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Matthew Miller
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Nokia N9 MeeGo device looks slick, but does anyone even care?

By | June 20, 2011, 9:18pm PDT

Summary: The Nokia N9 was announced and it looks like a slick device. However, can Nokia really afford to have four operating systems to support?

Last week Nokia sent out some invites for an announcement of a market disrupting device and tonight we see they announced the Nokia N9 MeeGo device. While the hardware will likely be as solid as other high end Nokia devices and the operating system looks slick I don’t see anything knocking the socks off of iOS, Android, or Windows Phone 7 and without an ecosystem this will likely just be another hobby phone like the Nokia N900.

I am a Nokia fan, but am having trouble getting too excited when Nokia states it is scheduled to be in stores later this year and has no pricing information. We also have no idea if this will ever be released in the U.S. and a time frame like this means that there will be new Android, iOS, and even Nokia Windows Phone devices coming out with thousands of applications, ecosystems to support media, and carrier support.

The specifications include the following:

  • 1 GHz Arm Cortex A8 OMAP3630 processor
  • MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan operating system
  • Penta-band 3G radio (Yeah Nokia, why can’t anyone else do this?) at just 14.4 Mbps
  • 8 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with dual LED flash
  • Front facing camera for video calls
  • 3.9 inch AMOLED display at 854×480 pixel resolution
  • NFC chip
  • Bluetooth 2.1
  • 802.11 b/g/n WiFi
  • A-GPS
  • 1450 mAh battery
  • Dimenions of 116.45 x 61.2 x 7.6 mm and 135 grams

It looks to have specs matching current devices, except for the processor and slower wireless cellular radio and in six months won’t stand out in the crowd at all. There are no buttons and everything is controlled by the touchscreen interface. The N9 will come in Magenta, Cyan, and Black and the design does look beautiful with the curved Gorilla glass.

Check out some Nokia N9 resource sites for more information:

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Topics

Nokia Corp., Apple iOS, Media, Wireless LANs, Mobile Operating Systems, Wi-Fi, Wireless And Mobility, Matthew Miller

Matthew Miller started using a Pilot 1000 in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since.

Disclosure

Matthew Miller

Matthew is a professional naval architect by day and a mobile gadget freak at all other times. He purchases his own devices and then sells them on eBay or Craigslist to buy more. Many other devices are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the carrier or manufacturer. If any are provided as “long term loaner units” this will be clearly disclosed in his reviews.

Biography

Matthew Miller

Matthew Miller started using a mobile devices in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since. He is a co-host with GigaOM's Kevin Tofel on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and an author of three Wiley Companion series books. Matthew started using mobile devices with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 125 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, iOS, Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone operating systems. His current collection includes an HTC Radar 4G, Dell Venue Pro, Apple iPad 2, HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nokia N9, Apple iPhone 4S, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".
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You Need to Use This Thing Before Reporting On It!
kmontyw@... Updated - 19th Oct
Gees man, I care. This is the best looking/working phone I've ever seen. The OS is just sublime. Nokia are fools for ditching it, and I'm hoping public support forces them to revisit it.

I've owned 2 iPhones, and an Android, and this is significantly better than either of them. It's just a beautiful piece of work.
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It does look slick .... but ....
wackoae Updated - 20th Jun
... I have to agree. Without a healthy ecosystem it has no where to go. The fact that Nokia is dropping the OS also means that the platform has no future .... only fans will make apps for a dead OS.

The sad part is that Nokia is dropping a platform that was very popular and had a chance to develop an healthy ecosystem, for a platform that for the most part is being rejected by the public.
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
JoeHTH 23rd Jun
@wackoae Since when has Meego ever been popular? Nokia has sunk billions into Symbian and Meego, and has nothing to show for it except shrinking market share and revenue. Few want Symbian or Meego. The only people who do are Linux lovers, and we know how few and far between those are.
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
mrojasg 21st Jun
I think you missed the point of the N9. It is a technology demonstrator, like a concept car to pioneer features that eventually will trickle down to more mainstream models.

Check this, from a Nokia employee in Maemo forums:

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1034103&postcount=6926

"- Why MeeGo? Simple, this phone couldn't have been done with WP7 at this point! That is the strength of MeeGo, being able to do something new and somewhat different like this. Maybe its ideas will be incorporated into WP7 devices in the future (I hope so), but I don't expect that to be a quick process."
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
mrojasg 21st Jun
Also:

"Sure, you won't have hundreds of thousands of apps for the N9 anytime soon, but not everyone needs that either. For those who don't, or who can live with a reasonable number of quality apps, the N9 out of the box provides an excellent, unique experience that _no_ other phone can deliver right now. It may also well be the only one of its kind. Ever."

I don't care about ecosystems (in fact, I don't even want to be dragged into one) so a standalone device with a very capable browser works for me. And Nokia is covering the basic apps, so I'm getting one.
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
timiteh 21st Jun
@mrojasg
I agree with you. I personnaly don't really care about ecosystems and certainly not about dozens of thousands of apps whom over 99.9 % are completely useless for most people.
I would rather have a device such as a N9 with a lot of features out of the box and the possibility to have access to a reasonnable number of useful apps.
I personnaly think that this whole ecosystem ******** is a way for companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft to earn a lot of money on the behalf of the costumers and of the developpers.
In fact it is rather sad that Apple has made such systems very popular.
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Like Secretariat, only taller
Robert Hahn 21st Jun
The world would indeed be a better place if the rest of us could be as smart and discerning as you, Your Altitude.
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
triphamk2 11th Jul
@mrojasg I am strongly agree. I have an android smartphone with a hundred apps that I rarely use them. Some are repeatable to the other. Ecosystem is surely not what I need. I will get an N9 for its sleek, simple and useful.
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Meego. It's Linux Folks.
Dietrich T. Schmitz, *~* Your Linux Advocate 21st Jun
This is not a new foray into Linux as far as Nokia is concerned.

