Nokia N9

Nokia N9

Nokia N9 phone running Harmattan software
Manufacturer	Nokia
Series	Nseries
Predecessor	Nokia N900
Compatible networks	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 GPRS/EDGE class B, multislot class 33 UMTS 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100 HSDPA Cat10, up to 14.4 Mbps HSUPA Cat6, up to 5.7 Mbps
Form factor	Slate
Dimensions	Width: 61.2 mm Height: 116.45 mm Thickness: 7.6 to 12.1 mm
Weight	135 g
Operating system	MeeGo 1.2 "Harmattan"
CPU	1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 SoC processor; TI OMAP3630 3D Graphics PowerVR SGX530 GPU
Memory	1 GB Mobile DDR
Storage	512 MB internal NAND memory 16 or 64 GB on-board memory
Removable storage	none
Battery	BV-5JW 1450 mAh Li-Ion battery (removable, but too difficult for common user) micro USB charging
Rear camera	8 MP (CMOS sensor) with Carl Zeiss optics (F2.2, Focal length: 3.77mm / 28mm), 720p at 30 FPS, Digital zoom 4X for camera and video
Front camera	Yes (lower right corner)
Display	"Clear Black" AMOLED 854 × 480 px (FWVGA), 3.9" (99.1 mm), 16.7 million colors (24 bits)
Connectivity	WLAN IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4 and 5GHz) bluetooth 2.1 +EDR micro USB 2.0 GPS and A-GPS 3.5 mm AV connector (audio in/out, video out) near field communication (NFC) micro SIM card FM transceiver
Data inputs	Capacitive multi-touch display External functional hardware keys Accelerometer (3-axis) Magnetometer (3-axis) Proximity sensor Ambient light detector Dual microphone for active noise cancellation
Development status	To be released (Q3 2011)

The Nokia N9 is a smartphone made by Nokia based on the MeeGo "Harmattan" mobile operating system, the first from Nokia on the MeeGo OS. It will be released in three colors: black, cyan and magenta.

Following the agreement with Microsoft, in October 2011 Nokia will retire all of its high Symbian models from the North-American market, in exchange for a push of initial Windows Phone 7 smartphone models.

In August of 2011 Nokia announced that it therefore (despite earlier announcements) will not be introducing the Nokia N9 to key markets such as Japan, Canada, Sweden, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.

Despite earlier announcements and local advertisements during the summer of 2011, according to which Nokia would be launching the Nokia N9 in Kazakhstan on September 9th, 2011 (for an introductory price of about 475 EUR), Nokia missed another of its N9 milestones and deadlines, prompting it on September 10, 2011 to postpone the Kazakhstan launch date at least to 30 September, 2011. According to Nokia Australia, the Nokia N9 will be officially released in Australia sometime in October of 2011.

Nokia post on the offical blog in the last week of September 2011 that the N9 is heading to the shop. The retail price will be around EUR 480 (16GB) and EUR 560 (64GB) before applicable taxes or subsidies.

History and availability

The successor of the Nokia N900, internally known as the N9-00, was scheduled to be released in late 2010, approximately one year after the N900 launched. Pictures of the prototype were leaked in August 2010 that showed an industrial design and a 4 rows keyboard. A software engineer working for Nokia's device division cited the N9-00 (the product number) in the public bug tracker for Qt, an open source application development framework used in MeeGo. This design was dropped then Nokia started working on the N9-01, codenamed Lankku; a new variant without keyboard.

The Nokia N9 was announced on June 21, 2011 at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. The phone is presumed to become available to the public in September 2011. Users can get notified via email of the availability of the N9 at the Nokia Online Store in their country on a webpage on the Nokia site. Since Nokia closed the Online Shop in many countries, including France, Poland, Spain, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom and the USA, on 30 June 2011, availability in those countries will be at the sole discretion of third party retails and cellular telephone service providers. On the 10 August 2011, Nokia announced that they had no plans to release the phone in the UK or the United States.

