There’s also 16GB of internal storage, along with a microSD card slot. The battery is user-accessible, for speedy switch-overs, and there’s some clever intelligence which can recognize which back-cover you clip back on.

Thanks to that, the Jolla can automatically change the color-scheme – as well as fonts, ringtones, profiles, and more – of its interface to match the color of its casing; a little gimmicky, perhaps, but it’s likely to go down well with those who remember Nokia’s XpressOn covers from the pre-smartphone days. Jolla is calling the system “the Other Half” and will offer multiple different casing finishes.

Any new platform needs apps, and Jolla is putting out the call for developers to jump on board its Sailfish OS. However, the Jolla will also run Android apps, which should open the door to a greater number of titles out of the gate. They’re likely to need some tweaking, however, to suit the gesture-based platform.

Jolla isn’t the only company to take elements of MeeGo and reuse them of late. Nokia, for instance, borrowed elements of the UI and the swiping-gesture system for its Asha Platform, debuting on the Asha 501; although not as flexible or powerful as the MeeGo-powered N9, the 501 does have the advantage of being significantly cheaper.

Jolla’s first phone will arrive by the end of the year, the company says, assuming all goes to plan. It’ll be priced at €399 ($513) SIM-free and unlocked.

*Note: today’s announcement did not specifically note that the Motorola deal with Google had anything to do with Samsung’s decision to move forward with Tizen – the operating system born of yester-year’s OS Meego. It’s an important point to make that such a suggestion would not be a fantastically intelligent thing for Samsung to say when Google is still so important to their business with Android. What has been said specifically is a bit of an analysis piece on the situation by Byun Han Joon from KB Investment & Securities in Seoul.

“The Tizen was born as Samsung hoped to lighten its growing dependence on Google on concerns that its top position in the smartphone market may weaken following the Google- Motorola tie-up.” – Byun Han Joon

A report from earlier this week suggested that it wouldn’t just be Korea that’s seeing Tizen devices. The report had both DoCoMo of Japan, Vodafone in Europe, and France Telecom all onboard for a Tizen device (or perhapse more than one Tizen device) for the year 2013. Samsung’s report this week comes in the form of a confirmation that Intel-backed Tizen will, indeed, move forward from here.

“We plan to release new, competitive Tizen devices within this year and will keep expanding the lineup depending on market conditions.” – Samsung

Will you be looking to pick up a Tizen device within the next 12 months? Have a peek at all recent stories on Tizen in the timeline below to see more about this next-generation operating system for Samsung!

[via Bloomberg]

If you’ll take a look back at our original Nokia N9 review from several months ago, you’ll find that Chris Davies’ assessment of the device (“Seldom are we so reluctant to part with a review unit”) was more than just a little leaning towards the positive side. Because the software Nokia’s former MeeGo team were working on was – and in some cases, still is – so lovely and not like anything else out there at the moment, we’ve got to pause and wonder what might have been had it taken off. One of the items of big interest here is the Senna tablet.

This tablet was obviously meant to replicate the better points of the N9 with design cues galore, rounded corners and vast, simple movements in hardware all around. You’ve got the ability to shoot 1080p video on the back, a ST-Ericsson’s NovaThor U8500-based platform on its innards, and a public version of MeeGo right up front. The user interface is said to have been essentially the same as the N9, just blown up a bit.

The account also makes it clear that the Senna tablet was presented to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop back in 2010 where it was praised by him initially. Once the MeeGo strategy was stopped entirely, so went the tablet as well. Another of the bigger reveals here from Taskumuo is the existence of Nokia model RM-716. This device was essentially the Nokia N9 made for Verizon – but without 4G LTE, it was also doomed to fail before it got off the ground.

As we all know, Nokia went with Microsoft’s loving embrace less than a year ago, bringing forth a collection of Windows Phone devices here and there ever since. The newest range of Windows Phone 8 devices from Nokia have generated quite a bit of interest as far as we’ve seen, and we’re more than a bit pumped up about their delivery here in the Autumn of 2012. In this season we’ll likely see big movements in Nokia’s market share up or down – it’s all up to Windows Phone 8 and its ties with Windows 8 – and Microsoft backing the colorful manufacturer up, of course.

Jolla is receiving €200 million in funding to develop and release a MeeGo-based mobile operating system codenamed “Sailfish.” The funding will come from a number of different partners in Jolla’s newly-established ecosystem alliance.

Jolla confirmed its upcoming MeeGo OS will be ready for licensing by device manufacturers and service providers by spring 2013. However, the company is planning to put a lot of its focus on the Chinese market. It will have its data center facility located in Hong Kong, where it will store Jolla’s data and provide cloud services, and they plan on conducting most of their research and development in Hong Kong as well.

The upcoming MeeGo OS will be completely open-source, and Jolla says that the new OS will be immune to constant patent wars that are saturating the mobile market. Jolla’s head Jussi Hurmola says that the patent lawsuits between Samsung and Apple are actually benefiting the company, since they’re based on an independent operating system and are said to be implementing a completely new UI.

[via ZDNet]

The company plans to do so via an application compatibility layer. That will allow apps to run without any issues on MeeGo, with OpenMobile, the company behind the ACL, saying that there’s no performance loss. Apps should also behave correctly as the software makes use of the Android runtime environment and Dalvik virtual machine, allowing for full compatibility.

Jolla also revealed that its first smartphone will come with a screen size of 3.5-inches, an interesting move given the shift in the market towards larger screens on smartphones. Even the upcoming iPhone is rumored to have a larger screen size, coming in at 4-inches compared to the 3.5-inch size used on previous iPhones. Bigger isn’t always better, however, and plenty of consumers are happy with the 3.5-inch form factor: Jolla could be looking to take advantage of that, and there’s nothing stopping the company releasing multiple devices with different sizes.

Jolla is comprised of ex-Nokia employees looking to leverage the MeeGo operating system, with the company formed at the beginning of July. Nokia only managed to get one MeeGo phone out of the door, the Nokia N9, before switching over to Windows Phone for the Lumia 800 and 900. Jolla has faith in the MeeGo operating system, believing that development “deserves to be continued”. How much success the company will have in an already crowded market remains to be seen.

UPDATE: Arctic Startup mistranslated the original article, noting that Jolla’s first smartphone will in fact have a screen larger than 3.5-inches. An exact size wasn’t given, however.

[via fonearena]

Not surprisingly, Hurmola points to an already available app that seems to be on just about every device on the planet, Angry Birds, but he went on to recognize the importance of a healthy app store. In addition to releasing details about its upcoming phone, Jolla has pledged to inform the world about the availability of upcoming applications. The phone is currently on track for a release later on in the year, although Hurmola doesn’t guarantee Christmas availability.

Interesting, Jolla doesn’t want the phone to be as open as some Android devices, saying that the kernel will be locked down and that customers won’t be able to flash their own software. Jolla intends the phone to appeal to the mass market, hoping to create a phone “almost everybody would want for themselves.” Good luck to the company: it certainly has a uphill battle ahead, with the likes of iOS, Android, and Windows Phone to compete with.

UPDATE: It looks like something was lost in translation regarding the phone’s hackability. Jolla plans to offer a developer edition of its phone on top of the retail version, allowing developers and hackers to tinker with the system that should spur development for the platform.

