The Nokia N9 ($ 700 street) has come to a door with an alternate reality a lesson for us. Almost impossible to buy in the U.S., the N9 is common to use the same body, and many features Nokia's flagship Windows are known as "Sea Ray". It is also a curious one, the only phone that can still be seen based on Intel and Nokia fell MeeGo OS. So this is another type of examination. Of course, you will not buy this phone. But let's see what we can teach.Physical design and quality of calls
Nokia N9 is fantastic. It stands out. Nokia uses a unique twist on the traditional dish of phone design,
and in recent days, I had several people ask me what phone I carrying.The phone 854-by-480, 3.9 - inch AMOLED Gorilla glass is surrounded on all sides by a plastic colored wrap. It could be black, but it is much more striking in red or blue, because it brings color around the front and sides of the phone in an unexpected way. It's safe to say that it does not look like an Apple iPhone 4S ($ 199, 4.5 stars), or Windows phones such as Samsung Focus ($ 99, 4 stars).
The AMOLED screen is traditional, but Nokia says it has "air space" and a polarizing filter, which offers some of the rewards of brightness and visibility outdoors is found in the Samsung Super AMOLED screens. The screen is very, very strong, with black and whites of exceptional purity. The phone is smooth and strange in his hand, like a 1920 Bakelite plastic style.
A pair of doors at the top of the phone to hide the SIM card slot and a microUSB connector, there is no way to remove the battery and no memory card slot. (Phone for Windows does not like memory cards, anyway.) Counterfeit design is only the power button on the right side of the phone. Mine was loose and wavy.
The reception at the T-Mobile has been strong, and this is one of relatively few phones that works on networks and 3G T-Mobile AT & T. It's just the 3G, although the top unless 4G 14.4 HSPA not here. The phone also connects to Wi-Fi
A voice call could use a little 'noise reduction. Sound through the headset is generally a good tone, but too much background noise, it became clear the microphone. Speakerphone is a quiet touch, and transmission through the living voice sounded far away.
I was not satisfied with the battery in only 4 hours, 47 minutes of conversation. It is not good enough for a modern 3G phone. Hopefully it comes to saving Meego and the lack of battery 1450 mAh.
MeeGo (away now)
The N9 might have been the first of many MeeGo phones, but Nokia has pulled the plug on the project in February, when he decided to join forces with Microsoft to make Windows phones.
I heard the call moves Linux based Meego "last, best hope for the multitude of open source." The nickname comes from the opening of the Nokia devices piracy of individuals on the basis of your previous operating system Maemo, Nokia N900 as the phone / tablet. No advance Maemo devices hackability past cult status, however, and there seems to be saved Meegan.
MeeGo home screen sticks with a grid of icons, layout we've seen since the beginning of the feature phones, but it was wrong for several years. The icons themselves are halfway between the circles and squares, and they are beautifully designed. As you add new icons, they are just stacked on the bottom, and you do not have more pages here.
This is because the left navigation, right, top and bottom has a special meaning in Meegan. Drag to the right of the home screen takes you to a small gallery of all minimized windows applications you use. This is the true multitasking. Slide back to the right (or left of the screen) and you get a page combined Facebook / Twitter updates and email alerts. When you're in an application, minimize to slide up, slide down closes.
The TI OMAP 1GHz single-core processor was a little 'difficult to deal with from time to time MeeGo Apps. I've seen some of the shots in animation, and the phone froze at times. Rest of the time, the user interface was very smooth and fast, so I suspect companies to stop because of background processes taking time on the other hand, because of the underpowered CPU.The phone has all the usual applications PIM, web browser based on Webkit (no flash), and Nokia is free, very nice application of Ovi Maps. It comes with built Twitter and Facebook (including a combination of Twitter, Facebook and telephone contact information, and show your friends' status updates for their newer cards). Exchange, Google, and POP / IMAP support as well as the stock market and the CalDAV calendar.
The virtual keyboard is a pleasure to type, as well as audio and physical feedback. The browser could be faster, did not score so well-browser benchmark market to compete with top-of-the-line Android phones, iPhone OS, or even the latest Blackberry.
For applications, you go to Ovi Store by Nokia, which has only a handful of choices compared to other platforms and it is not likely to collect much more. There are a few high-end games like Galaxy on Fire 2 and Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed was not as smooth as playing on phones with high end equipment than the iPhone 4S.The NFC phone also but here in the U.S., it's just not much to use NFC. (Ovi Store will offer to check in the square, but we need places to have NFC tags on them.)
Multimedia
There are 16 GB of onboard storage, and removable memory. N9 packs a decent 8 megapixel camera with a good performance in low light. It is not as clear as the Apple iPhone 4S, and photos sometimes had blue or red cast to them. The f/2.2 lens promises good pictures in low light, and saw the minimum shutter speed of light little blurry but it was there. The camera records video in HD 720p and 21 frames per second and slightly granular within 30 fps outdoors. The camera froze once and crashed once during my tests.
The music player is beautiful, with the tiles on the album cover with clear lists in alphabetical order of their music. The only speaker at the bottom of the phone is a bit weak, but noisy. You can return to a list of recommendations for similar songs that play music from Nokia Ovi, which does not sell songs to the Americans, but can deliver up to about a dozen radio stations like. The music sounded good in a Bluetooth headset with cable o.
The video playback performance was very disappointing. The N9 could not handle one of our high-definition video, and even left some executives when presented with VGA, H.264 video files. The phone supports a variety of formats, including WMV, XVID and MPEG4, but will have to be sparing with the data rate.
Conclusions
Meego is a no go. Look at the N9 entirely as a physical object and as a harbinger of Windows phones to come. Nokia built the material highlighted here, at least in a visual standpoint. If you jump from pure black screen surround a series of repetitive patterns, similar monotone black and gray. This brings us back to the history of Nokia advanced mobile odd-looking, of course, and I hope that Nokia is turning from the main branch.
The phone's performance is average but acceptable. I can see why MeeGo not considered ready for prime time, as the user interface gets a little rough N9, the browser needs some polishing, and video playback, in particular, is lower than I expect from now high technology, especially one that costs $ 700, unlocked.
I am sure there are fanatics who are salivating thinking open source N9 to bend to their will. The rest of us should shrink from a phone if the platform has been largely abandoned. But if that's what Nokia's designers worked on the first generation of Windows phones, Sea Ray and his colleagues will really stand out in a crowd.
