Nokia N9: The Beauty with the brain, the Meego walkthrough
The swipistic User Interface
While the Nokia N9 seems to have smitten you by its look alone, this is not even half the thing that this engineering magic marvel holds for you. A new language of interaction, a new definition of beauty, an entirely new UI that stands out of the crowd. Yes! we are talking about the first All Touch OS that doesn’t want buttons to live any more. Isn’t this a little strange that the same Nokia, who was first a bit hesitating about Touch screens when iPhone got launched and now it comes back an OS that is entirely based on touch alone..
Thing is, why you need buttons, when the Menu is just one swipe away and task manager, yeah that too takes just a swipe to side. Oh! wait, volumes, yeah! you can always increase or decrease volume by taping on top area, system volume, ringing volume is just a tap away.
The similar all Touch UI concept later got taken by Android ICS as well and others expected to fall in line sooner or later, but isn’t all this a little scary. I mean an all touch screen phone, what would you do if it hangs, what if you get trapped into some dead lock where any of the online app (full screen) not responding and you can not go anywhere else? Think about it… the All Touch UI experience can badly go wrong, if.. if wrongly implemented.
But let me tell you all, this should be praised with full throats that despite of all fears and the fact that one can hang any gadget of the world if want to do so, but it never happened with me that Nokia N9 stuck on me in some deadlock and it is no lucky charm, but this is how polished work MeeGo on Nokia N9 is.
All those people who blamed Nokia naïve about the animations, should really really check it out. In the above screenshot, I am swiping a running video to bring the app grid up. Interestingly the video will keep on running till you swipe it out and once out then it goes to pause. Similar with Camera UI and I demonstrated that in video demo as well.
I know that you might have been bored to death by hearing the words that
“This swipe thing is addictive and after using it, I end up swiping on every device.”
I was prepared to say something else, but hey News Flash!!! I have no other words to say.. this thing is really addictive. The magic spell is already on me that’s why I am feeling utterly frustrated on my SGS, when swiping down doesn’t closes an app or if I needed to push some physical button to switch to another app. Why one should look at the device then find some button or some menu then sub menu to close an app? Why why why? You just can’t find any better words but “very Intuitive” and “ADDICTIVE”.
Just tell me…
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Who wants to bother about finding some button to press and hold for switching to other application?
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Who wants to bother about that which application will continue running if he presses a back button or switches to other?
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Who wants to look at mobile and find the close button for closing a process?
Answer is… NO ONE.. we all are here with touch phones so that we can running away from those buttons, those taps and those tedious navigations, making the buttons minimum alone wont do the deal.. it’s a continuous evolution and swipe the next ladder, admit it.
A short (?) video demo of Nokia N9
Let’s start with a rough walkthrough video demo of Nokia N9 …Though making a video of something as beautiful as Nokia N9 should be classified as a job for professional hands only, but this was all what I tried.
You can see the difference from even the moment, you take the device in hands and then switch it on. Notice that how Black remains black even when device switches on, that is the beauty of Clear Black Screen. Then the glorious animations ending with a progress animation in shape of Anna like icon. This all feels like some fresh air.
Once the animations are over, then you land up on a screen full of shiny and colorful icons. “Its so iPhone-ish”, you will say, even I said so. No folder support, no conventional Symbian\Maemo\Android\BB OS like home screen or even widget concept.
It wasn’t my Maemo that I fell in love with from the first sight on Nokia N900, I should have felt disappointed a bit but it wasn’t the case, thanks to the vibrant colored Anna shape icons on the board and the clear black background making the impression so bold.
Nitish Kumar's Blog 
one question, how did you change the clock background to black?
Have always been trying to find out, because i read the review on theverge and they managed to changed even the calendar to a black background..
Clock background is white where you set alarm while its black where you set the system time.
I’m halfway through page 5, and… man I was so disappointed with “Ra.One”. It has NOTHING to do with this review; that comment will come later. 😀
Brother from where did you get this in India (I guess you are from India)…is there anyway I can get this device from anywhere in India…desperately need one…please tell
I got it from Nokia Connects as a review unit. No official words on Indian availability as of now.
Ok…if you had to guess that “will it come” ? what would you say ?
Maybe some time after Nokia Lumia phones ?
Well, you can always import 🙂 For example, it’s available in my country for around 600 Euros. You can send someone the money for it and have them buy it and sent to you.
You won’t get warranty in India if you import.
