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Nokia N9 smartphone rumours tip up
FINNISH PHONE MAKER Nokia's N9 smartphone prototype has been spotted in China and it is likely to be the first smartphone to run the outfit's own Meego OS. But it's going face real competition from the upcoming Blackberry Bold and HTC Desire smartphones, so it's going to have to be pretty good to gain much traction.
Unfortunately no specifications for the Nokia N9 have been leaked, only some photos of the device to tease us at the Chinese language site Baidu.
Nokia looks like it is going to put a slide-out Qwerty keyboard on the N9 and the first impression of it is that looks a lot like a miniaturised Macbook.
Overall, the device looks like it's going to be rather large, with a screen size comparable to the Samsung Galaxy S.
The Meego OS is likely to be key to the success or failure of the N9 and Nokia has all but pinned its hopes on the OS for the high end market. Not much has been seen of the user interface, and Nokia is going to have to work hard to attract users who have grown accustomed to smartphones running Android or IOS4.
Android devices in particular have been flying off the shelves with the OS experiencing an astonishing growth of 561 per cent year-on-year. Shipments of devices running the Google OS are expected to top 55 million this year.
Still, Nokia has an established user base that will welcome its devices. Users at the Nokia Blog seem particularly eager to get their hands on this device, based upon its looks alone.
"A very nice device indeed. Let's hope that the OS will have the same value," wrote one user.
"This is a piece of beauty. Ready to see some MeeGo mobile OS live," noted another.
Reports suggest that the N9 could hit the shelves before the end of the year. Considering that Nokia's upcoming N8 has been pushed back to October, this seems rather odd, as it would mean that Nokia will essentially be competing with itself.
However, the N8 will run the Symbian OS while the N9 will run Meego, so Nokia might be able to differentiate the two devices based on their operating systems alone.
Nokia's N8 and N9 smartphones are going to have to face some stiff competition this year, though.
New Blackberry and HTC handsets are expected to hit the market as early as October, as manufacturers scramble to release fresh devices well ahead of the Christmas shopping season.
The Blackberry Bold R020 will be the successor to the Research in Motion (RIM) current business favourite, the Blackberry Bold 9700. Unsurprisingly, the phone will retain the conventional Blackberry look and feature a 2.4-inch LCD screen with 480x360 resolution.
Key upgrades will include the Blackberry 6 OS, 512MB of RAM and a beefed up 5-megapixel camera, according to a leaked presentation.
The Blackberry R020 aims to pick up where the Bold 9700 left off and will combine "a perfect balance of speed, power and style", according to RIM.
Meanwhile, the HTC Desire HD and Desire Z have shown up briefly on the retail website mobiles.co.uk, but seem to have been taken down.
The specification list for the Desire HD confirms earlier leaked details, and it includes Android 2.2 Froyo, a 1GHz processor, an 8 megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording capabilities and 4GB of internal memory. It is also expected to have a 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen.
There are no specifications listed for the Desire Z, but the description claims that the handset will come with a vivid 3.7-inch touchscreen display and a slide out full Qwerty keyboard, making it perfect for browsing the web and messaging.
The handset will run Android 2.1 and be powered by a 1GHz processor, according to the retailer.
HTC would not confirm details, saying that it does not comment on rumours and speculation.
However, it does appear that Nokia's N8 and N9 smartphones will have some real competition from RIM and HTC this Autumn and in the runup to Christmas. µ
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"Nokia has been gaining global market share for the last four quarters while RIM and iPhone have been losing market share over the same period. Nokia did this while taking time out to develop MeeGo and Symbian^3, and without having a competitive flagship phone out."
That's not entirely true. It is "if" you include every phone being sold, but who gives a rats behind about a £5 phone sold in India or Africa on a PAYG contract. In the smartphone arena, Nokia has been murdered...and every quarter continues to get worse.
"What makes the competition better than Symbian^3 and MeeGo?"
They have developers producing app's for them and driving an ecosystem. Symbian3 is a corpse which should of been burried years ago. And Meego is just a waste of time when other Linux derivatives are available, have more backing, and support in the market.
"Maemo/MeeGo, Symbian and Winmobile are the only global mobile operating systems that do REAL MULTITTASKING."
Sorry, WinMo7 (I won't use the whatever it's called this week name) doesn't multitask. Your forgetting that big ass bear in the room called Android.
"Symbian has had REAL video calling over 3G, the best battery life, Video recording, Video Editing on device, etc for years."
