Nokia N9 MeeGo device looks slick, but does anyone even care?
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 854x480 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:
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
Talkback
It does look slick .... but ....
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
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."
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
"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.
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
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 bullshit 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.
Like Secretariat, only taller
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
Meego. It's Linux Folks.
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?
I see your point people, not available to anyone that I know of
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
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!
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
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.
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care? I care!!
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...
Speculative drivel
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?
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
RE: Nokia N9 MeeGo devices looks slick, but does anyone even care?
">Greek gods</a> of mobile phones then. The popularity of Nokia phones before is <a href="http://www.similar.ca">similar</a> to iPhones now. I hope this new Nokia N9 Meego devices would bring Nokia back up in the competition, not <a href="http://www.skitoronto.ca">ski Toronto</a> down the hill.
You Need to Use This Thing Before Reporting On It!