There was a time when Nokia was the dominating force in cell phone technology. Back in the early days of cell phones, right about the time they started becoming more affordable, anyone who had a phone most likely had a Nokia. I remember when all my friends had the Nokia 5190. In my opinion, it was the first phone specifically marketed to the younger generation. It had text messaging, a phone book and a calendar. That’s all we needed at that age, but the one biggest draw this phone had was interchangeable faceplates that you could swap out to instantly change the color of your phone!

But, nothing lasts forever.

Somewhere down the line, some 7 years ago from today, Nokia seemed to drop the ball. I can’t say for sure if it was anything they did, but what is certain was that as more and more people were able to afford the dropping costs of cell phones, many new contenders began to arrive on the scene. I remember after getting rid of my Nokia 7210 in exchange for the Motorola Razr, I never looked back. Personally, the reason I stuck with Nokia for so long was because I hate flip phones and any device that had moving parts like a slide-out keyboard, but I did like the evolving technology that integrated music, videos and Internet with phones.

For some reason Nokia appeared to only be making business-type phones geared for professionals—not something that I was at the time. I stopped “shopping” phone models in 2007 when the iPhone came out. I was successfully brainwashed!

Nokia N9

In the never-ending battle between iOS and Android, one would think the worst move you could make was to drop another fighter in the ring, but Nokia is coming baby. With them comes their own OS called, MeeGo. It’s a Linux-based operating system that was launched back in May of 2010 as a mobile-only OS and currently used on tablet PCs, in-car stereo receivers and hand-held devices.

The N9 is a phone that does away with ALL buttons. According to Nokia’s website, it’s all touchcreen. I have to say, I’m liking this already. Let’s look at some specs:

Networks: Pentaband WCDMA 850, 900, 1900, 1700, 2100, Quad band GSM/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900

Speed: HSDPA Cat10: 14.4Mbps, HSUPA: Cat6 5.76Mbps

Display: 3.9” WVGA (854×480) AMOLED display with curved Gorilla glass, no air gap, anti-glare polarizer

OS: MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan

Memory: 1024MB RAM, 16GB/64GB storage

Camera: 8Mpix auto-focus Carl Zeiss, wide-angle lens, 2x LED flash, Video capturing MPEG-4 SP 720p @ 30fps, 2nd camera for video calls

Size / Weight: 116.45 mm x 61.2 mm x 7.6–12.1 mm (L x W x T) / 76 cm3/ 135 g

Connectivity: BT 2.1, GPS, A-GPS, WLAN 802.11abgn, NFC, 3.5mm AV connector, micro USB connector, USB charging

Processor: ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP3630 1 Ghz, PowerVR SGX530

Audio: MP3 player, Audio jack: 3.5mm, Supported codecs: mp3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, FLAC.

Battery: 1450 mAh

Operating Times
Talk time: (GSM/WCDMA) up to 11 h / up to 7 hours
Standby time: Up to 450 hours (WCDMA), up to 380 hours (GSM)
Video playback (720P): up to 4.5 hours
Music playback: up to 50 hours

Of course, these specs are not guaranteed and can change whenever this device comes out, but I can be pretty sure that this is looking like a serious contender for my next phone purchase. That is unless the next iPhone doesn’t blow it away! Anyway, let’s watch the video:

My two cents

There’s not much to go on as of yet, so I won’t be making any predictions about how great this device is, but I can promise you that I’ll be following it as more develops. My two concerns at this time is how well Nokia can (or will) compete with the size of Apple’s App Store and the Android Market and when this phone might be available in the U.S. One thing is for sure, since leaving Nokia as a customer over 5 years ago, it would be very refreshing if they could win me back and from what I’ve seen so far, it’s looking good.