Nokia N9

Nokia N9 hardware is “near perfect” but MeeGo isn’t ready for primetime

Oct. 5, 2010 (9:30 am) By: John Brownlee

Rewind about five years ago, and Nokia was to the cell phone world then what Apple is now. Their cellphones were a fusion between excellent hardware design and the most intuitive mobile phone operating system out there. Somewhere along the line, though, Nokia became complacent in the superiority of its software… even as their hardware designers continued to push boundaries.

This disconnect between Nokia’s hardware and software designers is largely what is responsible for the Finnish cell phone giant’s fade from prominence… a downward spiral that looks ready to continue abreast with the upcoming N9 smartphone.

In an early preview of the N9 by Russian journalist Eldar Murtazin (who has leaked early Nokia prototypes in the past), Mutazin describes the hardware of the N9 as “near perfect. When speaking about the N9’s MeeGo operating system, though, Murtazin is decidedly less kind, describing it as “not so good” and a “work in progress.”

Now, the N9 isn’t due out until 2011, so there’s still a lot of time for Nokia to polish MeeGo… but there’s also a lot of time for other companies to advance smartphone hardware design so that the “near perfect” N9 looks behind-the-times. Personally, though, I hope Nokia can finally get its act together with the N9 and deliver a smartphone that is worthy of the effortless fusion of hardware and software for which Nokia, and not Apple, was once so well known.