Better check warranty terms in nokia website. (Nokia replied)
True, but if something happens you can always send it to Nokia Care from the country you’ve imported it from, and get it fixed there. Right?
It’ll not come to India, but you can find them on eBay.in
hey thanks bro…didn’t expect that…will wait for it to drop a bit in terms of price
Less chances for an Indian launch as of now, but who knows. Nokia N900 came to India after 8 months
ya actually that thought is not allowing me to buy any other device…still using 5800
Wow .N900 now ready for India. Of course it shloud be as silence is broken, Meego would not be commercially launched for N900. So Nokia don’t want to let its smartphone sales figures come down & since latest info on N900 will not help sales figures to move up in Europe & elsewhere, the better option is to follow the imprints of Apple I.e. Launch soon going to be obselete products in Indian Market.Thank you Nokia. This time luckily I wasn’t expecting anything else.
you nailed it Nitish .. greatest phone ever made .. period .. and your review does give N9 a justice that it need .. no other phone should have a review of this length and attention to detail except N9 😀 ..
this phone has saved me from all dreadful devotion given to all the dreadful ecosystem .. you won’t believe how much I’ve spent buying apps from apple appstore without even executing half of it .. and come to think of it, I did that because I can’t never find satisfaction or sense of completeness with my last phone in its original form ..
but N9 was different .. it has everything that I ever need in a timeless beautiful form, and already I felt a sense of completeness in one aspect of my life .. I think this is the phone that I’m going to kept forever while I’m alive even if it is can’t no longer be used (I always sold my old phone/trade in when buying new phone).. seriously, I am that much of fan ..
Nitish Kumar there some inconsistency in your review.
1. .deb files you can install it as simple as enabled 3rd party installation then run file manager and run it directly no need terminal
2. soft reset the cirulating arrow doesnt mean brick it means its erasing or in progress. in the progress even u turn on and off it will still process u just need wait until it reboot itself means completed
or its that your fren
3. Account Authentication Broken: fixed in PR 1.1
1. Agree that the same can be done with File Manager itself but I was not sure that if it picks supporting files as well. Didn’t happened in case of VLC with me.
2. I waited more than 20 mins but nothing happened and then review unit was to go back, so couldn’t check.
3. My unit had PR1.1 only as I got the update before the review and it actually got broken after the update only.
What a review!! Thank you so much!! 😀
Greetings from Portugal. 😀
hi nithish… Good job… My doubt is if i buy this n9 from singapore .. Whether i will get software update in india or not through air or not.. Pls mail me
Your “issue” number 3 is not an issue at all.
This is N9 behaviour – and it is not “bricked” as you said.
You just have to be patient and wait 10-15 minutes.
Ok.! I couldn’t wait more than 30 mins as DHL guy arrived on door to pick it up 😦
I could barely make it through the first page of this review, as the English is absolutely terrible. This trend continues through the rest of your site as well. I would recommend doing some major editing.
will try mate
The noise-cancellation microphone is next to the camera flash – a 0.5mm hole. The in-device instructions indicate you shouldn’t cover this location during a call if you enable noise-cancellation.
Maybe I missed it but can you :pause/play/forward/back the music player on the included earphones button? Is there a volume control too?
As I wrote, the one shipped with it is a minimal one with one button only.
Regards Nitish Kumar @nkumar_
The Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone smartphone is a power packed product with many amazing features like an 8 MP Camera, Microsoft Windows 7.5 OS, a 1.4 GHz processor with 512 MB RAM, People Hub, XBOX gaming, among other things. But one feature that takes the cake here is Nokia Drive. Nokia Drive is a GPS app with a voice guided turn-by-turn navigation system which helps you when you are out travelling. And the best bit about it is that it is completely free!
Nokia Drive also saves your search history so that the user can easily get traffic updates to their regular commutes. This also means you can quite easily select any of your previous destinations. The fact that Nokia Drive has a database of over 100 countries and that it can be used offline as well, is something that will really click with the viewers.
The only thing I have not found in any review is a perspective or voice dialing.
Voice quality in most of Nokia phones is always top notch, something that we take for granted, so missed to mention again.
Regards Nitish Kumar @nkumar_
What I meant was regarding voice control…
What was your impression on Battert Life?
Battery life is OK. Much better over Nokia N900 but not better over Nokia E6/E7/N8
Regards Nitish Kumar @nkumar_
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