[via International Business Times]

“Last week there was lots of news concerning MeeGo, there was the 1.3 Nokia update, and people were speculating “is this the end of the story, the end of the line, will there be any hope any more?” What we basically wanted to say is that MeeGo is not dead” Hurmola told The Voicemail’s Stefan Constantine. “We got such a tremendous response from Twitter and the online community, and then even the traditional media, that we had no choice but to go with it.”

Nokia, meanwhile, had first heard about Jolla as part of the Bridge program, which the company set up to help employees made redundant find new roles or establish start-ups. ”Within the [Bridge] program we had an opportunity to be open with Nokia with what we were doing,” Hurmola explained, “so it’s not a surprise for them, and their response to our stuff is not a surprise to us. We were able to cooperate in setting up this thing.” In fact, around 50-percent of the current Jolla workforce has come from Nokia, and “almost everybody” has Maemo, Moblin or MeeGo backgrounds.

However, that cooperation doesn’t mean the Jolla phones will get the UI from the N9. ”Swipe is a Nokia device UI. We’re going to do a new UI, and selecting MeeGo enables us to do something new” Hurmola says. “If we selected Android or something else we would be just following the UI it already has, so we will make a new UI. Of course we will inherit the familiar and powerful elements that MeeGo has as we know it now, but we are not going to use the Nokia way, we will go our own way … It’s inspired by many things. iOS, Android, N9… I personally like the N9, so I’m influenced by this so I think we are influenced by N9 UI in our design.”

That software will run on hardware that’s still in preparation, with Hurmola coy on naming any specific partners. The team has been visiting Chinese companies weekly for the past few months, exploring how it will spend its €10m first round of funding. ”In order to make a smartphone or mobile product these days you need chipset support and ODM support, and some other companies” he says. “We’re already close in negotiations to be able to communicate what partners we actually use.”

The phone itself will be revealed later this year, though is expected to be the first of several devices, equally shrouded in mystery. “Our principle is to be careful, we don’t want to promise anything we cannot do … We have different things on our drawing table at the moment, but we need to see how this first one goes before we commit to future products.”

Why MeeGo and not Android? Jolla’s primary goal is to differentiate in an increasingly crowded marketplace, Hurmola says, and joining in with big-name Android OEMs like Samsung and Motorola – not to mention Google itself with its Nexus series – isn’t the best way to do that. Even with a heavily re-skinned interface, it’s not ideal, he claims.

“There are many people who do UIs on top of Android. It’s still a following game … based mostly on price competition. We want to lead the technology, we want to lead the UI. That’s our business.” Jolla is realistic about the importance of apps, too, though Hurmola refuses to be drawn on the current paucity of third-party MeeGo software. ”I understand that you cannot seriously sell a smartphone if you don’t have sufficient application offering” he said. “I think we will answer those questions, but we will answer them when we publish our product.”

As for whether Jolla Mobile hopes to recreate the success that – until recently – Nokia has had, Hurmola is realistic. “The team that we have, we have built ecosystems, we have built platforms, we have built devices. Building a company you can never repeat, it’s always a different story.” Jolla wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to working with Nokia again in the future he says, however, if the Windows Phone strategy stumbles.

“Creating an ecosystem is about co-operating, it’s not about going alone. What we are doing is collecting partners, collecting effort about MeeGo and Jolla. I’m open to all co-operation. There are different forms of co-operation of course, but the key is to grow the ecosystem.”

Jolla is one of the products of Nokia’s Bridge project, set up to help employees leaving the company start up new businesses of their own. “Nokia will offer training, funding, and help identify business opportunities and partnerships for those interested in starting a new business or a company on their own,” the company said of the scheme, “which can fuel new growth for impacted communities.”

Exactly which patents Nokia has handed over to Jolla is unspecified, though presumably much of the IP in question was produced by the MeeGo team while working on projects like Nokia’s N9. The two companies have a “good and open relationship” according to Hurmola.

Jolla hasn’t confirmed exactly when the first of its devices are expected to hit shelves, though Hurmola says there could be something to see before 2012 is out. The team has been listening “to very strong signals coming from the market” about consumer tastes in smartphones, and has “considered a serious break” with what would traditionally be classified as a smart-device.

Update: Looks like something got lost in translation. According to a statement given to SlashGear from Nokia’s Mark Durrant, the company has not given Jolla any patents. ”We’re proud of the support from our Bridge program to start-ups founded by former Nokia people,” Durrant told us, “but we have not gifted Nokia patents to any of them, including Jolla.”

[via Stefan Constantine]

The terror game known as Resident Evil 6 is hitting the pre-order list for Tesco. We’ve got a tip on a Samsung Windows RT tablet coming down the line with a Qualcomm processor inside. HP will also be releasing some products soon, with the HP ENVY All-in-One hitting on all fours.

The operating system known as Meego will be revived by Nokia ex-employees. Don Reisinger has written a column by the name of Third-Party Developers will Make or Break the Wii U. You’ll want to check out the Death Star ping-pong that’s popped up this morning. A high court in the UK has decided that the Samsung Galaxy Tab family are no iPads.

Thousands of individuals are knocked offline today as DNSChanger cleanup peaks. The Dark Knight Rises has a brand new 13-minute feature out now that should readily ruin the entire movie for you. Windows 8 RTM coming early august with shelf exposure coming late October.

The company, which is made up of ex-Nokia personnel, is planning to develop a bunch of new phones built in the Meego platform. Meego, you may recall, was supposed to be Nokia’s answer to the explosion of Android and iPhone popularity. It was to be Nokia’s last shot to stay relevant in the changing mobile phone market. But just as it finished putting all the bells and whistles together, it ended up partnering with Microsoft and Windows Phone instead.

At the head of the new company is one Marc Dillon, who as you might expect was an integral part of the Meego team. Dillon was Nokia’s chief operating officer and was the principal engineer for the now-defunct mobile OS. “Nokia created something wonderful – the world’s best smartphone product. It deserves to be continued, and we will do that together with all the bright and gifted people contributing to the MeeGo success story,” Jolla said in a statement.

[via Cnet]

Those improvements include various problems in network and connectivity being ironed out, though it’s the app tweaks that are likely to see more interest. The Twitter app now runs faster, according to user reports, and introduces streaming updates so that new messages appear automatically.

There are also changes in the Mail and Facebook apps, though Nokia is yet to release a detailed changelog for the 40.2012.21-3 update. Instead, we get a one-line summary that, unsurprisingly, is leaving owners of the N9 somewhat frustrated.

As for the developer version of the phone, the Nokia N950, there’s apparently no official news on when – or even if – that might get a PR1.3 release of its own.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

That push has seen Nokia repurpose the aesthetic of the N9 with the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 900, though work on MeeGo itself has quietly continued. Most recently, the company released an update for the N9 – and the developer-focused N950, with its slide-out keyboard – that added video calling and iOS-style folders to the handset.

MeeGo was initially envisaged as Nokia’s escape route from the aging Symbian platform, a collaboration between Nokia – which donated Maemo – and Intel – which donated Moblin – to create an open-source OS suitable for phones, tablets and other electronics. However, development of MeeGo proceeded simply too slowly for Nokia’s liking, and the platform was shelved back in the lab when the Windows Phone deal with Microsoft was inked.

