Nokia N9 Review
Introduction
The Nokia N9
was hottly anticipated and yet, sadly, this illusive handset won't be widely available
to the majority of readers. Simply put, when we hold the Nokia N9 in our hands,
we're holding a piece of history. MeeGo, the culmination of decades of Nokia
mobile software development, is now officially canceled so why are we reviewing
the Nokia N9? The hardware, both an evolution of the critically acclaimed
Nokia N8 and an insight into what we might expect with the next chapter of
Nokias. With its edgy plastic build, 1GHz processor, 3.9" AMOLED screen,
8MP camera and not least of all, MeeGo, the enigmatic Nokia N9 is both a proud
tribute to yesterday and an optimistic insight into Nokia's tomorrow.
Design
Undoubtedly,
Nokia has churned out some fantastic hardware in recent years. Take the N8 and
E7, respectively at the top of their game when it comes to product design with
beautiful annodised alluminum chasis' and confident, bold shapes that just work
in the hand, in the pocket and to the eye. We therefore have high expectations
from the Nokia N9's AMOLED bevelled glass display, high-grade coloured plastic encasing,
not to mention the slab's abundance of personality. Beginning with the display,
even before you set a finger upon the Gorilla Glass, as the light bounces off
the beveled edges, the Nokia N9 begins to come into its own. With the phone
locked, the convex beveling accentuates the natural curves of the device, while
the deep, AMOLED black screen gives way to a light, typographic time display.
Double
tap the screen to reveal the wallpaper, our chosen being a beautiful bokehing
of light against a dark backdrop. At WVGA resolution, this 3.9" Clear Black
AMOLED display delivers a crisp, vibrant image and accurate color with the
wallpaper looking every bit as evocative as you might hope. Interacting with
the curved glass is a sensory treat, slick, smooth and contoured for an edge to
edge recess with every swipe. All in all, a definite highpoint of the Nokia N9.
The one criticism we would have relates to viewing angles. Tilt the device a
few degrees and a blue hue takes hold, so while detail retains its integrity,
color unfortunately doesn’t. The Nokia N9 can be rested flat or stood up in
portrait thanks to its dramatic flat top and bottom sides. Pick up the handset
and there's no cold, steely reception. Instead, the Nokia N9 greets with nostalgic,
reassuring room temperature warmth. In the face of the plastic casing, the
phone feels thoroughly modern and solid. Maser fully crafted, curvaceous, laden
with flush elements and a minimalistic, button less fascia, the Nokia N9's
design comes together harmoniously and with intent.
Other Features
The
front facing camera (strange, isn't it). On the right side is the volume rocker
and lock/power button, at the base, the loudspeaker and on the top-side, the
micro SIM card slot, the hinged micro USB cover and 3.5mm headphone jack. On
the back of the Nokia N9 lies the 8MP camera with dual LED flash. There is no
removable battery or expandable memory which is unfortunate, though given the
strong design; we can see why Nokia made this decision. Simple, engaging and
playful. Nokia have played to their strengths with their N9's design. Available
in three colors, black, cyan and magenta all finished to the highest degree, if
you care about how what you pull out of your pocket looks, then you'll revel in
revealing your Nokia N9. From an ergonomic point of view, the handset also feels
rich, and sits well in the hand. The bottom right hand corner may be a tad edgy for prolonged comfort against a palm, however for standard use; this handset is
at the top of its game.
Interface
The beauty of MeeGo is its simplicity. The OS is
comprised of 3 screens,
a fixed notifications bar at the top and hardly any layers. Screen one is a
four column view of your apps. Screen two, multi-tasking, providing thumbnails
of open-apps. Finally, the third screen offers a dashboard of Twitter and Face
book feeds while also indicating notifications and weather. Journeying between
screens is achieved by a horizontal swipe, with all three screens cycling
through a loop, so you always have somewhere to go whichever way you swipe.
