Nokia has showcased its next generation handset, the N9 running on MeeGo operating system, at the Nokia Connection 2011 event in conjunction with CommunicAsia 2011 event in Singapore.
The new Nokia N9 is a full touchscreen smartphone with no buttons on the front panel. Flaunting a new industrial design with vivid 3.9-inch Amoled touchscreen display, the Nokia N9 certainly is a worthy successor to N8 and a flagship MeeGo device. The N9 is expected to be made available later this year.
Nokia N9 will certainly sweep many off their feet with its slim (7.6-12.1mm) unibody and curved glass display, stuck together to form one slab of a smartphone. The precision crafted polycarbonate unibody is just one piece that packs the battery and the other hardware inside it.
The N9 has a 3.9-inch AMOLED curved glass touchscreen display with 854×480 Pixel resolution. You can expect to see 16.7 million vibrant colours and crisper text on the screen. The N9’s AMOLED touchscreen is built using the scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass technology.
Internally, the Nokia N9 houses a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 architecture based ‘Texas Instruments OMAP 3630’ processor, with PowerVR SGX530 graphics chip. It is the same combination used in the recently available Samsung Galaxy S LCD 4GB GT-I9003.
The Nokia N9 packs massive 1GB RAM and comes in 16GB or 64GB storage options.
The Nokia N9 features the volume rocker and lockscreen buttons on the side. At the back panel lies an 8-megapixel camera with Wide-Angle Carl Zeiss optical lens coupled with dual LED flash. Supporting the imaging in 16:9 aspect ratio, the camera has a digital shutter and comes with continuous Autofocus while recording a 720p HD video. One can enjoy the digital 4x zoom while clicking a still image or shooting a video. The camera optics are powerful enough to give great performance under low light conditions thanks to its larger f/2.2 Aperture and dual LED flash.
There’s a camera at the front panel for making video calls. To stay put with latest generation of smartphones, Nokia has put the Near-Field Communication chip inside it.
Nokia boasts of its new swipe philosophy where the users can browse through the smartphone’s user interface with finger swipes. Running MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan operating system, the user experience has been developed with the help of the Qt cross-platform application and user interface framework. With system-wide swipe gesture implementation, users can go to homescreen any time by swiping in any application.
Nokia has designed three different home screen views and offers live multi-tasking. Open Applications feature shows the number of apps running in a card style panel interface where users can multi-task between them.
Being the MeeGo flashship device, Nokia has also added free maps and turn-by-turn based Navigation with voice guidance. The dedicated Drive App has been optimised to be used as the GPS navigation system in cars and also features public transport routing. Apart from that, N9 also supports corporate email with ‘Mail for Exchange’ and comes pre-loaded with Ovi Store and Music along with support for Facebook as well as Twitter.
Nokia N9 features a fast mobile web Browser built using Webkit 2 technology and offers wide HTML5 support for using rich web apps and smoother video playback. In sound department, N9 supports Dolby Headphone and Dolby Digital Plus that enables personal surround sound audio experience with any pair of headphones connectable via 3.5mm audio port.
For network connectivity, the N9 features quad-band GSM and penta-band WCDMA support. Apart from that, wireless connectivity is ensured through Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.
The N9 features a 1450mAh battery that offers talktime of up to 11 hours on 2G and up to 7 hours on WCDMA. One can play 720p HD videos for up to 4.5 hours and music playback is up to 50 hours — better than the Apple iPod touch. The N9 will be available in black, cyan and magenta colours.
With mind-blowing design, contemporary specifications and intuitive interface, Nokia N9 certainly is a flagship MeeGo smartphone. So far there are no details on the availability and pricing but expect to be blown away whenever they are official.