Hands-on with the Nokia N9 MeeGo device

Nokia's first, and likely last, MeeGo powered device is now shipping outside the United States to select countries. The hardware is beautiful and the OS is powerful, but there may be very few people that get to experience such a good device.

Check out my full ZDNet Smartphones & Cell Phones blog post that includes a video walkthrough of the Nokia N9.

Nokia includes the device, a skin case, USB cable, USB a/c charger, wired stereo headset, and Quick Guide.

Nokia's skin case is designed to give the device a bit of grip and slight protection.

Here is the N9 with Gorilla Glass and an anti-glare polarizer. You can see the glass is curved around the edges.

The N9 is constructed of high quality plastic.

You will find an 8 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera and dual LED flash on the back of the N9.

There are very few buttons on the Nokia N9, but on the right you will find the power/lock button and volume buttons. The volume buttons can also be used for zooming in and out with the camera.

There is nothing at all on the left side of the N9.

The top of the Nokia N9 houses the 3.5mm headset jack, microUSB port, and microSIM card slot.

Here you can see how the two areas open up for access.

The Nokia N8 is on the left and the Nokia N900 is on the right of the Nokia N9. The N8 is one of the modern Symbian smartphones while the N900 runs Maemo.

The Nokia N9 is sandwiched in between the Nokia N8 and Nokia N900.

The glass is curved on the front of the N9 and is amazingly well integrated.

The Nokia branding is placed above the display.

Here you can see the N9 inside the included skin case. It has opening for all ports and the camera.

The Nokia N9 fits well in my hand, even when inside the skin case.

The main interface on the N9 is the application launcher. You can tap and hold to move shortcuts around the display, but there is no option for creating folders.

Here you can see how you move icons around on the display.

You scroll up and down on the applications page to view all of your installed apps.

The status menu is accessed by tapping at the top of the display.

This screenshot shows the running services on the N9.

Connections can be managed through the status bar.

Another one of the three main displays is for your feeds and notifications. You can view social networking updates and more in the feeds page.

The third screen is the task manager, similar to what we saw in Maemo on the Nokia N900.

The N9 has a functional calendar application that syncs to multiple online services.

Ovi Maps is found on the N9, including support for offline maps for FREE. This was one area of weakness in Maemo that has been addressed in MeeGo.

The web browser works well, but is also pretty basic. Websites load up fast and look good.

The Facebook application looks similar to what you find on other smartphone platforms.

The Ovi Store is included on the Nokia N9.

You can shut down applications from the task manager by pressing and holding on the thumbnails and then tapping the red X button.

There are several options in the camera software.

Here are a few more settings in the camera software.

Nokia has a cool UI for switching the time that I find much more efficient than the spinner that others use.

There are several settings available on the Nokia N9.

Nokia N9 gallery 1