Hardware

Processors

The Nokia N9 is powered by a Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 which is a System-on-a-chip based on a 45 nanometer CMOS process. It includes three processor units: a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU which runs the operating system and applications, an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX 530 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 2.0 and capable of processing up to 14 million polygons per second; and a 430 MHz TI TMS320C64x, a digital signal processor, which does image processing for the camera, audio processing for telephony and data transmission. The system also has 1 GB of low power single channel RAM (Mobile DDR). Compcache uses part of this memory as compressed fast swap.

Screen and input

The Nokia N9 has a 3.9-inch (99 mm) capacitive touchscreen (up to 6 simultaneous points) with a resolution of 854 × 480 pixel (FWVGA, 251 ppi). According to Nokia it is capable of displaying up to 16.7 million colors. The AMOLED screen is covered by a scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla glass. The gap between the glass and the display has been reduced and the screen is coated with an anti-glare polarizer to ease the usability in daylight. There is a proximity sensor which deactivates the display and touchscreen when the device is brought near the face during a call. It has also an ambient light sensor that adjusts the display brightness.

The device also make use of its accelerometer to rotate the screen in portrait/landscape mode for some application such as the web browser.

The device has an autonomous GPS with optional A-GPS functionality, Wi-Fi network positioning and a magnetometer and comes pre-loaded with the Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive application. Nokia Maps is similar to Ovi Maps found on recent Symbian devices from Nokia and is mostly about finding nearby places (restaurents, metro station, theater, etc...) around the user. Nokia Maps for MeeGo is also integrated with the Contacts and Calendar applications. Nokia Drive is a dedicated application for car navigation and provides: free life time, turn by turn, voice guided car navigation. The Nokia N9 comes with preloaded maps of the continent where it was purchased and as such, Nokia Drive does not require an active data connection and can work as a stand alone GPS navigator.

The back camera has an autofocus feature, dual LED flash, is optimized for 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio and has a 4× digital zoom for both video and camera. The sensor size of the back camera is 8.7 megapixel (3552 x 2448 px); the effective resolution for the 16:9 aspect ratio is 3552 x 2000 px (7.1 megapixel) and 3248 x 2448 px (8 megapixel) for 4:3 aspect ratio. Typically, a 16:9 picture format on a digital camera is achieved by cropping the top and bottom of a 4:3 image, since the sensor is 4:3. The Nokia N9 genuinely provide more in the width of the picture by choosing the 16:9 aspect ratio option (using the full 3552 px of the sensor) and more in the height of the picture by choosing the 4:3 aspect ratio option (using the full 2448 px of the sensor). The lens, marketed as "Carl Zeiss", has quite unusual specifications for a mobile phone: 28mm wide angle focal length, fast (for this class) f/2.2 aperture and 10 cm to infinity the focus range. It is capable of video recording at up to 720p at 30 fps with stereo sound.

Buttons

When holding the device facing the screen, on the right side, there is a power on/off (long press) and lock/unlock (short press) button and volume keys. As the Nokia N9 has fewer hardware buttons than most smartphones, in other words is lacking dedicated home or back keys, it makes extensive use of the touchscreen to navigate the user interface, which can only be done by finger gestures. For example, to minimize a running application, the user has to swipe its finger from one side of the bezel surrounding the screen to the opposite side. There is also no dedicated shutter key for the camera; the touch screen is instead used to focus and take the picture. The screen can be unlocked by double tapping on it.

Audio and output

The N9 has 2 microphones and a loud speaker, which is situated at the bottom of the phone. On the top, there is a 3.5 mm AV connector which simultaneously provides stereo audio output, with support for Dolby Headphone, and either microphone input or video output. Next to the 3.5 mm connector, there is a High-Speed USB 2.0 USB Micro-B connector provided for data synchronization, mass storage mode (client) and battery charging. The USB connector is protected by a small door.

