Despite the fact that Nokia is teaming up with Microsoft to adopt Windows Phone 7 OS as its primary smartphone operating system (OS), the company has unveiled its first MeeGo-operating (MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan) smartphone during the Nokia Connection event in Singapore today.

 

MeeGo is the Linux-based mobile OS that Nokia developed along with Intel, which is expected to power a range of mobile devices ranging from smartphones and tablet PCs through to netbooks.

Design

The N9 features a pocket-friendly (116.45 x 61.2 x 7.6-12.1 mm, 135 g) and good looking unibody design, with the most prominent design feature being the 3.9” curved glass AMOLED (480 x 854 pixels) touch-enabled display.

According to the Finnish phone maker, the N9 is constructed from the best in polycarbonate material available today, resulting in “superior antenna performance over most other competitors’ smartphones”. To the end-user this will translate to improved reception, better voice quality as well as fewer dropped calls.

Nokia’s N9 is available in three colours, black, cyan and magenta as well as in two variants sporting either 16 GB or 64 GB of storage space. This smartphone boasts 1 GB of RAM (4x that of the Nokia E7) and an ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP3630 processor running at 1 Ghz, whist a PowerVR SGX530 chip handles the graphics.

  

Dolby sound-power and NFC

Nokia stated that the N9 is the first mobile phone sporting a Dolby Headphone and Dolby Digital Plus support that will enable a surround sound experience on any headphones. Like Android-operating devices and also recently announced BlackBerry smartphones, Nokia have jumped on the near field communication (NFC) bandwagon. Users will be able to share content such as photos and business cards via NFC.

Buttonless interaction

Unlike Android devices that boast three or four buttons on the front of the phone (back, home, search and options) or the iPhone with its solitary menu button, the Nokia N9 doesn’t have any buttons on the front of the device. The user will only utilise touch gestures to interact with the user interface (UI demo video posted down below), for instance, performing a double-tap on the screen to unlock the phone.

Three home-screens

As with the company’s Symbian^3 running devices like the E7 and C7, the N9 sports three home-screens. Unlike the home-screens on those smartphones though, the N9’s three home views are arranged in a carousel around the most used functionality on a smartphone.

The first home-screen is dedicated to Applications, and is used for launching and organising apps. The second home-screen is for Events, and features social networking feeds and notifications for calls, messages (SMS and MMS), calendar events and the like. The final home-screen is for Open applications, and allows users to switch in between all live apps that they have recently used. According to Nokia, the N9 delivers the best multitasking experience on any smartphone.

Happy snapper

Nokia has always included impressive cameras on their smartphones and the N9 is no exception, as it features an eight megapixel auto-focus camera with Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash and super wide 28 mm lens. This camera enables users to record HD-ready (720p) video and capture true 16:9 resolution photos.

Improved web browsing

We weren’t exactly fans of the standard Symbian^3 web browser, so we were glad to hear that the N9 boasts a faster web browser built on the latest Webkit 2 technology. Users will be able to have multiple browser windows open in the open applications view and their favourite websites will appear as visual thumbnails. Wide HTML5 support is also offered meaning users should be able to utilise rich web applications and enjoy faster video playback whilst surfing the net.