Bottom line: Nokia ends decline with new 'pure touch' N9?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 22 June 2011 13:22

Your IT - Mobility

Nokia has finally (finally!) released a classy, modern-era, MeeGo-powered smartphone in answer to all of its iCompetitors, including new partner Microsoft, with a claim to having the purest touch experience of them all.

Now that Nokia's N9 has been publicly preview launched at last, my mind is cast back to 2007 and what was the ground breaking Nokia N95.

It was Nokia's most advanced phone at the time, but amazing though it was in '07, it has been recycled endlessly ever since with newer, thinner form factors and increasingly better touch screens. 

Nokia's chosen OS, Symbian S60, was designed for a world of physical buttons, and needed its touch interface to be bolted onto ageing code. It took several generations and UI improvements right up until last year's N8 to still not be as good as the iPhone's iOS UI, with Nokia's 2007-era experience needing not upgrading with a touch layer, but complete replacement.

The other phone that set a benchmark in 2007 was the iPhone, with that same basic yet highly advanced interface still powering developer betas of iOS 5.0.

Steve Jobs said Apple was 5 years ahead of the market at the time, and although Google, Palm and Microsoft have caught up to varying degrees, the market leader in 2007 was clearly Nokia.

In 2011, five years after the original iPhone, Nokia's N9 has arrived at last.

It has all the right specs, including a proper new OS and smooth multi-touch goodness, a unique new polycarbonate-based unibody that dramatically enhances reception and antenna performance, while also being the same colour right through the case, making scratches or scuffs much less noticeable than on competing smartphones.

There's an NFC chip that is surprisingly not for mobile payments but for effortless synching between Nokia's accessories and the N9, what genuinely looks like an excellent multitasking system, an 8 MP Carl Zeiss camera, 720P HD recording, 3.5mm-plug based video out, Dolby-enhanced audio and a capacity 16GB with a 64GB model option.

A 'pentaband' chip inside means compatibility with all the major 3G frequencies, including the all-important 850MHz for Telstra, 900MHz for Optus and Vodafone, and naturally the 2100MHz standard upon which Telstra's competitors rely for most 3G services in metro areas.

There's also what is claimed as the first front button-free 'pure touch' interface that does away with the need for home buttons, back buttons, menu buttons or search buttons, with the screen itself the ultimate button.

Yes, there are buttons on this so-called button-free design: three buttons on the right hand side of the phone. These are volume up and down buttons, and an unlock button, but the rest of the front facing interface is all front facing on the 3.9-inch AMOLED and Gorilla Glass protected screen, with slight curves at the edges to make the 'swipe' interface smoother to use.

While there was some minor confusion at first over how to go 'back' to the home screen, or do things without a 'home', 'back' or other buttons, it was all actually very easy to use and effectively instantly get the hang of, and unlike RIM's attempt at redefining the touch interface as it did with the BlackBerry Storm, Nokia's attempt at redefining a touch interface actually works very nicely.

So, what's been left in and out of Nokia's new N9, and what might it mean for Nokia's deal with Microsoft? Please read on to page two!