Ironically, it went on to receive pretty much rave reviews – from ourselves included - for its slick interface and straightforward approach to multitasking. Mutterings of a successor have persisted in the intervening months, but Nokia itself did as much as possible to ignore the platform.

What’s interesting about this new rumor is that the target for the new MeeGo devices is said to be low-cost developing markets, where Nokia has been pushing smartphone-style features with its budget Asha range. One of the advantages of the OS is its relatively low specification demands: the N9, for instance, runs a mere 1GHz TI OMAP3630, a chipset that was only bleeding-edge back in mid-2010. Those minimal requirements could allow Nokia to price any new MeeGo devices particularly competitively.

The physical volume and power buttons are recognized properly, as are any headset buttons, and the USB port is recognized. The LCD shuts off in sleep mode as you’d expect, and there’s Bluetooth and accelerometer support too. Audio playback works in the earpiece, speaker and through a headset.

Elsewhere things get a little patchy. Charging doesn’t actually affect the power icon graphic, so it’s presumably tough to know what sort of level the battery is at, and it takes a hack to recognize the documents folder. Video decoding is handled by software, too, and YouTube is reportedly choppy.

Switching between the two platforms is done via holding the volume up key while rebooting, at which you get a menu option to load into Android instead of MeeGo. There are some other issues, and it’s probably not ready for primetime use, but it’s certainly igniting our longstanding lust for an N9 again.

[Thanks Steve for the tip and the photo!]

There are still several issues still to be overcome before Android on the N9 is a realistic prospect, however. Currently the battery indicator isn’t working – the N9 says it needs to be plugged in, though it’s clear from the video that that’s already the case – and network connectivity is also non-functional at present.

When we last saw evidence of the hack, OpenGL support was also causing headaches. That’s implicit to the N9′s 2D/3D graphics, and without compatibility in the ICS port using Android on the Nokia smartphone would be less than comfortable.

Still, an early alpha is promised as in the pipeline, and hopefully as more people weigh in on the hack the coveted 3.9-inch MeeGo phone might get a second wind as dual-booting demand flourishes. More on the N9 in its untampered form in our original review.

[Thanks Kevin!]

“The increase in our Smart Devices volumes in the fourth quarter 2011 was primarily driven by the broader availability throughout the quarter of the Nokia N9 and the shipments during the quarter of the Nokia Lumia 800 and 710 in selected markets, as well as increased seasonal demand for our devices” Nokia

The importance of the N9 in Nokia’s sales results, however, could be significant. The company confirmed to us that the “well over 1m Lumia sales” soundbite referred to Windows Phone sales to-date, rather than solely for the Q4 2011 period; that’s a small chunk of Nokia’s 19.6m unit smartphone sales that quarter.

However, Nokia includes Symbian^3 handsets in its “smart devices” category, and without knowing exactly how many of those phones – such as the C7 and E7 - were snapped up, we can’t fudge an overall estimate for the N9′s share of the segment.

“Nokia launched the Nokia N9, the outcome of efforts in Nokia’s MeeGo program. The Nokia N9 is a pure touch smartphone which introduces an innovative new design where the home key – typically located at the bottom of the device – is replaced by a simple gesture: a swipe. Under Nokia’s new strategy for smartphones, MeeGo will place increased emphasis on longer-term market exploration of next-generation devices, platforms and user experiences” Nokia

Nokia repeated its mantra from late 2010 on MeeGo’s future in the company, that it would be marginalized as a research platform for “next-generation devices.” Meanwhile, the open-source OS has also been folded into Tizen, an Intel and Samsung led project.

Although Samsung’s integration work is still underway, with no timescale expressed for its completion, when finished it should bring Tizen and bada developers and apps together. Tizen devices will be able to run software created using the bada SDK, Kang said, with existing apps requiring no modification; meanwhile both bada and Tizen developers will use the same SDK and APIs moving forward. The Linux core of the two platforms will also be harmonized.

However, while the two platforms will be drawn closely together, Samsung apparently intends to keep using them independently. bada will be used at the low-end, most likely single-core handsets, focusing on affordable smartphones and devices a step up from feature-phones, while Tizen will appear on more advanced devices. There’s also the possibility of non-phone devices running Tizen as well, though Kang is keen to point out that no explicit plans have been made.

Speculation that Samsung would open-source bada began last year, shortly before the company announced its support for the Tizen project. Tizen, a collaboration with Intel and others, sprung in part from the work Nokia had done on MeeGo before all but abandoning it in favor of Windows Phone. At launch, Tizen’s OS and SDK were each promised for release sometime before the end of March this year.

That timescale looks all the more achievable with the combined heft of bada and MeeGo developers involved; Samsung in particular has driven bada app development with cash prizes over the past 18 months. The Korean company has also discussed using bada on future smart TVs.

[via Liliputing]

In fact, Nokia’s app folders – which you can see previewed in the screenshot below – are likely to prompt some heated comparisons with Apple’s platform. The MeeGo Harmattan team’s “inspiration” is clear, though we can’t argue with the functionality nor deny that it’s something N9 owners have been asking for.

Other tweaks include new features in the Camera and Gallery apps, though details themselves on the changes aren’t listed. No word on when the PR1.2 firmware will be released, though the version number seems to suggest a January 30 2012 build which could indicate sometime close to the end of this month.

More details on the Nokia N9 in our full review.

[via MyNokiaBlog]

That’s because the N9 is still a relatively rare beast across the globe, with Nokia’s Lumia 800 being the device the Finnish company has heaped its hopes upon. That means the white N9 is likely to show up in Finland, Poland and Russia, but not in the US or UK unless you can source one from independent resellers.

Of course, where the N9 goes, it’s entirely possible that the Lumia 800 could follow. Nokia’s Windows Phone 7 handset has so far only been seen in black, cyan and magenta, but being all but identical to the N9 casing may very well show up in a white iPhone rivaling hue sometime soon.

For more on the Nokia N9, check out the full SlashGear review.

This update will be coming to you N9 holders over the air over the next few days and weeks, so keep on tapping away at your Menu, Settings, Applications, Manage Applications until it pops up for you. What you’ll be getting in this update includes, but is not limited to, the following list of items.

- NFC tag reading to instantly interact with NFC tags
- Music controls on lock screen
- Photo and video shooting with color filters: black & white, sepia, vivid, negative, solarize-
- More powerful multitasking with improved memory handling
- Swype for fast typing
- Faster MfE synch, synchronizing only active folders
- Nois cancellation reduces background noise so that your friends hear you better
- Close apps easily with swiping down, this now on by default
- New indicators for standby screen like charging and calendar

For those of you without the device, you’ll probably want to check out the rest of our news on the Nokia N9 from the past few weeks to see what you’re missing. Also note that this device was given Spotify at the end of October and continues to receive support from Nokia as its number one device. Love and kisses! Also note we’ve got a full review of the Nokia N9 for your enjoyment.

[via Nokia]

The N9 already comes preloaded with access to Nokia’s Ovi Music store, allowing paid downloads on a per-track or per-album basis. However, Spotify relies on a subscription, a single monthly payment - $9.99 or €9.99 – granting access to the company’s full catalog of streamed tracks.

