November 13th, 2011 
Jay 
Nokia was once a great player in the mobile market. It’s no secret that Nokia phones have been almost unanimously destroyed in tech blog reviews world wide for years now. Despite this fact, Nokia still has its fair share of loyal fans. And for those fans, there is some good news. After playing around with it for a day, Your Mobile Site has concluded that the Nokia N9 is actually a pretty damn good phone.
Click here to view the Nokia N9’s current price!
Hardware Specifications
The Nokia N9 has a 3.9” capacitive multi touch screen display. The display’s resolution is 854 x 480 pixels and is built with amoled technology. The 8 megapixel camera can record video at 1280 x 720 pixels.
The single core processor runs at 1GHz and the N9 has 1GB of working memory. The storage capacity is 16GB. The lithium ion battery has a capacity of 1450mAH. The standby time is officially listed as 450 hours.
The Nokia N9 comes in black and weighs in at 135 gram. Its dimensions are 61mm x 116mm x 12mm.
Design
The Nokia N9 has a slightly curved display at a 854 x 480 pixel resolution. It is an amoled screen. Nokia calls this display the Clear Black Display for a very good reason. The display really is capable of making pixels look like true black. The reason for this is that amoled technology does not make use of any backlighting hardware. Pixels are black when they are simply turned off. Like the phone itself, it really is black!
Display
The colors of the display are bright and even clearly readable when the daylight shines right on the display. The slight curve in the display also makes that it is very easy and intuitive to use. What is remarkable about the N9 is that the front facing camera is hidden behind it. Normally, phones have the camera placed above the display. But Nokia doesn’t let any space go to waste. They simply put the front cam behind the display!
Operating System
The Nokia N9 runs on the lesser known operating system known as MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan. This should be taken with a grain of salt, because the actual operating system isn’t MeeGo. Instead, it’s Maemo 6… the successor to Maemo 5 which ran on the N900. Nokia is riding the reputation of MeeGo, because it’s got a better rep than Maemo does.
Multitasking & User Interface
Up until this point, Nokia has consistently released new phones with too little working memory. However, the N9 is the first to have a decent amount of it. The 1GB of RAM in the N9 plays a very noticeable role in the responsiveness of the user interface. Multi tasking is one hell of a lot more easy on the N9 than it was on any of Nokia phones that have been released in recent years.
The multiple touch screen interface does a good job at reading multiple touches at the same time. All it takes is a swipe. It’s really very easy to navigate your way through the software on your N9.
Hardware
The Nokia N9 also supports micro usb, but unfortunately it doesn’t support micro sd cards. Granted, this is a flaw. But it can be overcome if you are willing to settle for the N9’s native 16GB of internal storage. The N9’s camera can handle 8 megapixel. No complaints here. It also supports GPS, 3G, WiFi and… NFC!
Applications
The N9 comes with a wide variety of applications installed. There are several games preinstalled such as Angry Birds. But you will also be able to Facebook, Twitter and Skype with your N9 straight out of the box. If all preinstalled applications are not enough for you, then you can visit the Nokia Store and get much more.
The Nokia Store works much better than it previously did with Nokia phones that ran Symbian. There aren’t many apps in at the moment. But that’s not a problem that passing time won’t fix.
Typing Text
Writing text on the Nokia N9 is easy as pie. The clear black display really helps a lot. The virtual keyboard can be displayed in either landscape or portrait mode, whichever you prefer. For every keystroke you make, the N9 gives off a subtle but noticeable vibration. This instantly makes it clear to you that you’ve successfully typed a letter. You don’t need to switch your eyes from text to keyboard all the time.
The virtual keyboard will also automatically suggest words for you. This can help you type text even faster. However, sometimes the auto suggest feature gets it wrong. It’s not realistic to expect software to predict what you want to type 100% of the time, so we can live with it.
Battery Life
The N9’s battery life does not disappoint. You can easily use it intensively for a whole day without having to recharge it. You can even squeeze out a few more hours if you’d like. However, the battery would not survive the end of the second day when used constantly. It’s best to hook your N9 up to the recharger at the end of each day. That way, you’ll definitely be able to enjoy it all throughout the day.
If you don’t use your N9 intensively and let it sit on standby most of the time, the battery life would probably span multiple days. We can’t say for sure, because we’ve only had one day with it ourselves.
Camera
The Nokia N9’s 8 megapixel camera makes use of a Carl Zeiss lens. For anybody that knows the basics about camera lenses, the name Carl Zeiss will sound like music to your ears. Carl Zeiss is always good news and the N9’s camera can shoot some pretty high quality pictures. The N9 can record video at 720p at 30fps. That’s not bad at all.
Needless to say, the photos that this camera takes are also of very high quality. The N9’s camera’s quality is among the best. It comes close to being able to replace your digital camera. Not quite, but still very impressive!
Surfing the Web
The integrated browser that comes with the Nokia N9, is very user friendly. It doesn’t have a whole lot of settings. But then again, it doesn’t really have to. It’s easy to navigate your way through the web. Web pages are displayed clearly.
One remarkable thing about the N9, is that it scores higher in HTML5 tests than any other phone we have ever seen. HTML5 is the future of the web. HTML5 will make it possible for web applications to compete with desktop applications. Manufacturers worldwide are hopping on the bandwagon and adding HTML5 support to their mobile browsers.
It’s a true story of David and Goliath, with Nokia blowing all other phones from Samsung, Google and Microsoft out of the water when it comes to HTML5 support.
There aren’t that many HTML5 websites out on the web at the moment. But this is sure to change soon, considering the fact that HTML5 has turned out to be very promising. Promising enough that Microsoft has chosen to stop development on Silverlight and Adobe has chosen to stop development on Flash.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is safe to say that the Nokia N9 is the best Nokia phone that we have ever laid eyes upon. And we have certainly enjoyed laying eyes upon its display, because it is one of the best out there. It easily rivals the Samsung Galaxy SII’s and the HTC Sensation’s display.
It’s an eternal shame that Nokia has let its reputation slide as much as it has. But with the Nokia N9, Nokia is making a comeback with a capital C!
The N9’s performance is right up there with other flagship phones such as the above mentioned S II and Sensation. What’s more impressive is that it does this with lesser hardware. The S II and Sensation both have dual core processors clocked at 1.2GHz, whereas the N9 has a single core processor which is clocked at 1GHz.
Like with all flagship phones, the N9 has a certain price tag. You can buy the Nokia N9 for around $650 at the moment. The price may be a tad bit high, but hey… you get what you pay for! If you are a true smartphone aficionado with a soft spot for the Nokia brand and everything it represents, then you simply can’t go wrong with the Nokia N9!
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