Nokia has launched the successor to the somewhat successful N8. Nokia has had a tough 2011. It has seen a lot of bad press, rumours of an acquisition by Microsoft of their mobile unit and the termination of their flagship software Symbian.
The N9 has launched with a bit of controversy as well. The Initial specifications had an element of secrecy to it as the operating system was barely mentioned by Nokia. I believe the reason for this is that opinion leaders in the cellphone industry thought this could be the first Nokia phone featuring Windows Phone 7 as the primary operating system. Since the partnership of Nokia and Microsoft was made public, they have been off the radar to a large extent and the N9 could potentially change that in a big way. But alas, the Nokia N9 features Meego as its operating software.
My first observation is that the Nokia N9 looks very much like an iPhone. A Large OLED screen which is heavily dependant on a touch screen interface.
According to Nokia this is their first-ever pure touch smartphone, which is all about making things simpler. Nokia N9 focuses on the most important things that people do: use apps, get notifications and switch between different activities. Navigating the UI is done with a simple gesture, a swipe of a finger.
No Buttons.
The Nokia N9 is the world’s first pure touch screen phone without any front-facing buttons at all. You unlock the phone by just double-tapping the screen.Three Home Views.
The user interface in Nokia N9 is designed around the things people typically use the most. This is why there are three recognizable home views arranged in a carousel:
- Applications for launching and organizing your apps.
- Events for social networking feeds and notifications for calls, SMS’s, calendar events, etc.
- Open applications for switching between all live apps you have used recently. You can pinch and zoom the screen to see either four or nine open app icons.
In fact, the Nokia N9 delivers the best multitasking experience on any phone!
The things that make the Nokia N9 unique – the industrial design, developments in software and user interface, and the ease of developer experience with Qt – will live on in a variety of ways.
I hope for Nokia’s sake that the N9 is a success as they need some positive news. No details have been made public on the South African launch date yet.
