I am pleased to tell you that Nokia has announced at Singapore the first button-less smartphone in the world - N9. This appears to be a great device with the latest technology on board and wonderful design making it attractive, modern, elegant. You are probably wondering how the phone can be unlocked if there are no front-facing buttons? The answer is to double tap the screen and you can enter in the menu. All menu structure is made around gestures and swipe of fingers providing and intuitive way to access and use features and functions.
The most important technical details are:
-- DISPLAY: 3.9 inches AMOLED capacitive touch 480 x 854 pixels screen, 16M colors, Gorilla glass.
-- CPU: ARM Cortex A8 1 GHz.
-- GPU: PowerVR SGX530.
-- MEMORY: 1 GB RAM.
-- STORAGE: 16/64GB for internal.
-- CAMERA: Primary - 8MP dual-led flash camera (Carl Zeiss optics with auto-focus), video recording up to 720p.
Secondary - VGA, video calls
-- CONNECTIVITY: 3G, HSDPA, HSUPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, micro-USB port, 3.5 mm headphone jack, A-GPS, NFC.
-- SENSORS: Accelerometer, Proximity, Digital Compass.
-- BATTERY: 1450 mAh.
-- OS: MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan, HTML 5.
-- APPLICATIONS: OVI apps, social networking, OVI Maps, Angry Birds Magic, Galaxy on Fire 2, Real Golf 2011.
The screen is a curved one with scratch resistant surface, no air gap and anti-glare polarizer, included in a unibody one-piece case. The innovative laminated display technology are making the application look like are really floating on top of the screen. The case is made of polycarbonate material offering a superior antenna performance.
The user interface was build around three most used features by people - applications, events (including notifications, missed calls, text, calendar and others), open applications for switching between the most used ones providing the best multitasking experience. Important features also delivered with this device are the free maps and the turn-by-turn navigation, the Dolby Digital Plus sound support and NFC techmology for information exchange. I really would like to see this smartphone in my hands soon. The only questions that come in my mind now are the MeeGo operating system as I am not sure about the future of it and also the limited number of applications and why there is no micro-SD card support. I believe that the price will have an important role to play for a smartphone with MeeGo (a recently developed OS) and top hardware specifications in the same time.
