Nokia N9 Review

Nokia N9: One of a Kind

Introduction

Nokia N9 was announced on 21 June 2011 at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. It is the first ever all screen design touch screen phone.The Nokia N9 running on Linux based MeeGo Harmattan mobile operating system. Available in three colours: black, cyan and magenta on initial release, later on white version of N9 was announced on Nokia World 2011.

Nokia N9 colours: white, cyan, magenta and black

Another variant model of MeeGo Harmattan device was announced as Nokia N950. It is a developers' phone for Linux based MeeGo Harmattan software and development of the N9. The Nokia N950 uses the same hardware components as the Nokia N9 with the following exceptions:

• N950 has a slightly larger screen at 4" TFT LCD display, whereas N9 has a 3.9" AMOLED display. Both devices have the screen resolution of 854 x 480.
• N950 has a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard, while The Nokia N9 is a touchscreen-only device.
• N950 is made out of aluminum body, whereas N9 has a polycarbonate unibody.
• The N950 has a 12 MP camera module but limited to 8 MP resolution, whereas N9 has a 8 MP camera module with Carl Zeiss branding.
• N950 does not have support for Near Field Communication (NFC).
• N950 has a 1320 mAh battery, while the Nokia N9 has a 1450 mAh battery.

Nokia N950 with slide-out QWERT keyboard

Nokia N9 (left) and Nokia N950 (right)

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Specification

Size

Dimensions: 116.45 x 61.2 x 12.1 mm
Volume: 76 cm³
Weight: 135 g

Display

Screen size: 3.9"
Type: Capacitive Multi-point Touchscreen
Features: AMOLED, Corning® Gorilla® Glass, Curved display, ClearBlack Display

Display Resolution: FWVGA (854 x 480)
Pixel Density: 251 ppi
Display Colours: True Colour (24-bit/16M)

Processor

CPU: Single core ARM Cortex A8
GPU: 3D Graphics PowerVR SGX530
Clock Speed: 1000 MHz / 1.0 GHz

Memory

RAM: 1 GB
ROM: 512 MB
Mass Memory: 16 or 64 GB

Software

SW Platform: Linux
Operating System: MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan
Latest Version: PR1.3 (40.2012.21-3_PR_005)

Camera

Main Camera Sensor: 8 MP
Camera Resolution: 3248 x 2448 pixels
Focus Type: Auto Focus

F-stop/Aperture: f/2.2
Sensor Size: 1/3.2 inch
Focal Length: 28 mm

Flash Type: Dual LED Flash
Carl Zeiss Tessar Lens: Yes
Video Recording: 30 fps, 720p (HD, 1280 x 720 Resolution)

Secondary Camera

Camera Resolution: 640 x 480 pixels
F-stop/Aperture: f/2.8
Video Resolution: CIF (352 x 288)

Battery

Model: BV-5JW
Voltage: 3.7V
Capacity: 1450 mAH

Detailed specifications for the Nokia N9-00: http://www.nokia.com/global/products/phone/n9/specifications/

Design and Hardware

The Nokia N9 has a beautiful one-piece and all-screen phone unibody design. The body of the N9 is made from polycarbonate material. The build quality is solid and the premium-quality of polycarbonate feels nice when holding it. The polycarbonate is colored itself rather than painted, scratches won't reveal anything but the same colour as the body. The Nokia N9 comfortably rest in your palm and easily operate using a hand.

The unique size of 3.9 inch curved AMOLED Corning Gorilla Glass display made the N9 looks stunning. There are no front-facing buttons at all on the screen, all it takes is a swipe. The curved screen made the swipe gesture more smoothly and handy. The viewing angles are good and when you looking at the screen, the icons look almost floating on the surface of the screen.

There are only 3 physical buttons located on right side of the phone: volume up and down, and a power on / off button or lock / unlock screen. I seldom use these buttons as there is a cooler way to unlock the screen by double tapping the screen.

With a single core 1 GHz Cortex A8 processor paired with a 1 GB of RAM to powered the Nokia N9, everything runs smoothly and effortless. Back then, it was consider as a high end device from Nokia with no underpowered processor and sufficient of RAM.

Nokia N9 was the first Nseries device to equip with  a powerful 1 GHz processor and a juicy 1 GB RAM. The system on chip (SoC) inside the Nokia N9 is the TI OMAP 3630 single core 1 GHz Cortex A8 processor with PowerVR SGX530 GPU. The Soc handling  all the apps and games to run smoothly and responsive enough to enjoy a fluent experience on the N9.

Performance

Nowadays, the era of smartphone has been evolve from single-core, dual-core, quad-core to octa-core Soc and the amount of RAM has been increased from minimum of 512 MB to 3 GB for upcoming 2013-2014 flagship devices. To rival with others in hardware, for sure Nokia N9 fall very behind in the processor power, speed, screen resolution, mega-pixel counts, screen size and so on. But in the real world performance, the N9 work perfectly with it single-core processor and everything that I need for a smartphone is there to be.