Interestingly, according to the app description at Nokia’s Ovi Store, the new software “is developed and maintained by NOKIA in cooperation with Spotify” rather than being the sole handiwork of the music company itself. That might suggest that Nokia is doing some coding work of its own, trying to feather the N9′s app options and make the platform more appealing.

We reviewed the Nokia N9 in full over the weekend, so make sure to check that out!

[via Twitter]

The Nokia N9 features a unique pillow shaped chassis with a front side covered entirely by a Gorilla Glass encased 3.9-inch touchscreen display without any physical buttons. It also sports an 8-megapixel autofocus rear-facing camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual-LED flash. Inside, it’s powered by a 1GHz TI OMAP3630 processor and 1GB of RAM. For more details on the device, make sure to check out our full in-depth review of the handset.

Unfortunately, the Nokia N9 will be restricted to certain markets and will not be available in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. This is so that the device won’t compete with its Windows Phone cousin, the Nokia 800, which should be near identical in hardware. Although specs have not been revealed yet, we have seen plenty of photos, including the recent press shots leaked.

Hardware

Even the harshest Symbian critics have struggled to criticise Nokia’s hardware, and with good reason: the company has consistently pushed out slickly-designed phones and smartphones. If we had a dollar for every semi-recent Nokia handset review we’ve seen that concludes “If this phone were running Android” or similar, well, we’d probably have enough to buy ourselves an N9 outright.

Nokia has certainly excelled itself with the N9. The chassis – a pillowy 116.45 x 61.2 x 7.6-12.1 mm and 135g – is a CNC’d chip of pure polycarbonate, shaped like a swollen battery with tapering ends, and nestling into the hand with a feel that falls somewhere between plastic and anodized metal. Three color choices, of cyan, magenta and black, are the pure, unpainted hues of the plastic itself: scratch the N9 and you’ll find more of the same underneath, rather than ugly white.

Up front is a 3.9-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen running at 854 x 480 resolution, the highest of any Nokia smartphone to-date, and using the company’s ClearBlack polarizing system for improved contrast. Nokia is particularly proud of the way the AMOLED and the glass have been constructed, with no air gap in-between. That makes for a picture that seems to float just under the fingertip, or even look as though it’s been painted on the glass.

Colors are rich and Nokia’s UI scheme – the black background blending in with the black Gorilla Glass, which itself curves smoothly to fuse with the body – uses this to its advantage, bright icons standing out like colorful shards. Viewing angles, too, are impressive, in both portrait and landscape orientation, though perhaps not quite up to the standard of some of Samsung’s recent Super AMOLED panels. Still, it’s a beautiful, highly usable display with great touchscreen response.

Physical controls are limited to just a volume rocker and power/lock button on the right side. On the top edge there’s a 3.5mm headphones socket – you also get Bluetooth 2.1+EDR for using headsets – and, under a hinged cover, a microUSB port for charging and syncing. Next to that is a small caddy for a microSIM, the same size as you’d find in an iPhone 4. Our one design complaint would be this arrangement of pop-up and sliding doors, the microUSB cover sometimes proving reluctant to flap back down.

Nokia has given the N9 two cameras, an 8-megapixel autofocus unit on the back with a dual-LED flash and Carl Zeiss optics, and a front-facing camera. Unusually, this front-facer is in the bottom right corner of the display, rather than somewhere at the top, likely for reasons of internal construction rather than anything else. Doubly-odd, there’s no actual way to access it, at least using the camera app Nokia preloads. On the bottom edge is a speaker with a surprising amount of volume and body to it.

Inside things are a curious mixture of technologies, some at the cutting edge of the segment and others dawdling behind. At its heart, the N9 runs a 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP3630 processor paired with PowerVR SGX530 graphics and 1GB of RAM, an ARM Cortex A8 combination that was only really bleeding-edge back when Motorola’s DROID X launched in mid-2010. That’s paired with a pentaband UMTS/HSPA+ radio with support for up to 14.4Mbps downloads and 5.7Mbps uploads. As with other recent Nokia handsets, the N9′s 3G will work happily on both AT&T and T-Mobile USA’s networks, something that can hardly be said for most other smartphones on the market.

Then there are the various sensors, the accelerometer and digital compass, a proximity sensor, ambient light sensor and GPS/A-GPS. No FM radio, nor an FM transmitter, but you do get NFC: Nokia uses that with its newest accessory line-up of speakers, headsets and cordless headphones, bypassing the traditional Bluetooth PIN-pairing system and instead allowing you to tap the N9 to the peripheral and, after a second or two, have them connect automatically. A second tap disconnects. It’s a system that works surprisingly well, with music playback automatically re-routed while in-progress calls are handed over instantly between the phone’s speaker dual microphone array and your Bluetooth headset. Of course there’s WiFi a/b/g/n too.

Nokia N9 NFC demo:

There have been some compromises made to achieve Nokia’s aesthetic. Most obvious are the absence of a user-accessible battery, the N9′s 1,450 mAh Li-Ion power pack being sealed inside the casing, and the reliance entirely on internal storage rather than offering a microSD card slot. Nokia has opted for two extremes in memory, either 16GB at the entry-level or, for those with capacious multimedia collections, a 64GB version.

MeeGo

MeeGo has had a rocky road to market, and it’s not out of the woods quite yet. The combination of Nokia’s own Maemo platform, most memorably implemented on the N900, and Intel’s Moblin platform, most memorably for its, well, amnesiac impact on the PC market, MeeGo was to be the cross-platform best of both worlds. To make things more complex, however, the software build for the N9 was already underway in the midst of Nokia and Intel’s partnership agreement, and so developed partially independently as MeeGo/Harmattan.

Unfortunately, Nokia’s own work on MeeGo proved insufficiently rapid for newly-crowned CEO Stephen Elop, who balked at the company’s sluggardly roadmap and decided to throw in with Microsoft on Windows Phone. MeeGo, it was announced at the time, would be sent back to the labs, a test-bed for future “game changer” technologies but with no concrete commercial future. Soon, it will spar off on another path, as part of the recently announced Tizen, yet another platform with open-source aspirations and ambitions to be on your phone, your tablet, your netbook and your notebook.

There’s the troubled birth, but is the N9 a wallowing nugget of misery or a shining beacon of what could’ve been?

Curiously, endearingly, frustratingly, it’s broadly the latter. Like iOS, there are no widgets, but MeeGo feels like it has been designed with multitasking and social integration from the outset. The homescreen is a triptych of panes: a vertically scrolling app menu, with icons for all your software, then a task-switcher pane showing thumbnails of recently used apps in the order you last accessed them, and then finally a notifications pane, with weather, a section of email/calendar/etc alerts, and a long feed of recent updates from Facebook and Twitter. Swiping left and right slides between each pane.

Nokia N9 MeeGo demo:

The whole interface is awash with neat little animations and usability tidbits, all with touch at their heart. Lists spring and bounce when scrolled to their end, and there’s no lag to be encountered in swiping. Tap the title bar, with its icons for battery, network status, time and activity, and up pops a simple pane showing the current profile – silent, beep or ringing, with the ringing bar extending to show ringer volume – volume and current connections or downloads, including WiFi status and your availability on Facebook chat, Skype and Google Talk, all of which are supported natively.