Who the hell cares? It's a phone! I don't want to edit anything on it, take a video or a picture yes. Edit, stuff that I'll wait till I get back to the PC to do that. And video calling is nothing but a marketting joke like 3D tv.
"Nokia's FREE GPS Navigation works in offline mode so it doesn't use up your mobile data unlike Google Maps navigation."
True, but that's what an dev markets for. To sell you things Nokia don't have, and can't develop as they haven't the developer base to make any.
"Maemo/MeeGo is the only mobile operating system that can do Skype and Gtalk native video and voice calls over 3G and wifi."
Why want's to use video?! I don't even want to talk to someone let alone see them. Thats the whole point of smartphones, you can use text to tell them to bugger off and not speak or see their ugly mugs!
"So really, What makes the competition better than Symbian and Meego???"
The current situation with the smartphone market is very much like the PC market was at the end of the 1980's. Lot's of little time OS's and a couple of big boy's. While some of these OS's are technically better (WebOS for example) they are to small a market share to bother about for developers wanting to make some money.
Having a lovely shiny OS is all well and good, but without anyone developing for it, it's stale and won't support the broad range of uses users want from a smartphone these days.
As it currently stands. Apple is going what it always does, dig itself a hole to jump in and whine from. Android is fast becoming the Windows of smartphones with the manufacturers and dev support it has. And Nokia is fumbling around like IBM did with Meego being nothing more than this times around OS/2. WebOS is in the Amiga kind of place, and Symbian is urgh DOS (yes two MS products in here but for market and position reasons, it'll kick and squeel for many more years, but eventually curl up and die) :P
Yeah sure, China makes the phone first and than Nokia just copies it in R&D@Finland.
/sarcasm
Apple's marketing dept. make iOS better than Symbian and Meego. The man on the street doesn't give a shit about the technical features of a phone unless it's spelled out for them, they're not going to explore to find out what the phone can do.
Nokia has been gaining global market share for the last four quarters while RIM and iPhone have been losing market share over the same period. Nokia did this while taking time out to develop MeeGo and Symbian^3, and without having a competitive flagship phone out.
What makes the competition better than Symbian^3 and MeeGo?
Maemo/MeeGo, Symbian and Winmobile are the only global mobile operating systems that do REAL MULTITTASKING. Symbian has had REAL video calling over 3G, the best battery life, Video recording, Video Editing on device, etc for years. Nokia's FREE GPS Navigation works in offline mode so it doesn't use up your mobile data unlike Google Maps navigation.
Maemo/MeeGo is the only mobile operating system that can do Skype and Gtalk native video and voice calls over 3G and wifi.
So really, What makes the competition better than Symbian and Meego???
Nokia has been gaining global market share for the last four quarters while RIM and iPhone have been losing market share over the same period. Nokia did this while taking time out to develop MeeGo and Symbian^3, and without having a competitive flagship phone out.
What makes the competition better than Symbian^3 and MeeGo?
Maemo/MeeGo, Symbian and Winmobile are the only global mobile operating systems that do REAL MULTITTASKING. Symbian has had REAL video calling over 3G, the best battery life, Video recording, Video Editing on device, etc for years. Nokia's FREE GPS Navigation works in offline mode so it doesn't use up your mobile data unlike Google Maps navigation.
Maemo/MeeGo is the only mobile operating system that can do Skype and Gtalk native video and voice calls over 3G and wifi.
So really, What makes the competition better than Symbian and Meego???
The amount of time it has taken for N8 to be released after announcement, it seems N9 will only due before christmas next year. Seems like nokia has also adopted Apple's annual cycle of phone releases.
Hopefully they got their act together, cause they haven't released anything good in 3 years, N97 was an utter failure, maybe not financially but as far as their reputation it was.
First of all, I like their naming system change and the whole "Nokia tree" but Frankly, it does not look like it they've got it together, it's delays, delays, delays, Symbian^3 does not look impressive and smooth, functionally it may be more powerful than iOS and Android but Nokia fails in the UI department, N8 runs on an ancient hardware... and Apple and Android are very quickly catching up in functionality with Symbian.
Nothing is known about MeeGo, and there are no applications, nothing enticing, no eco-system. How will Nokia make the developers interested in it? And with Android and iOS around and going full speed, how will slow Nokia catch up to them?
N9 is rumored to be running on an ARM Cortex A8 1GHz CPU, but in a Nokia fashion the N9 will most likely get delayed into 2011, while other manufacturers will be coming out with Dual core A9s and dual core 1.5GHz snapdragons, not to mention Android 3.0
Nokia will have a VERY hard time fighting Google and Apple, they are too slow and unorganized.