Running 5-10 apps on background and multitasking between all open apps were responsive and effortless. Playing games on N9 was smooth and the graphic is awesome and no lag. The default browser speed is fast and easy to use.

Tapping on a app take a seconds to launch and sometimes apps not responding, but it perform fair enough for a 2 years old device and technology. Any phone with any operating system will facing these problems too, but just depend on how often the apps crash or not responding.

Operating System


MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan

Nokia N9 runs on Linux based MeeGo Harmattan operating system (OS), per-installed with software version PR1.0 out of the box. The latest software version for the Nokia N9 is PR1.3 (40.2012.21-3_PR_005).

From the software version PR1.0 to PR1.3, there are lots of new features were added to the N9 and bugs were being fixed in every update. The features that I like the most are the double-tap to unlock screen, stand-by screen, swipe down to close an apps, true multitasking and maps with free navigation.

Below are the links for the change-log for the software version:
PR1.1
PR1.2: (1), (2)
PR1.3: (1), (2)

Nokia N9 is the one and only one MeeGo powered smartphone from Nokia. The N9 is one of a kind due to its unique design language with button-less all screen design and a UI based on gesture. All these reasons made the N9 differentiate from others.

In February 2011, Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia officially announced the new strategy for Nokia, which shifting its smartphone strategy to Microsoft's Windows Phone and discontinuation of both in house Symbian and MeeGo OS.

So, the Nokia N9 is the first and only one device from Nokia with MeeGo. I hope Nokia would continue develop the MeeGo OS because it is the best mobile OS I have used so far. MeeGo has the potential to rival with Android and iOS as it is still on the early stage of development, there are still lots development of space to improve and adds on.

Swipe User Interface

What made the Nokia N9 so special and distinctive? Well, I would say is the combination of both hardware and software that work seamlessly together created the Nokia N9 to make things simpler any easier than before.

Swipe User Interface (UI) introduced a new and better way to use a phone. All you need is just simply gesture, a swipe of a finger. The swipe UI is design based on what people do the most, focus on things around people typically use the most. That why the three home views were designed to the UI in Nokia N9.

The three home views are: Events, Applications and Open Applications.

• Events: Display all the notifications such as missed calls, unread message/mail and social networking feeds.
• Applications: All installed applications for launching and organizing your apps.
• Open Applications: Showing all running apps for switching between them. You can pinch to zoom the screen to view either four or nine open app icons.

Three home views: Events, Applications, Open Application (left to right)

Practically, the Nokia N9 delivers the best multitasking experience on any phone. It is the true multitasking, the apps running in background are still active, unlike others operating system that attempt to stop or close the apps when running in background.

All you need is just a swipe to navigate through the UI. To unlock the screen, double tapping to wake up the screen. Swipe from the edge to another edge of the screen (you can swipe from any direction - left to right / top to bottom) to unlock the lock-screen.

You can open the quick launch bar by holding the phone upright, swipe from the bottom of the screen onto the screen, and hold on a place, until the quick launch bar display.The quick launch bar may access from any applications even in the lock-screen.

To multitasking or back to the home view, in all open applications, swipe from left, right, or bottom of the screen to left the apps running in the background. In the Open Applications view, you can see which apps and task are open in the background, and switching between them.

To fully close an open application, just swipe from the top to bottom of the screen. It is so simply and easy , I like this very much and it is so convenient. Everything is just a swipe, what a brilliant idea on a new way to use a touchscreen phone.

You can access useful settings directly in the status menu. Select the status area by tapping it on  the top of screen. From there you can select the profile, adjust the volume, bluetooth, and internet connection. Tapping outside the status area to close it.

More about Swipe, please visit http://swipe.nokia.com/.

Camera

The 8 MP auto focus camera with Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash and super wide 28 mm lens capture and produce good quality images. It is not aim to be a cameraphone as the Nokia N8, but the N9 facing numbers of significant challenges with the camera development.

The sensor on the N9 is actually 8.7-Megapixels, which allows it to capture 8 Megapixels shots in 4:3 mode and 7.1 Megapixels images in 16:9 aspect with only a slight loss of resolution in both aspects.

White Nokia N9 rear camera with LED flash

The f/2.2 aperture and 28 mm wide angle Carl Zeiss Tessar Lens, the Nokia N9 has the fastest camera from launch to focus to capture. It has 4x digital zoom for both camera and video. Camera features: Touch focus, Continuous auto focus, Automatic motion blur reduction, Geotagging, Face detection.

