On 21st June, 2011, telecommunications giant Nokia announced its first Meego smartphone - Nokia N9-00, simply referred to as Nokia N9, at the Nokia Connections event in Singapore. Other than MeeGo v1.2 Harmattan UI and buttonless design, Nokia N9 features a polycarbonate unibody, near field communication (NFC) capabilities, a GPS navigation support and a lot more - all of which has made it talk of the town of late.
The absence of physical buttons is undoubtedly the USP of Nokia N9, and rightfully earns it the name 'Swipe'. It is a welcome change, as you don't have to resort to physical back buttons to return to the previous page or home from now on. Instead, everything will be done in a smooth manner on this Nokia smartphone with a few swipes here and there. The scratch-resistant glass merges into the unibody with no trace of merger, and that makes N9 quite appealing in itself. Given below are the details of the technical specifications of Nokia N9 Swipe; make sure that you don't miss out on its AMOLED display, Meego operating system, powerful CPU and GPU, and the 8 MP rear camera with Carl Zeiss optics.
Nokia N9 comes in three different colors - cyan, black and magenta. Even though the phone is being marketed as a MeeGo device, it doesn't actually have the MeeGo OS, but instead resorts to 'MeeGo Instance' wherein the UI framework of MeeGo is integrated in Maemo 6. The GPS and navigation support armed with turn-by-turn voice guidance comes handy when you are traveling in unfamiliar area of the city. More importantly, the fact that the maps for your region come preloaded with the device means you don't have to spend anything extra on getting them downloaded onto your phone. The Drive app instantly turns your smartphone into a navigation device, and makes your journey as easy as it can get. The new browser, with HTML5 support, promises a fast, effortless browsing experience.
The 8 MP camera, with Carl Zeiss optics, is bound to come as a treat for people who like to save those good old moments in the form of pictures. Sharing these pictures is also easy owing to the presence of near field communication technology. The camera facilitates HD quality video recording in 720p resolution at 30 fps. It also plays a wide range of audio codecs, including MPEG-4 AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, WMA and Dolby Digital Plus. If you are a fan of gaming, preloaded games like Angry Birds Magic and Galaxy on Fire 2 are bound to come as a treat for you. At the same time, you are bound to be pleased to know that Angry Birds Magic comes with NFC support on Nokia N9.
So the Nokia N9 Swipe, riding high on its features and technical specifications, seems quite promising - at least on the paper, but it's too early to predict what's in store for this smartphone in future. As new technologies continue to flood the tech arena, the lifespan of smartphones has come down by a significant extent. The trend of launching two generations of a particular model within a span of year hints at this very fact. In such circumstances, the manufacturer has no option but to put in a great deal of efforts to make sure that their product leaves a mark. Has Nokia done it in N9-00? We will have to wait for a few more days to review this model and find out.
Update: It was earlier revealed that Nokia plans to release its new N Series handset Nokia N9 in Kazakhstan on 9th September, 2011. However, the same was eventually withdrawn, and now it is rumored that Nokia N9 will be released in the last week of September, 2011, (most likely 30th September) in Kazakhstan.