focus on Anna and WP7 although I will honestly request Nokia to reconsider their decision as MeeGo can prove to be a top OS with some love and support from its developers.

Price of Nokia N9

In international markets it is expected to cost around $700 and for Indian customers the price will hover around Rs.30,000

Nokia N9 running on MeeGo OS review, specification, features, ratings and price

Nokia N9 specifications

Nokia N9 review and ratings

Final verdict on Nokia N9

Price of Nokia N9

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