Screen one
Screen
one, the apps screen is
single layered, so no folders in sight. It looks neat and clean while allowing
for basic customization. With a long press, all the app icons gray out, with
small crosses appear next to specific apps. This grayed out screen enables
re-ordering or uninstalling of apps
The second screen
The
second screen,
multi-tasking displays a thumbnail of each open application. These can be
scrolled through, tapped on for quick access or long-pressed for further
options. These options allow you to close windows one by one, or close all.
The final screen
The
final screen in MeeGo's
minimalistic arsenal involves updates. These include both Twitter and Face book,
with the option of
including news articles from the pre-installed AP Mobile news app. There is the
option to display 50, 100, 200 or 500 items with an update interval ranging
from 10 minutes through to 24 hours.
The notification band
The notification band at the top of the display
indicates battery, network, Wi-Fi, Face book chat / Gtalk status and time. This
can be expanded by a tap, allowing you to select a profile, choose your chat
status and your Wi-Fi connection. The locking mechanism on the Nokia N9 takes
full advantage of the physical convex quality of the screen. It requires a two
stage unlock, firstly, a double tap or press of the unlock button. Second, an
edge to edge swipe across the sleek fascia, with the tapering edges indicating
that at the end of your swipe, you have indeed reached your destination.
All this talk of swiping
alludes to the final point to note about MeeGo's UI: managing windows. With any
window other than a main screen open, a swipe from bottom edge to top edge or
either horizontal edge across will send the application to the multi-tasking
pane, and send you to a main screen. If you wish to close an app completely,
simply swipe down. This step by step explanation goes to indicate the
beautiful simplicity of MeeGo,
at its heart, it's an operating system that's easy to get to grips with, looks
charming and adopts gestures more fundamentally than any other major mobile OS
before it, with the exception of perhaps HP WebOS. While it can jitter and slow
down, and there are a few kinks to iron out in terms of functionality (swipe up
won't close video player), had we not already known MeeGo's future, we would
have anticipated it to be very promising.
Functionality
As far as key phone tools,
the dialer and phone functionality works well. Every button, icon and drop down
menu is touch optimized and looks charming. Adding a contact is a piece of cake
and the Nokia N9 synchronized easily with our Google contacts. Unfortunately,
the calendar wasn't so easy to sync, but still performs well, with a split
panel view and attractive UI. Messaging on the Nokia N9 is a treat. The
keyboard offers amongst the best haptic feedback you're going to experience,
while the keyboard in landscape is well laid out and easy to get to grips with.
The portrait QWERTY
is a touch thin for comfortable thumb typing, though we got used to it pretty
quickly.
There is support for a range
of accounts, with the aforementioned Face book and
Twitter integration also coming in the form of fully functioning apps. There is
also support for Skype, Flicker, Picasa, YouTube, and other accounts such as
mail for exchange. There are also a range of other useful applications on the N9, such as notes,
document viewer, RSS feeds, AccuWeather and AP Mobile, not to mention some
pre-installed games, including trials of Angry Birds, Galaxy on Fire 2, Need
for Speed Shift and Real Golf 2011. Finally, MeeGo also sports a useful search
function that enables you to trawl the entire phone for whatever it is you're
after.
As far as the market
experience goes, Ovi Store
is surely lacking. We were able to find a screen hot app and some additional
new apps; however this isn't the handset to buy if you're looking for an
engaging app experience. In the Nokia N9's defense however, most of what you'll
ever need is pre-installed on the device.
8MP at the Back
With Huge shoes to fill,
looking at specs alone and the Nokia N9 trails behind its older brother, the
N8. The sensor's down from 12MP to 8MP while the Xenon flash has been dropped in favor of a dual
LED flash. That said
working in the Nokia N9's favor is the fixed minimum aperture of f2.2 in
contrast to the N8's f2.8, and the slightly wider angled 26mm focal length.
Specs aside, and the
performance of the Nokia N9 camera is very solid indeed. Detail levels are good,
dynamic range is respectable and color is for the most part accurate, though at
times the exposure and white balance needs a helping hand. Our only niggle is
in relation to the auto-focus and the camera UI. The camera fires very quickly,
sometimes before it even get a chance to focus. This is both a blessing and a curse;
with quick capture but occasionally soft picture. Touch to focus also proved
unreliable, not playing nice in macro and locking occasionally, while the UI is
heavily menu driven. We would have liked shortcuts or HTC style corrections on
the fly approach.