Navigating between apps is all swipe-based: swipe across the screen in any direction to exit the current app and return to the homescreen. Optionally, swiping down can close the app rather than leave it running in the background. Otherwise, manual task management is done from the multitasking pane, which by default shows four large thumbnails on-screen at a time, but with a pinch-zoom gesture can flip to showing nine, complete with a neat zooming animation. Tapping any app re-opens it; holding down on the thumbnail pulls up red “X” buttons for each app, allowing you to close it completely. A “Close All” option at the bottom takes you back to square one. It’s a button we seldom felt the need to tap, however; even with 25+ apps in the list, the N9′s 1GHz single-core handled things well, though occasionally we’d see a little sluggishness as apps loaded.

Considering how touch integration was so uncomfortably bolted onto Symbian back in the S60 v.5 (aka Symbian^1) days, a clumsy afterthought, it’s great to see that Nokia’s software engineers do actually know what they’re doing with touchscreen technology. It took mere minutes to get used to the swipe multitasking, helped by the fact that MeeGo drops you back exactly where you were in the homescreen triptych, even if you were scrolled partway down the app launcher list. Apps introduce themselves with a sentence explaining the functionality: suggesting you sync music across from your computer, for instance, or inviting you to create your first note.

Then there are the less obvious elements, which help add to MeeGo’s sense of depth. When locked, the N9 shows a dim white clock – the low-power benefits of AMOLED allowing it to stay active for this all the time, without draining the battery – and some notification icons, such as “@” when you have new emails. You can reach the regular lock screen by pressing the physical button on the side, but alternatively a brisk double-tap on the touchscreen takes you there too. From there you can see just how many emails you have, along with a preview of the latest; a swipe in any direction unlocks the phone.

Alternatively, though, you can swipe up halfway, pause for a second, and then get a row of four shortcuts along the bottom of the screen: phone, messages, camera and browser. Press the volume buttons while on the homescreen, and you can switch between profile modes without having to fully unlock the N9. Head into the settings pages, meanwhile, and you can find not only a percentage of what juice remains, but an estimate of talktime and standby time in days, hours and minutes. It even tells you the condition of the battery. Then there are data limit options, both for cellular data use on your home network and when roaming.

Software

Nokia doesn’t stint on preloaded applications with MeeGo: the N9 comes out of the box with just about everything you’d expect from a recent smartphone. Email supports Exchange, Gmail (though not with push), and any IMAP/POP account you might have, served up in a universal inbox. There’s no conversational view, unlike on Android, though you can pinch-zoom to get in close to attached photos and text. Begin scrolling and a shadow scrollbar appears down the right hand side: drag it, and you can easily jump down the list by date. Up to a week’s worth of messages are synchronized, and the dedicated Search app includes those – though not what’s still on the email server – among its queries.

The on-screen keyboard is particularly good, offering both portrait and landscape variants and supporting a sharp haptic buzz that does a great job of feeling localized to your fingertip. Audio feedback is another option. Word correction and auto-complete are each supported, and while the N9 doesn’t have as large a screen as, say, some of the more recent Android devices, we still had no issues with accurate text-entry on it.

The N9′s browser supports pinch-zooming, text-reflow and HTML5, though oddly not Flash, despite that being offered on Symbian phones. Still, it’s a neat little app: bookmarks are – either conveniently or overwhelmingly, depending on how addicted to creating favorites you are – saved as icons in the app pane, and each open window is served up individually in the task switcher.

Calendar and Contacts work as you’d expect, combining your Google, Exchange, Facebook and other sources into a single location. MeeGo pulls in profile photos from your Facebook friends, and creates monogram “squircles” for those it can’t find. The dedicated Facebook and Twitter apps – which each feed their recent updates into the notifications homescreen pane – are basic but serviceable. Oddly, while you can upload photos directly to Facebook, you can’t do the same with Twitter, and you’re also limited to just one of each account. Those hoping to manage their work and personal tweets from the N9 will be disappointed.

As with Symbian Nokia devices, the company doesn’t assume you’ll be satisfied with solely cellular voice calls. A Skype client – which also supports chat and contacts sync – is preloaded, plus those with their own SIP accounts can register them and access VoIP as another option in the dialer. Both WiFi and 3G VoIP is supported, though your carrier may not like the latter.

Multimedia on the N9 consists of the gallery, the music app and the video player, plus a link to the mobile YouTube site. Images can be tagged and viewed by tag group, as well as marked as a favorite for quicker subsequent access. Both photos and video from the N9′s camera are mixed together in the gallery timeline, though you can pull out video clips separately. Images can be shared via NFC, if you have another device that supports the standard.

The music app is straightforward and somewhat reminiscent of an iPod in its UI. Album art thumbnails cluster at the top of the screen, with links to Artist, Album, Song and Playlists below. There’s also access to the Ovi Music store, offering MP3 song and album downloads directly to the N9. Audio quality from the integrated speaker was loud and clear, with the phone doing a decent job of cranking up volume without suffering too much distortion. Finally there’s the video app, which seems intended for side-loaded clips rather than those you shoot yourself with the N9′s camera. H.263, MPEG4-SP & ASP, H.264 BP/MP, WMV9 / VC-1 and Mkv (Matroska) formats are supported. There’s no apparent way to access your own footage from the app; instead you have to play it back through the gallery.

Nokia Maps and the Drive app are two of the jewels in the company’s software and services crown. Offering a solid alternative to Google Maps Navigation on Android. As well as comprehensive NAVTEQ mapping data – which can be downloaded on a country-by-country basis directly to the phone’s own storage, useful if you’re going abroad and want to navigate while avoiding data roaming fees – there are turn-by-turn directions and points of interest with reviews from Qype and other sources. Directions can be tailored for those driving and those on foot, with the former getting the dedicated Drive app that presents an oversized, finger-friendly interface for when you’re behind the wheel, and the latter usefully flipping the map so that your next turn is always shown ahead of how you’re facing.

All the basics are covered, with a calculator, documents viewer, RSS feed viewer and notes app, plus a WiFI Hotspot app that allows you to share your 3G connection with multiple WiFi-connected devices, such as notebooks and tablets. There are also four games – Angry Birds, GOF2, NFS Shift and Real Golf 2011 – none of which exactly burn a hole in the current line-up of mobile titles, but which play well on the N9 and look great on the ClearBlack display.

Nokia’s comprehensive selection is a good strategy for the company to take: it keeps users away from the Ovi Store and potential disappointment. There are certainly apps for the N9 in there – MeeGo support Qt development, just like Symbian – but simply not as much choice as on an Android handset or an iPhone. Whether that’s likely to change much is questionable: Nokia’s public change of direction, away from Symbian, MeeGo and Qt and toward Windows Phone, telegraphs a pretty clear message to developers deciding where to invest their time and efforts.

Camera

Although the N9 has two cameras, MeeGo only comes set up to to use one of them: thankfully it’s the rear-facing f2.2 8-megapixel snapper with the Carl Zeiss optics. The camera app itself is straightforward to use, though there’s no dedicated shortcut key; the volume rocker acts as a control for the 4x digital zoom. Touch-to-focus is supported, and the autofocus system in general is quick, though we found it could be a little less accurate during macro photography.