The built-in Bluetooth v2.1 +EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) supports stereo audio output with the A2DP profile. Built-in car hands-free kits are also supported with the HFP profile. File transfer is supported (FTP) along with the OPP profile for sending/receiving objects. It is possible to remote control the device with the AVRCP profile. The Bluetooth chip also functions as a FM Receiver/Transmitter, allowing one to listen to the FM radio by using headphones connected to the 3.5 jack as antenna. As with the Nokia N800, N810 and N900, it will ship without software support.

NFC is also supported for sharing photos and pairing stereo speakers and headset.

Battery and SIM

The BV-5JW 3.7V 1450mAh Li-Ion battery performance, as provided by Nokia, are from 7h to 11h of talk time, from 16 to 19 days of standby, 4.5h of video playback and up to 48h of music play back. The phone only supports USB charging. The N9 will support micro sim only .

Storage

The Nokia N9 has either a 16 or 64 GB eMMC (mass storage memory) and 512 MB NAND (ROM) non-removable storage. Additional storage is not supported.

Software

MeeGo

Main article: MeeGo

Strictly speaking, the Nokia N9 does not run MeeGo 1.2 as its operating system. It instead runs what Nokia refers to as a "MeeGo instance". During the development of Harmattan (previously marketed as Maemo 6), Nokia and Intel merged their open source projects into one new common project called MeeGo. Not to postpone the development schedule, Nokia decided to keep the "core" of Harmattan, such as middleware components (GStreamer) and packaging manager (Harmattan uses deb not RPM). Nonetheless, Harmattan is designed to be fully API compatibility with MeeGo 1.2 via Qt. As far as end users and application developers are concerned, the distinction between Harmattan and MeeGo 1.2 is minimal. Since all marketing effort would have been directed to "MeeGo", Nokia dropped the Maemo branding to adopt MeeGo as to not confuse customers.

The Nokia N9 user experience provides three panes, called Home, and a Lock Screen. Dragging or flicking horizontally navigates between the three panes of the home. [1] The Home consists of :

• Events : It holds all the notification such as missed calls, upcoming meeting and unread messages/emails.
• Applications : Menu with all the installed application shortcut. It displays 4 columns that can be scrolled up and down as needed by the number of application.
• Open Applications : A task manager that can be viewed either as a 2 columns or 3 columns (a pinch gesture will switch between each mode). If more application are open that can be displayed on the screen, the user can scroll the open applications list up and down.

When in an application a swipe gesture from one edge of the screen to the other one will return the user to one of the three views of Home. This will not close the application, it will either be suspended or keep running in the background, depending on the application. To close an application, the user most press and hold until a red "X" appears on the upper left corner of the application thumbnail in the Open Application view, which will allow to close it. Clicking on the status bar on the top of the screen while using an application or on the Lock Screen, will display a menu allowing the user to adjust the volume, change the active profile (airplane mode, silent, etc...) and turn off the blutooth, WiFI, 3G and 2G radio. The Lock Screen display the status bar, a clock and some notification. It is customizable by the end user.

The phone can be unlocked by double clicking on the screen. Sliding the lock screen up reveals 4 customizable shortcuts, called the Quick Launcher. The Quick Launcher can also be accessed while using an application.

Open/closed source packages and community contributions

The approach applied by Nokia is one of an open platform, with exception, and a closed user experience. As with Maemo 5 on the Nokia N900, the community can request a closed source component owned by Nokia to be released as open source.

Hundreds of 3rd party applications, mostly free and open source, have already been created or ported to the Harmattan platform.

The Nokia N9 comes with Busybox, bash and wget.[2]

Initial reception

The Nokia N9 was announced at Nokia's Connections event in Singapore, June 2011. The overall reception for the device—MeeGo v1.2 Harmattan UI, pseudo-buttonless design, polycarbonate unibody construction and the NFC capabilities—has been positive, with sources such as Engadget's Vlad Savov chastising Nokia for picking Windows Phone as its primary OS over the well-received MeeGo variant seen in the N9, given the phone's potential and positive reception.

See also

• List of Nokia products
• Comparison of smartphones

External links

• http://swipe.nokia.com/
• http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n9/specifications
• http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devices/Device_specifications/N9/