Nokia N9: A savior or delusion

So, Nokia finally announced its MeeGo-powered N9 and all of a sudden we're getting all the more excited about the phone, the OS and the company's future as a whole. After today's announcement, we don't doubt that many have already gotten their hopes high for the Nokia N9. While this might be justified indeed, we wouldn't rush it just yet. There are still too many questions that need to be answered, before we know if the Nokia N9 will be ready to serve its purpose as a contemporary feature-packed high-end smartphone (that's what we want, right?), or simply turns out to be a sweet delusion with its attractive unibody construction and competitive spec sheet, but sub-par user experience.
All-touchscreen concept

It goes without saying that what has helped build most of the interest in the handset is its concept of having absolutely no keys to clutter the front. It's just you and that 3.9” AMOLED touchscreen. This, of course, makes the handset look somewhat innovative and intriguing, and we're totally in for it. Whether navigation will be comfortable though is another story. It depends on how it'll be implemented with the interface of the MeeGo OS. From the available demos so far (not much info), we can only say that it looks mostly straightforward. Whether this will be the case with the finalized product still remains to be seen.

The screen plays a vital role when it comes to the positioning of the device on the market. In that aspect, the Nokia N9 seems well-prepared to us with its 3.9” display, which is pretty close to what some of you recently quoted as their most desirable screen size. We also find 3.9 inches to be a good balance between size and comfort. Nokia has been opting for AMOLED tech in its high-end smartphones ever since the N8, and we wouldn't blame it for the most part. AMOLED screens are indeed pretty impressive with their popping colors and high contrast levels, so the Nokia N9 is surely being competitive by counting on this particular screen technology.

One thing we should all be thankful to MeeGo for is that it finally brought Nokia out of the 360x640 world. The N9 will sport a contemporary resolution of 480x854 pixels, but it should be noted that for this screen res to stay relevant (at least in the high-end world), the handset should be released right about... now. Or at least very soon, because qHD phones are already popping up here and there.

We wouldn't waste time discussing the device's build and execution. Nokia has showed us many times that it is capable of crafting beautiful and unique-looking handsets, and as it seems it won't disappoint us with the N9. It's not the hardware that we're uneasy about though, it's the software.