The end result, though, is excellent. Colors are accurate and on the pleasing side of saturated, while exposure is only frustrated by particularly over-illuminated scenes. There’s a huge amount of detail in each shot, too, though some noise can creep in there as well. The dual-LED flash is bright and often overwhelming, and we found low-light shots could sometimes do better leaving things to the f2.2 aperture lens.

Once you’ve taken a shot, you can do red-eye removal, straighten the frame and automatically fix the colors and exposure with the onboard editing tools, all the while leaving a copy of the original frame untouched for later experimentation.

The single-core processor, among other things, keeps video recording to 720p HD at most, rather than 1080p. Nonetheless, you get 30fps support in 16:9 aspect, with some control over white balance and exposure. There’s also continuous autofocus along with stereo sound recording thanks to the twin microphones.

The eventual clips are solid, if not outstanding. The N9 shows a tendency to over-expose, leaving brighter areas of the shot washed out. There’s also noticeable noise and some blurring with faster-moving objects. Still, the autofocus shows admirably little hunting, and the sound pickup is good.

Phone and Battery

Nokia’s reputation for solid handsets isn’t just limited to build quality: radio performance is also something the company consistently gets right. The N9′s pentaband UTMS/HSPA and quadband GSM/EDGE leaves it content on pretty much any GSM network you can mention, in fact the trickiest part might be finding a microSIM to use. We saw no problems with call performance, and the dual-microphone noise cancellation system worked well without leaving speech too artificial.

As for the battery, Nokia says to expect up to 11hrs GSM talktime (6.5hrs WCDMA) or up to 340hrs GSM standby (420hrs WCDMA) from a full charge, or alternatively 6.5hrs of WiFi browsing, 5hrs of HSPA browsing, 5hrs of 720p HD video playback or 50hrs of audio playback. In practice, with mixed use including some Nokia Maps navigation, browsing over both WiFi and 3G, some photography and multimedia playback, and push email turned on, we reached the end of the day with juice to spare. In fact, the N9 made it through a fair chunk of the next day, too.

Wrap-Up

It’s not often we review what’s effectively a dead product. Usually, if a manufacturer decides to cancel a project, or if the company itself folds, that happens well before the doomed devices reach the SlashGear test bench. Even in the case of the HP TouchPad, the company was still full-steam-ahead at review time, only axing the poorly-selling slate when it became clear how much it was struggling.

Our frustration is that the N9 doesn’t deserve to die. In fact, Nokia has delivered a double-punch of compelling software and beautiful hardware: a device that earned curious, envious glances while we played with it in public, and a platform that was both instantly usable and consistently slick. We try not to play “What could’ve been” because, frankly, there’s usually interest and intrigue enough in the directions manufacturers do eventually take, but forgive us if we stare wistfully off for a while, imagine a whole range of MeeGo smartphones helping Nokia reclaim its crown.

Rationally, though, it’s tough to recommend the N9 to the general smartphone audience. Scarcity is one big element of that: the number of locations Nokia will actually sell the smartphone is severely limited, the focus very much being on Windows Phone. Meanwhile, the ominous future of applications for the MeeGo platform is our other big concern. There’s enough pre-loaded to certainly best any feature-phone, but smartphone owners expect apps; that leaves the N9 too expensive to rival a cheap feature-phone and with too shaky a future to take on Android or iOS.

Nonetheless, it’s hard to escape the polish of the N9′s hardware/software combination. Seldom are we so reluctant to part with a review unit as we are over sending the N9 back to Nokia. It may not be the fastest, or the most whiz-bang of the smartphones, but it’s holistically beautiful and an example in many ways of why Nokia once led the mobile field. The saving grace is that we know Nokia is carrying forward the design and build of the N9 to at least one of its Windows Phone 7 handsets: they may not have MeeGo, but they’ll have a future, and we’ve always had a soft-spot for Microsoft’s platform too. We can’t blame Nokia for the direction the company has chosen – there’s more to it than mere software; Windows Phone gives them a platform, a developer ecosystem, and the might of Microsoft among other things – but we can be more than wistful that the N9 and MeeGo came that little bit too late to have their true worth recognized.

What are we expecting?

Windows Phones, and perhaps as many as three of them. It’s no surprise that Microsoft’s smartphone platform will be star of next week’s show; Nokia hasn’t exactly been shy about mentioning the Q4 launch window. Still, if there was any doubt, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Windows Phone, is set to take the stage for a Nokia World keynote.

Meanwhile, the devices themselves have also been leaked in various capacities. “Sea ray” we know most about, after Stephen Elop himself flaunted the handset earlier in the year. Outwardly resembling Nokia’s MeeGo-based N9, with a polycarbonate casing, last we heard the smartphone is set to launch as the Nokia Lumia 800, though that could still well change before launch.

Other devices have been somewhat more mysterious. The Nokia Sabre, which we saw leaked images of earlier this week, is more akin to the X7 with its sloping corners. It’s tipped to be smaller than the X7, however, with a 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen, while inside is believed to be a 1.4GHz single-core processor, as in the Lumia. though a 5-megapixel camera to the Lumia’s 8-megapixel.

Finally, there’s a third device, codenamed Nokia Ace, with the largest display of them all: 4.3-inches and using the company’s ClearBlack Display technology. A 1.4GHz processor and a sizable 1,800mAh battery are also expected, along with an 8-megapixel camera using Nokia-favorite Carl Zeiss optics.

Then there’s software, with Nokia World likely to see the company’s first dedicated apps for Windows Phone debut. Nokia Drive Maps is expected to replace Bing Maps, with talk of turn-by-turn spoken directions and integration with Windows Phone’s voice recognition system, and the company will probably demonstrate that for the first time too. Expect plenty of developer outreach work, too, to coax former Symbian/Qt coders to jump on board with Microsoft’s platform.

Why is it a big deal?

This is make or break time for Nokia. Symbian has already been given its marching orders, phased out over the next few years, while MeeGo is no longer the future of Nokia’s smartphones but has instead been marginalized back into the labs. The company has bet its future on Windows Phone, but will also need to preserve some element of “authentic Nokia” in its line if it wants to remain differentiated from other licensees.

It’s a potentially pivotal time for Microsoft, too. The smartphone market may have already shed itself of webOS, while RIM’s BlackBerry prospects look ever-darker, but the rising forces of Android and iOS continue to dominate the segment. Microsoft needs a strong OEM partner, particularly one who can bring Windows Phone to more affordable price points, broadening the target market as the company aims for a strong third-man position.

Finally, it’s an opportunity for Nokia to prove it can do what the company, so far, has struggled to achieve: get its products to market without months of delay in-between announcement and sales. That’s something, for all its production abilities, Nokia has seemed incapable of in the past, as well as being something CEO Stephen Elop specifically mentioned as a target for change when he took up the role.

We’re hearing that Nokia has no small ambitions on that front, with plans to have at least one of the new Windows Phones launched next week – perhaps most likely the Lumia 800 – on store shelves mere weeks after it’s officially unveiled. That should be the start of a steady flow of devices as we head into 2012.

What would be a show-stopper?

Nokia’s new phones alone will arguably be show-stoppers. Windows Phone is such a considerable change of direction for the company, all eyes are on whether the new line-up is convincing enough to warrant frustrating employees, shareholders, developers and the “Nokia faithful” in ditching Symbian.

