Nokia N9
The Nokia N9 is a flagship smartphone developed by Nokia, running on the Linux-based MeeGo mobile operating system. Announced in June 2011 and released in September, it was the first and only device from Nokia with MeeGo, partly because of the company's partnership with Microsoft announced that year. It was initially released in three colors: black, cyan and magenta, before a white version was announced at Nokia World 2011.
Despite a limited release, the N9 received widespread critical acclaim, with some describing it as Nokia's finest device to date. It was praised for both its software and hardware, including the MeeGo operating system, buttonless 'swipe' user interface, and its high-end features. The case would be reused for the Windows Phone-powered Nokia Lumia 800 which was released later that year.
Background
The successor of Nokia N900, internally known as N9-00, was scheduled to be released in late 2010, approximately one year after N900 launched. Pictures of the prototype leaked in August 2010 showed an industrial design and a 4-row keyboard. A software engineer working for Nokia's device division cited the N9-00 in the public bug tracker for Qt, an open source application development framework used in MeeGo. This would later be known as the N950. This design was dropped; then Nokia started working on the N9-01, codenamed Lankku, a new variant without a keyboard.Nokia planned in 2010 to make MeeGo their flagship smartphone platform, replacing Symbian, whose N8 flagship launched that year. Thus effectively N9 was originally meant to be the flagship device from the company. On 11 February 2011 Nokia partnered with Microsoft to use Windows Phone 7 as the flagship operating system to replace Symbian, with MeeGo also sidelined. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop promised to still ship one MeeGo device that year, which would end up as the N9.
Nokia N9 was announced on 21 June 2011 at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. At the time, the phone was presumed to become available to the public in September 2011. Users can get notified via e-mail of the availability of N9 in their country at the webpage of the Nokia Online Store. Since Nokia closed its Nokia Online Shop in many countries, including Poland, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States on 30 June 2011, availability in those countries will be in the hands of retailers and operators.
Elop restated that the company will not be continuing development of MeeGo even if the N9 would be a success, focusing solely on the future Lumia series, something that MeeGo supporters already felt before the N9 announcement due to the Microsoft deal. They responded by creating a petition "We want Nokia to keep MeeGo". That was even more severe as MeeGo Linux was also a form of continuation of Maemo Linux, which was established with combining Nokia's Maemo with Intel's Moblin, in frames of Nokia and Intel alliance created for purposes of such cooperation. Despite the success of the alliance, it was broken and MeeGo canceled by Stephen Elop's decision. Intel officially expressed regrets because of this situation. After the N9's positive reception and generally weak sales of its Lumia range, Elop was criticised for this move, which has been said by some to have contributed to the company's demise in the smartphone market. According to Elop following the Microsoft alliance, MeeGo became an experimental "project", with some of Harmattan's interface elements being used in the cancelled "Meltemi" project and later the Nokia Asha platform.
Availability
In August 2011, Nokia announced that Nokia N9 will not be released in the United States. Other reports indicated that the device will not be available in other markets such as Japan, Canada and Germany. Nokia posted on the official blog in the last week of September 2011 that N9 phones are heading to the stores. The initial retail price was announced to be around €480 and €560 before applicable taxes or subsidies. In Germany, devices imported from Switzerland are available online from Amazon and German Cyberport GmbH. In January 2012, they were also made available in some major stores of the Saturn Media Markt chain. In February 2012, Nokia N9 appeared on the Italian Nokia site, which is supposed to be a sign of N9 being in official Nokia distribution for the Italian market.Prices in January 2012 were, depending on the size of the internal memory, between €500 and €630.
Hardware
Processors and memory
The Nokia N9 is powered by a Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 which is a System-on-a-chip based on a 45 nanometer CMOS process. It includes three processor units: a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU which runs the operating system and applications, an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX530 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 2.0 and capable of processing up to 14 million polygons per second; and a 430 MHz TI TMS320C64x, a digital signal processor, which does image processing for the camera, audio processing for telephony and data transmission. The system also has 1 GB of low power single channel RAM. Compcache uses part of this memory as compressed fast swap. It was, at the time, the most powerful device Nokia created.All user data is stored on the internal eMMC chip; in 16 and 64 GB variants. The N9 was the first smartphone to include 64 GB of internal storage.