Video capture
Sadly, video capture doesn't deliver the quality
we would have hoped for. With 720p recording, it's already slightly behind the competition; however, the
artifacting, muted colors and shortage of clarity and detail are what stop the
Nokia N9's video output from complementing some rather impressive optics. For
casual video however, it is passable, and as you can see from the clip, the
touch to focus during the video itself tends to work very well indeed. This
firmly places the Nokia N9's camera in the game still photo snappers, however
if video's your bag, watch our sample before committing your hard earned cash. After
you've spent hours creating content, you'll want to consume it, and the Nokia
N9 has everything you'll need to do just that.
Music player
Starting with the music
player and Nokia has
decided to lock everything into portrait orientation. This works perfectly for
one handed usage and keeps in-line with the simplicity of the OS. The main
screen offers you a 3x3 grid of recently played album artwork in the upper
half, while in the lower half are standard playback options such as artist,
album, songs, playlist and ovi music. Playback quality is definitely above
average, with impressive volume and clarity. Tracks retained a good amount of
bass as well; giving the N9's audio output a nice rounded quality.
Video support
In its native WVGA
resolution, video support is good for H.263, MPEG4, H.264 BP/MP, WMV9 / VC-1 and Mkv formats.
Sadly, at 720p, rvrn MP4 support wasn't reliable. While the Nokia N9 manages to
play captured HD content well, MP4 video podcasts and YouTube rips fail to
playback smoothly. Once your video is playing however, the Nokia N9 comes into
its own. The Clear Black AMOLED display caresses your senses while the
immersive audio quality is the icing on the cake, making the video playback a
real treat.
Connectivity
The on board penta-band 3G and
quad-band GSM makes the Nokia N9 an ideal phone for traveling – it is even
usable in T-Mobile USA's 3G network. The pre-installed Nokia maps with GPS allow for free
navigation. The handset also has your usual, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, not to mention
NFC which is something we don't see all that often.
Web browsing
Web
browsing is a very
positive experience on the Nokia N9 thanks to a zippy browser and intuitive
interaction. Multi-touch pinch to zoom works a treat while pages load quickly
and are browsable while loading. The browser doesn't support Flash, and this
probably has a lot to do with the smoothness of the experience, however you do
get HTML 5 support. The Nokia N9 gives users the ability to easily tether Wi-Fi
which we're delighted to see. The GPS also works well, locking on when outdoors
in a matter of moments with the AGPS, and from cold in about 30 seconds.
Performance
The
1GHz TI OMAP 3630 chipset does a respectable job at making sure MeeGo keeps up
with everything we throw at it. At times we opened in excess of 17 apps with
little in the way of stuttering. At other times however, with 2 or 3 apps open
the Nokia N9
hung, froze or took its sweet time to open a new application. Inconsistencies
in behavior remind us that the MeeGo is still in its infancy. This doesn't kill
the Nokia N9 experience, but does sully it somewhat, especially when
considering the uncertainty behind support for this platform over the coming
years.
Call quality
Call
quality on the Nokia N9 wasn't the crispest we've experienced, though is by no
means poor. The active noise cancellation does its job and the person on the
other end sounds audible, if ever so slightly soft. The feedback we received
from the other end when talking on the N9 was that a good sound was produced,
volume and clarity are all above average. With good reception, the Nokia N9
confidently offers both solid smarts and acommendable phone.
Battery Backup
With
the non-removable 1450 mAh battery stated to last 11 hours while talking and 16
days standby, the Nokia N9 manages to put other smart phones to shame. While
real-world results produced a full day to day with chat logged in, if you need
to preserve juice, switching off connections can get the handset through two
days - something most smart phones can only dream of.