Nonetheless, there are still wildcards Nokia could pull out, if it particularly wanted to shake up the mobile market. Most obvious of those would be a tablet, with various mutterings from the company about alternative form-factors over the past few months. Nokia would not, Elop has previously said, simply create another me-too slate, but the generally positive reception previews of Windows 8 on tablets received earlier this year could motivate the company to reveal a device using the platform.

Finally, there remain stubborn rumors about a second MeeGo-based consumer device, something again in the manner of the N9: niche targeted, limited release and part experiment. Elop has been scathing about MeeGo’s future, lending such speculation an increasing air of unlikelihood, but with it being confirmed that the team responsible for the platform already had further handsets on the original roadmap, there could still be a sop made to open-source developers. Much as we’d like to see MeeGo survive, however, we’d class this one as being particularly unlikely.

SlashGear will be at Nokia World 2011 next week, bringing back all the details on the company’s new announcements. Can the Finns pull back their focus and eventually reclaim the smartphone topspot? We’ll have to wait and see!

Meanwhile, the green Nokia N9 has no suggested availability, at least at present. It’s possible it could be a prototype not intended for actual release, as Nokia finesses the polycarbonate machining process used in the production of the N9 chassis (and, we expect, the chassis of select Nokia Windows Phones).

It’s not the first time a white N9 has been caught in the wild. Back in August the phone was caught taking a photo in the hands of model Sanja Suzanna, who has also been featured on Nokia’s own N9 mini-site. At the time it was suggested that it could be a close-fitting case, though no official explanation has been given and, according to Nokia, red, blue and black are the three colors the N9 comes in.

Update: We’re told the white N9 was originally cancelled, but now it seems some locations will receive a limited number of them. Similarly, the green N9 will also be a limited edition.

[Thanks JOE!]

That could mean delays if you were hoping to pick up an Acer Iconia M500 tablet, which promised MeeGo on an Atom processor, but it’s unclear what will happen to the ASUS Eee PC X101. The MeeGo-based netbook is already up for sale, though it’s possible that it could be the last ASUS model to support the platform.

DigiTimes’ sources also claim that Samsung’s integration between bada and Tizen is pretty much a foregone conclusion, with the suggestion that the new OS’ app store will “merge the current resources of Intel’s MeeGo and Samsung’s Bada.” With Tizen tipped to show up not only on phones and tablets, but smart TVs, netbooks, in-car infotainment systems and other platforms, it would certainly be a more straightforward way for Samsung to follow through on its apparent ambitions to develop a more complex smart TV system.

Although the first Tizen release isn’t expected until February 2012, Intel apparently confirmed at its AppUpElements conference that the SDK is on track for distribution in November, according to The Handheld Blog.

Although Intel and Samsung are the big names, The Linux Foundation isn’t short on supporters either. Members include Fujitsu, Panasonic, NEC, Motorola, ARM and a host of others, though who exactly will be using Tizen and who will just be quietly observing from the sidelines remains to be seen.

“We believe the future belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5. Shifting to HTML5 doesn’t just mean slapping a web runtime on an existing Linux, even one aimed at mobile, as MeeGo has been. Emphasizing HTML5 means that APIs not visible to HTML5 programmers need not be as rigid, and can evolve with platform technology and can vary by market segment” Imad Sousou, co-chair MeeGo Technical Steering group

MeeGo’s vision of future mobile platforms tallies well with Tizen’s, unsurprisingly. According to the project’s new site, the app programming interfaces are “based on HTML5 and other web standards” with APIs for the platform’s functionality including messaging, multimedia, camera, network, and social media.

“For those who use native code in their applications, the Tizen SDK will include a native development kit. We will open the entire Tizen software stack, from the core OS up through the core applications and polished user interfaces” Tizen

The decision to roll MeeGo into Tizen is already meeting push-back from existing developers, however, who are unclear on where the cross-platform Qt framework fits into the mixture. It’s also uncertain what buyers of the first Nokia MeeGo device, the N9 which began shipping this week, will get in terms of Tizen support. Nokia has said the smartphone will be supported “for years” with several updates already in the pipeline. Whether that includes a Tizen upgrade has not been confirmed.

It’s also unknown as to what Tizen means for Samsung’s bada platform, itself tipped to go open-source in 2012. Samsung is known to be considering its software “competitiveness” in the face of Android’s increasingly litigious circumstances and Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and bada itself is similarly HTML5 and web-runtime centric to how Tizen has been presented. Whether that means the Korean firm will fold bada into Tizen, just as MeeGo is being incorporated, remains to be seen.

For the moment, they’ll be the only way to enjoy the platform Nokia had originally bet its future on. MeeGo was to be the triumphant Symbian replacement, but tardy development and a roadmap with fewer devices pinned to it than Nokia needed meant the company looked elsewhere, eventually settling on Windows Phone and a partnership with Microsoft.

That’s not to say MeeGo is bad: in our brief time with the N9 we were impressed at the swipe-happy navigation system, clean UI and the slick hardware it was all wrapped up in. That hardware style will be carried forward to at least one Windows Phone device. Actually finding a place to buy an N9 may be the biggest issue outstanding, with the list of countries where the smartphone will be officially offered dwindling fast.

Nokia N9 demo:

The X101 netbook features 10.1-inch display with 1024 x 600 pixel resolution, 1.33Ghz Intel Atom N435 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB SSD. Connectivity options include WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, two USB 2.0 ports, audio, and an SD card slot. There’s also a webcam and stereo speakers. Battery life is rated at 4 hours with its standard 3-cell battery.

The specs aren’t too impressive, but that’s not surprising given its low cost. However, it does feature an incredibly slim chassis measuring only 0.69-inches thin and weighing about 2 pounds. And it also offers the Linux-based operating system, MeeGo, as an alternative to your usual Windows 7, if you’re into that kind of thing.

[via Liliputing]

The failure of WebOS has put an exclamation point on the fact that the OS realm for mobile devices today is a three horse race with iOS and Android dominating and Windows Phone 7 far behind. One of the big reasons why rumors pointed to Samsung eyeing MeeGo is that the Android patent licensing fees Microsoft is beating out of smartphone makers are far from cheap.

Moving to another OS would allow the makers to avoid paying those Android patent royalties. Samsung’s rep also noted to CNET that the company was investing significantly in its own software solutions and content. It would be easy to assume that those investments would include bada. Do you think bada would have a chance on today’s market? I don’t.

The Nokia N9 was introduced with a warm reception back in June as it raised new hopes for the MeeGo platform with its unique design and revamped interface. It featured a 3.9-inch full touchscreen front-face covered with Gorilla Glass, pillow-shaped chassis, promising new swipe interface, and premium Carl Zeiss optics for its 8-megapixel camera.

However, Nokia will be basing its first Windows Phone 7 Mango handset on the N9 with near identical styling. And since Nokia is committed to promoting Windows Phone 7, distribution for the N9 would understandably be limited, especially in the major markets where Nokia hopes to make a big splash with its first Windows Phone, codenamed the “Sea Ray.”

[via Nokia]

The rumors follow reports last week that Intel was backing off of MeeGo development, with the platform said to be put on the back burner in the face of underwhelming interest from smartphone and tablet developers. Although MeeGo was originally the brainchild of Intel and Nokia, the Finnish firm has since backed away from the software; only one Nokia device will launch this year running the OS, the N9, and the company has said it will primarily be used as a test platform for future smartphone development.