Screen and input
Nokia N9 has a capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 854 × 480 pixels in PenTile RGBG layout. According to Nokia, it is capable of displaying up to 16.7 million colors. The OLED screen is covered by a curved scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla glass. The gap between the glass and the display was reduced in comparison to older Nokia models and the screen is coated with an anti-glare polarizer to ease the usability in daylight. There is a proximity sensor which deactivates the display and touchscreen when the device is brought near the face during a call. It has also an ambient light sensor that adjusts the display brightness.The device also makes use of its accelerometer to rotate the screen in portrait/landscape mode for some applications, such as the web browser.
GPS
N9 has an autonomous GPS feature with optional A-GPS functionality, Wi-Fi network positioning, a magnetometer, and comes pre-loaded with Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive applications.Nokia Maps is similar to Ovi Maps found on recent Symbian devices from Nokia and is mostly about finding nearby places around the user. Nokia Maps for MeeGo is also integrated with the Contacts and Calendar applications. Nokia Drive is a dedicated application for car navigation and provides free lifetime turn-by-turn voice guided car navigation. The Nokia N9 comes with preloaded maps of the continent where it was purchased, and as such, Nokia Drive does not require an active data connection and can work as a stand-alone GPS navigator.
Camera
The main camera has an autofocus feature, dual LED flash, is optimized for 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios, and has a 4× digital zoom for both video and camera. The sensor size of the back camera is 8.7 megapixels ; the effective resolution for the 16:9 aspect ratio is 3552 × 2000 px, and 3248 × 2448 px for the 4:3 aspect ratio. Typically, a 16:9 picture format on a digital camera is achieved by cropping the top and bottom of a 4:3 image, since the sensor is 4:3. Nokia N9 genuinely provides more in the width of the picture by choosing the 16:9 aspect ratio option by using the full 3552-pixel width of the sensor, and more in the height of the picture by choosing the 4:3 aspect ratio option by using the full 2448-pixel height of the sensor. The Carl Zeiss lens has quite unusual specifications for a mobile phone: 28mm wide-angle lens focal length, fast f/2.2 aperture, and a 10 cm-to-infinity focus range. It is capable of recording up to 720p video at 30 fps with stereo sound.Buttons
When holding the device facing the screen, on the right side, there is a power on/off, lock/unlock button and volume keys. The Nokia N9 has fewer hardware buttons than most smartphones of this time and makes extensive use of the touchscreen to navigate the user interface. For example, to minimize a running application, the user has to swipe their finger from one side of the bezel surrounding the screen to the opposite side. There is also no dedicated shutter key for the camera; the touch screen is instead used to focus and take the picture. The screen can be unlocked by double tapping on it.Audio and output
The N9 has two microphones and a loudspeaker situated at the bottom of the phone. The main microphone enables conversation and recording. The second microphone is located on the back of the device near the flash LEDs and main camera, it is used by MeeGo system for noise cancellation which make phone conversations clearer in noisy environment. On the top, there is a 3.5 mm AV connector which simultaneously provides stereo audio output, with support for Dolby Headphone, and either microphone input or video output. Next to the 3.5 mm connector, there is a High-Speed USB 2.0 USB Micro-B connector provided for data synchronization, mass storage mode and battery charging. The USB connector is protected by a small door.The built-in Bluetooth v2.1 +EDR supports stereo audio output with the A2DP profile. Built-in car hands-free kits are also supported with the HFP profile. File transfer is supported along with the OPP profile for sending/receiving objects. It is possible to remote control the device with the AVRCP profile. The Bluetooth chip also functions as an FM Receiver/Transmitter, allowing one to listen to the FM radio by using headphones connected to the 3.5 jack as antenna. As with the Nokia N800, N810 and N900, the N9 shipped without software support for the FM receiver. However, an FM radio application is available on the OVI Store from an independent developer.
NFC is also supported for sharing photos, contacts, or music with other devices supporting NFC and also pairing stereo speakers and headset. More than one device can be connected simultaneously with N9 via NFC.