Nokia N9 supported 720p, HD resolution video recording and video playback at 30 fps. Video recording features: Stereo Audio Recording, Video light, Video zoom

Here is the link for Damian Dinning on Nokia N9 imaging, which explained the development of the N9 camera - Nokia N9 Imaging Explained.

Multimedia

Music and Audio

The Nokia N9 has two microphones and a loudspeaker. Main microphone for conversation and recording. The second microphone is placed on the back of the device near the flash LEDs and main camera for noise cancellation which make phone conversations clearer in noisy environment.

The loudspeaker located at the bottom of the phone. On the top, there is a 3.5 mm AV connector which provides stereo audio output, with support for Dolby Headphone. The output of the loudspeaker is too soft and can easily get missing calls in louder environments.

Audio playback file format: WAV, AAC, AMR, MP3, M4A,and WMA.

Video

The video player of the Nokia N9 comes with a clean and simply look. Video get listed in vertically and video's thumbnails is displayed with the video length showing on the top right.

Video playback file format: MP4, WMV, AVI, Flash video (FLV/SWF), 3GP, Matroska (MKV)

GPS

The Nokia N9 comes pre-installed with Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive application. You get free and accurate GPS navigation in 90 countries worldwide. Maps are stored on the device and no worry about data, can be used on offline.

Nokia Drive is a time turn-by-turn voice guided car navigation, it turn the Nokia N9 into a complete satnav system. Guess what, it is totally FREE. Nokia Drive does not require any active data connection and can work as a stand-alone GPS navigator.

Location technology: GPS, A-GPS, Wifi network positioning

Connectivity

Nokia N9 supports micro USB, USB mass storage, Nokia AV 3.5mm, USB 2.0 High-Speed, USB, Bluetooth Stereo Audio, NFC, Bluetooth, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR

Battery life

Nokia N9 has a battery capacity of 1450 mAh. According to Nokia, it has a standby time of 340 h (2G) to 420 h (3G), talk time of 6.5 h (3G) to 11 h (2G), music playback time of 50 h, video playback time of 5 h and 6.5 h of Wifi network browsing time.

I am not a heavy user of phone on data network, I charge my N9 once every 2-3 days. Based on my experience, I manage to reach 8 days of battery life time before going charging my phone, that was a very light days usage and in power saving mode after battery dropped below 50%.

Battery last for 8 days 3 hours and 34 minutes with 18% left

I am a moderate phone user, I use the phone for Wifi browsing, camera, sms, wazapp (whatsapps for N9), some music and video playback, the battery can last for 2-3 days before dropping below 50%. I am satisfy with my Nokia N9 battery life. It can last for a full day for my heavy use.

Conclusion

The Nokia N9 is one of a kind. Using a word to describe it, it can be: Beautiful. Awesome. Simply. Fast. Brilliant. Innovative. Unique. Swipe.

It is a perfect combination of both hardware and software, it created a new way to use a touchscreen phone, a simple gesture for the UI. The swipe UI is easy, fast and simple, never experienced such smooth performance before on any other OS.

Sadly, MeeGo was abandon way before it is ready to release and the Nokia N9 was the first and last MeeGo running smartphone from Nokia. At the same time, it is also the last Nseries device. Nokia had chosen Windows Phone OS as their focus point. Leaving MeeGo facing the same fate as Symbian.

The N9 was promised to continue received update and support until 2015 by Nokia even after adopt Windows Phone for its smartphones. But unfortunately, MeeGo team, Head of Development of MeeGo Sotiris Makrygiannis and his team members had leave Nokia.

This indicate that there is no hope to get another major update for N9 after the PR1.3. All user of N9 around the world were disappointed and a petition was signed and asking Nokia to fix the bugs they found on N9. Petition link: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/nokia-corporation-bug-fixing-for-nokia-n9

If miracle would happen, I hope that Nokia could provide us the update for Nokia N9 and bug fix. Hoping to see developers porting and made more apps compatible to the N9 in future.

I am pleased to see some of the features of N9 being adopted by other OS such as the double tap to unlock the screen on Windows Phone 8 Amber update for Nokia Lumia smartphone. Nokia Lumia Glance Screen, using the AMOLED to display clock on the standby screen.

Even the design language of the Lumia phone look similar to the Nokia N9 design. The Nokia Lumia phone has three addition buttons below the screen and a camera shutter key button.

Side by side comparison: Nokia N9 (left), Nokia Lumia 800 (right)

I am not regret to getting the Nokia N9. It is really one of a kind. I am gonna miss it someday when the N9 no longer functioning and I really hope that day will never come. Love it so much and enjoying the N9 since the first day I own it. No matter what, I will keep the N9 as long as possible and hope you guys enjoy reading my review. Thanks for reading.

Long Live N9, Long live MeeGo... Hooray!!!

Pictures of Nokia N9