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Nokia Introduces MeeGo-Powered N9 Phone
An anonymous reader writes with news that Nokia has unveiled its first MeeGo-powered smartphone, the N9. "[T]he smartphone doesn't have any buttons on the front, with only the volume controls and a lock button located on the right side of the device. ... The performance of the prototype device felt very snappy, and it looks almost ready for retail. As a MeeGo device, the N9 will be running apps based on the Qt platform." The Washington Post calls it "the platform that could have been," referring to Nokia's decision to make the transition to Windows Phone for future devices. Others are impressed with the device, but see it as either a dead end or just another distraction to Nokia's long-term plans.
. . . is at long last finally here. Alas, it is stillborn, killed in the womb by corporate arrogance and indifference. Now, no one cares, not even me.
The N9 and N950 are not running MeeGo, but the previously in development Harmattan, which is a continuation of the Maemo line. All of the Qt APIs in use by MeeGo as of MeeGo 1.2 are available on the platform, however, and efforts are already underway to ensure that the Community Edition of MeeGo (which is a pure MeeGo platform) is available on the N9.
The N950, sadly, will only be available in limited quantities to commercial/professional developers, with roughly 250 to be handed out to open source developers in the community. Notably, the N950 doesn't have NFC so it can't be used to develop or test NFC applications.
The N9 both is and is not an upgrade to my N900. It's lack of a hardware keyboard, lack of an SD card slot, and capacitive screen are negatives, while the faster and slightly revised omap3630 processor and 1GB of RAM are definite upsides. Additionally, most major European countries plus the US are likely going to be delayed (hopefully just delayed) for the N9 release as Nokia seems to be prioritizing them for WP7.
I will probably get one, as a minor upgrade. Hopefully the price will be reasonable.
My hope is Symbian for dumbphones, WP7 for most smartphones and Maemo/Meego for the highend linux touchscreen computer phones. That allows Nokia to just continue support at the low end, not have to worry about the software side of the larger smartphone market and to be able to focus on pushing highend devices with their own platform that should appeal to power users.
Some investor with vision, should grab the whole team, and set up a new company to build MeeGo phone, a real convergent mobile device. That way, you won't have the Nokia baggage, you don't have to fight internal politics of a giant corp, you get the excitement and energy of a new start up working on something cool, and best of all, you rid yourselves off that Elop.
Why couldn't they have released this phone with windows on it?
They wanted it to be good.
And yeah, I know Microsoft's reputation managers will mod this to oblivion, but it's true. Once you get past the flashy tiles, WP7 doesn't do anything particularly interesting, and is inconsistent/crappy about a whole bunch of things, like syncing, SD Cards, email, etc, etc.
Try one - you'll quickly understand why the few people who bought them ended up disappointed.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."