What I Like
1) Good,
unique design
2) Unique,
simple UI
3) Solid
camera performance
What I Don’t Like
1) No
future for the OS
2) Occasionally
buggy UI
3) Extremely
limited app support
4)
Not available to Indian Market
Lastly I Would Say...
Nokia
N9 comes with MeeGo viable OSIs, the Nokia N9 design is awesome and you really
going to like it a lot, talking about camera the new camera is good enough. MeeGo ordains Nokia's impeccable hardware with
a form fitted OS, one that could even challenge the major players on the
usability stakes and before we can celebrate, we must commemorate. For any
Nokia fans out there considering this, you get our recommendation. However,
from a practical stance, for a day to day consumer who wants to buy into an
ecosystem rich in apps and development, the grass may well be greener on the
other side. If you, like us, have fallen in love with the Nokia hardware, but
the N9 won't be available in Indian market, this can feel embarrassing to
Indian users. You may want to consider an upcoming Nokia Windows Phone, which
would eventually spor a similar chassis and Microsoft's better-supported
OS.
Specifications
General |
2G
Network
|
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
|
3G
Network
|
HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700 /
1900 / 2100
|
|
Announced
|
2011, June
|
|
Status
|
Available. Released 2011,
September
|
Body |
Dimensions
|
116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1 mm, 76
cc
|
Weight
|
135 g
|
Display |
Type
|
AMOLED capacitive touch
screen, 16M colors
|
Size
|
480 x 854 pixels, 3.9
inches (~251 ppi pixel density)
|
|
Multi touch
|
Yes
|
|
Protection
|
Corning Gorilla Glass
|
|
- Anti-glare polarizer
|
Sound |
Alert types
|
Vibration; MP3, WAV
ringtones
|
Loudspeaker
|
Yes
|
|
3.5mm jack
|
Yes, check quality
|
|
Dolby Mobile sound
enhancement; Dolby Headphone support
|
Memory |
Card slot
|
No
|
Internal
|
16/64 GB storage, 1 GB RAM
|
Data |
GPRS
|
Class 33
|
EDGE
|
Class 33
|
|
Speed
|
HSDPA, 14.4 Mbps; HSUPA,
5.7 Mbps
|
|
WLAN
|
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi
hotspot
|
|
Bluetooth
|
Yes, v2.1 with A2DP, EDR
|
|
NFC
|
Yes
|
|
USB
|
Yes, micro USB v2.0
|
Camera |
Primary
|
8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels,
Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus, dual LED flash, check quality
|
Features
|
Geo-tagging, face
detection, touch-focus
|
|
Video
|
Yes, 720p@30fps, check quality
|
|
Secondary
|
Yes
|
Features |
OS
|
MeeGo OS, v1.2 Harmattan
|
Chipset
|
TI OMAP 3630
|
|
CPU
|
1 GHz Cortex A8
|
|
GPU
|
PowerVR SGX530
|
|
Sensors
|
Accelerometer, proximity,
compass
|
|
Messaging
|
SMS (threaded view), MMS,
Email, Push Email, IM
|
|
Browser
|
WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML5, RSS
feeds
|
|
Radio
|
Yes (Via third-party app)
|
|
GPS
|
Yes, with A-GPS support;
Ovi Maps
|
|
Java
|
Yes, MIDP 2.1
|
|
Colors
|
Black, Cyan, Magenta,
Glossy white
|
|
- Micro SIM card support
only
- SNS integration - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - TV-out - Dolby Digital Plus - MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA/FLAC player - MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV player - Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) - Video/photo editor - Voice memo/command/dial - Predictive text input (Swype) |
Battery |
Standard battery, Li-Ion
1450 mAh (BV-5JW)
|
|
Stand-by
|
Up to 380 h (2G) / Up to
450 h (3G)
|
|
Talk time
|
Up to 11 h (2G) / Up to 7 h
(3G)
|
|
Music play
|
Up to 50 h
|
Misc |
SAR
US
|
1.18 W/kg (head)
1.18 W/kg (body)
|
|
SAR
EU
|
1.16 W/kg (head)
|
||
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