Recall the Nokia Internet Tablet in its various revisions.
I own an N800 which has the predecessor Maemo UI running on top of......Debian based Linux.

Gotta tell you their will be all sort of apps in the community which will compile directly or will be readily ported to this unit. Just as was the case with the Nokia Internet Tablet family.

Matt, if you don't want yours, send it to me, I'll buy it.

Was the N9 qualified for purchase by the general public or is it only available to developers Matt?
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Contributr
I see your point people, not available to anyone that I know of
palmsolo (aka Matthew Miller) 21st Jun
@Dietrich T. Schmitz, *~* Your Linux Advocate I am warming up to the idea of the N9 now and as crazy as I am about devices I will probably try to find one to purchase too happy I don't think they are available to anyone at this time.
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
adi nata 21st Jun
it's base on qt, thing's that i familiar with, it's make me care
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
prasanna_vps 21st Jun
My 2 Paisa (Cents for the uninitiated) on this coming from India. The so called ecosystem is well and truly a differentiator only the developed world, out here I know people who own iPhone who cant use half the stuff in iStore, ditto for Andriod Market.
Out here people look for distinguishing factors like out-of-the-box features, battery life (and how it is becoming a premium), cool factor (be it metallic finish, nice colour or shape like this one).

PS: I own a Nokia E51 and personally I dont see why I needed a change, that is till now!
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
robnaj 21st Jun
I care I am buying this phone and it is going to be great if the web browser is anything like the n900 with this new UI and MeezGo that is fantastic it is all I ask for. The specs are great the hardware is great and the software matches my expectations.
Also I am getting tired of tech blogs using the word of the ecosystems, they are not befitting me as consumer they just make me spend more money an appstore is one thing but everyone having their own music ,video ect is stupid because they all are using DRM to luck me in and Amazon and iTunes are DRM free and Nokia had an ecosystem before but they killed every part of it for gave it away for free to Microsoft or Yahoo! Nokia maps is now part of WP and Big , Nokia music is dead and replaced with MS Zune mail is now basically Yahoo! now they are give all the money they could be making to MS and Yahoo!
The N9 and MeeGo having AngryBirds Twitter FaceBook and turn by turn maps and a fantastic browser that is all I need because I can load it up all the movies and music that have and all is good.
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
triphamk2 11th Jul
@robnaj Could you please put commas or full stop between sentences. Your great ideas could not get through me because of it. Sadly.
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care? I care!!
xaverian 28th Jun
I am a gr8 fan of Nokia phones... even when iPhone was launchd it had glitched and few till date.... Nokia has always been a pioneer in almost all the fields, be it introducing games, camera phones, voice navigation etc. etc.
the only thing was Nokia never tried to brag about the features that they had and now are introduced in iOS and android...
Who cares if there are few thousand apps for iphones or android... still ppl end up using only a handful...
So not a big thing... I like what N9 offers... basically what ppl use... out of the box... gr8...
Just waiting for it to be launched... i am buying it the moment it hits the shelves...
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Speculative drivel
kymics 28th Jun
How are you able to come to such a definitive opinion on something you obviously haven't even tried yet?

Other sites who have actually tested the N9 find the CPU more than powerful to run at a level of smoothness unmatched by most phones. I saw a video from a Nokia rep indicating that multitasking is only limited by internal memory and figured that you should be able to run at least 25 apps simultaneously without any hit on performance.

I think the concept of having open apps as an active part of the interface navigation is revolutionary, as well as the swipe to hide apps functionality. This is not some mere knockoff of iOS.

Regardless, Matthew Miller doesn't do his homework and writes a speculative powder piece.. but does anyone even care?
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
jackson1984-24316069205748857739440257893812 11th Oct
Wow! Truly brilliant publish seen it on Yahoo . This aricle is incredibly attention-grabbing. You look to become a really encountered mulberry bag blogger I am actually new to functioning a blog site
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
tomlin21-24319035676893835085146735905770 11th Oct
I am presently accomplishing many of those suggestions nflshop but a single can get really one or two others that have been new to me.
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RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
vkris 12th Oct
I remember Nokia was the top mobile company before the entry of smart phones,iPhones and Android phones. It was the Greek gods of mobile phones then. The popularity of Nokia phones before is similar to iPhones now. I hope this new Nokia N9 Meego devices would bring Nokia back up in the competition, not ski Toronto down the hill.
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You Need to Use This Thing Before Reporting On It!
kmontyw@... Updated - 19th Oct
Gees man, I care. This is the best looking/working phone I've ever seen. The OS is just sublime. Nokia are fools for ditching it, and I'm hoping public support forces them to revisit it.

I've owned 2 iPhones, and an Android, and this is significantly better than either of them. It's just a beautiful piece of work.

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