Nokia N9

nokia n9 review

Release Date:  Q3 2011
Expert Rating:
    Customer Rating:

• Sensational Touchscreen, a beautiful curve and flush fit
• Looks Fantastic
• Super strong one piece polycarbonate shell
• Fast 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU
• Excellent and versatile camera
• Fast and simple User Interface

• Just have to wait and see how the new O.S. stacks up until then we can't think of any Cons

  Nokia N9 Video Review  Nokia N9 Deals (0)

IS THIS FINALLY THE SMARTPHONE WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR FROM THE GIANT OF MOBILE HANDSET PRODUCTION?

Nokia N9 Design

This is the first in a very long time that we at mobilefonereviews have been compelled to use the word beautiful when talking about the design of a new mobile phone. Finally it seems Nokia have really hit the nail on the head. The body of this phone is machine from a solid piece of polycarbonate, which at the moment is billed to arrive in the shops in cyan, magenta and black. Although this process of manufacture lends itself to endless possibilities of colour in the future. Married to this gorgeous one piece body is a fantastic 3.9 inch super AMOLED touchscreen with a resolution of 480 × 854 pixels. The glass face of the touchscreen is toughened Gorilla glass which is sensuously curved and seamlessly fitted to the polycarbonate body. You only have to take one look to realise the design seems to have grown up from that of the N8. There is no home button on the front of the Nokia N9 either, this allows for more of the front portion of the phone to be uninterrupted screen adding to the N9’s fluid looks. The slightly raised curve of the screen, combined with its jet black quality, provided by the way the glass is laminated to the screen leaving no air in between, gives the impression that the user interface is floating on the surface of the glass front. Very promising. If looks were the be all and end all I’d take 10 please.

The next evolutionary change in the Nokia N9 is the change from Symbian™ to the user interface which is based on the Linux MeeGo O.S. V1.2 Harmattan. This works in combination with Apps powered by the Q.T. cross platform framework which is a very flexible opening development system. With this, Nokia hopes to ensure rapid development of Apps for users of the Nokia N9. Q.T. powered Apps are already available for previous Nokia S60 models from the Ovi Store and future integration of Q.T. into even older S40 Symbian™ O.S. Systems sets to ensure developers interest in the Q.T. platform.

The Nokia N9 has come up with a very unique and interesting way of combining Apps an Operating System into a user interface that does away with the need for the traditional home button, it replaces it with a swipe gesture which can be activated from any side of the screen. No matter what you want doing a simple gesture from the edge to the middle of the screen takes you back to the 3 simple home screens.

Nokia N9 home screen and swipe control

The first screen in the Nokia N9 home screens is the App screen from which you can launch the App of your choice which is as we know is nothing new. The second screen is responsible for bringing all social feeds together in one place, allowing you to view all of your contacts and social networks together mixing Twitter™ with Facebook™ and much more. The third screen contains all the applications that you have recently opened in the state in which you left them, allowing you to pick them straight back up and carry on with what you were doing. This makes it even simpler to find them again, they are all organise with the most recently used at the top of the screen. Nokia claim that this enables true multitasking on a handheld device. All these functions are not unusual but it is the way in which they are all brought together in a very simple 3 Screen interface control. The swipe gesture makes it stand out from the crowd especially as everything else seems to be getting more complex.

The Nokia N9 has another little trick up its sleeve as far as the user interface goes, well in fact three more. Again these are very simple additions, the first of which is again another simple swipe gesture from the bottom of the screen to the middle with a little hold on the centre. This activates the quick launch bar from which you can make a call, access the Internet, launch the camera or go to messages. The next is a feature which means that all your notifications such as missed calls, messages and tweets appear on the lock screen and they can be accessed by using the swipe feature again, just run a finger across and notification you want and the phone will unlock and automatically launch the correct application was one gesture. Very smooth. Well, as if that wasn’t enough the Nokia N9 also boasts Near Field Communication allowing automatic access to Bluetooth® devices. This technology also allows automatic payments just by placing your phone near to other Near Field Communication object. The possibilities of N.F.C. are only just starting to be realized and this will be the next big thing.

The browser on the Nokia N9 is a version of the Webkit2 found on Symbian™ Nokia devices. For this situation it has been refined with the additional feature of HTML5 compatibility and the ability to open multiple pages.

Nokia N9 camera

As mentioned before all social sites are instantly available with only a one time log in necessary. Now to bring all this together. If only we had a great camera so photos can be uploaded to the web on the move. Well it just so happens we aren’t disappointed here either with a Carl Zeiss Tessar 8MP set-up and a dual led flash. The Nokia N9 can also record true 16:9 format wide screen video too. “Why not 12MP like the N8”, I hear you say. There are 2 simple answers to this. The first being that it simply isn’t necessary as beyond a certain point Mega Pixels really don’t matter. There are many other factors that are equally important such as the processors ability to deal with the data and the quality of the optics. The second answer is space. For this design to work the bulkier 12MP unit was simply too big and we believe that for the sake of the sleek design the bragging rights of 12MP just isn’t justified. The optical setup has the feature of being able to open to an aperture of f2.2, this allows for lower light level shots without the need for flash than any other mobile device.

The Nokia N9 is powered by a super-fast 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, Power VR SGX530 GPU & TI OMAP 3630 chipset which finally sees Nokia no longer playing around in the field of MHz. It’s coming out to play with the big boys in the GHz playground, and although not Dual Core, there is definitely enough to push this O.S. into hyperspace as it is nowhere near as power hungry as Android™ devices. Couple this with a monster 1Gig of Ram and using the multitasking functions of the Nokia N9, it should be fast and smooth. Oh and did I mention it comes with either a 16Gig or monster 32Gig of internal storage & no need for Micro SD cards.

In conclusion we could go on talking about the Nokia N9 for ever as it seems to be the giant leap forward that the Nokia faithful were all waiting for while the rest of us deserted. If this phone is half as good as it looks a fair few of us could be going back to beg Nokia for forgiveness. The short of it is I WANT ONE! (In blue please if anyone is listening)