Samsung, meanwhile, is facing numerous patent suits from Apple over the hardware and software design of its Android-based tablets and phones, while the open-source OS has brought patent holders like Microsoft out of the woodwork, each demanding a licensing tithe per device. Back in July, it was suggested that some OEMs were giving greater consideration to MeeGo because of the shaky legal situation around Android, with a transition potentially straightforward thanks to the similarities between the kernels of both platforms.

Of course, Samsung also has its own smartphone platform, bada, and indeed one of its high-profile launches at IFA 2011 last week was a handset running it, the Wave 3. Although the company insists that sales of bada devices have been strong, the platform still lacks in consumer mindshare; Intel’s marketing budget – and desperation for a new hardware partner – would certainly help address that, should Samsung choose to adopt MeeGo.

According to a report by DigiTimes, Intel may temporarily discontinue development on MeeGo to focus on hardware products for Android and Windows Phone handsets in 2012. This decision is said to be due to the lack of enthusiasm for MeeGo from handset and PC vendors, with the only exciting device for the platform being the Nokia N9. But even with that handset, distribution is being limited to very select markets to avoid competition with Nokia’s upcoming Windows Phone offering.

MeeGo was first launched by Intel and Nokia in March 2010 as a combination of each company’s Linux-based OS platforms called Maemo and Moblin. Almost a year after the merge, slow development on the platform may have led Nokia to switch to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform, relegating MeeGo to the R&D playground and setting an expiration date in 2016 for Symbian.

Both of the machines run the same Atom N435 processor and sport 10.1-inch displays. The price for the N100 has been reported at about $200 here in the US by Russian and Indian websites. The official price for Europe or the US hasn’t been offered. The N435 processor operates at 1.33GHz. The screen for the machines is a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 resolution offering.

It has anti-glare coating, which is a very nice thing to have if you work in a room with lights on or outdoors. Graphics for both machines is via Intel GMA integrated. Storage is to a 250GB 5400 rpm HDD. Other features include a 3-cell battery, 1GB of RAM, and a memory card reader, VGA out, and USB ports. The price for the N102 is thought to be $299.

[via Notebookitalia]

The disappointing news follows confirmation earlier in the week that neither the US nor the UK would get the MeeGo phone. Rumors earlier in the year suggested that Nokia was positioning the N9 as a niche device, with less than 100,000 units expected to be produced.

Nokia pulled a countdown timer for the N9 recently, leading to further suggestions that it was attempting to downplay the handset’s launch. The company appears to be focusing on its Windows Phone range, expected to arrive in Q4 this year, with the Sea Ray prototype – that borrows the same polycarbonate unibody styling as the N9 – tipped to provide an aesthetic alternative for those in countries not getting a MeeGo launch.

[via PhoneArena]

“As an organisation Nokia takes a market by market approach to product rollout and each country decides which products to introduce from those available. These decisions are based on a local assessment of existing and upcoming products that make up Nokia’s product portfolio and are intended to provide the best local portfolio for the UK market. Although we are delighted with the very positive reception that the Nokia N9 has received, here in the UK there are no plans to offer the Nokia N9 at present.”

The decision is almost undoubtedly down to Nokia’s Windows Phone roadmap, and a wariness around potentially missing out on sales of devices running the Microsoft OS from those who have already bought the N9. The MeeGo phone could also run the risk of overshadowing the Windows Phone push, should its sales be particularly strong, re-igniting suggestions that Nokia made the wrong decision in adopting Microsoft’s platform at the cost of its own.

Nokia’s move to marginalize MeeGo comes hot on the heels of word that the company is also axing its Symbian range in North America, clearing a path for its first Windows Phones later on in 2010. The real push isn’t expected until the first half of 2011, however, with Nokia hoping that the new devices turn around what has been a disastrous financial quarter.

A leaked video earlier today purportedly showed some of those devices potential bringing salvation, though so far only the so-called “Sea Ray” prototype – which looks almost identical to the N9 – has been publicly shown.

“After the very positive reception to the launch of the Nokia N9, the product is now being rolled out in countries around the world. At this time we will not be making it available in the US. Nokia takes a market by market approach to product rollout, and each country makes its own decisions about which products to introduce from those available. Decisions are based on an assessment of existing and upcoming products that make up Nokia’s extensive product portfolio and the best way in which to address local market opportunities” Nokia

A similar comment was given to The Inquirer regarding a potential N9 launch in the UK, with Nokia saying that it would “share more information about the specific markets and the pricing closer to product availability.” Meanwhile, retailer The Carphone Warehouse has said that, as things stand, the N9 is not destined for the UK’s shores.

Hopes of a US release had been raised when the N9 was spotted clearing the FCC last month, a rite of passage that usually closely precedes availability. Now, however, it’s looking like early suggestions that Nokia was treating its MeeGo phone as a niche device, with only 92,000 units expected to be produced, will turn out to be accurate.

Instead, it appears Nokia is keen to leave key markets receptive to its Windows Phone handsets, one of which is the distinctly N9-esque Sea Ray. Previous rumors claimed that Nokia would only release MeeGo devices in markets where Windows Phone launches weren’t on the roadmap, and that decision-limiting stance may well turn out to be true.

The European carrier, Orange, has confirmed previously that the N9 would launch in Switzerland on September 19, and that lines right up with the countdown. It may then be followed by Sweden, which is reported to receive the handset on September 23. But oddly, other major European markets such as the UK, Germany, and France have yet to get confirmed dates. Pricing has also not been revealed, although it’s said to be quite affordable with an attached service plan.

The N9 features a slick 3.9-inch touchscreen display covered by Gorilla Glass on a pillow-shaped body with an 8-megapixel camera equipped with Carl Zeiss optics. Nokia’s first Windows Phone, codenamed the Sea Ray, is almost identical in form and may make its debut during an August 17 event.

However, both phones are slated to launch in Europe first, with the N9 coming out first in September followed by the Sea Ray, rumored for sometime in November.

[via Engadget]

VisionMobile looked at Android, Qt, Symbian, MeeGo, Mozilla, WebKit, Linux and Eclipse, ranking the eight projects on a so-called Open Governance Index. Google’s platform scored just 23-percent, less than half what Qt – in seventh position – managed. At the top end, Eclipse scored 84-percent, being praised for its transparency in decision making and corporate structure, among other factors.

1. Access: availability of the latest source code, developer support mechanisms, public roadmap, and transparency of decision-making
2. Development: the ability of developers to influence the content and direction of the project
3. Derivatives: the ability for developers to create and distribute derivatives of the source code in the form of spin-off projects, handsets or applications.
4. Community: a community structure that does not discriminate between developers

The researchers save some scathing words for the Open Handset Alliance, too, billed as the governing body of Android but now, they argue, a toothless rubber-stamping committee that serves as little beyond a way of keeping OEMs corralled:

“Visibility to the roadmap is limited, as there is no Android roadmap publicly available. In fact, development of the Android private branch and the roadmap is controlled by Google, with little input from external parties or the Open Handset Alliance members. When launched, the Open Handset Alliance served the purpose of a public industry endorsement for Android. Today, however, the OHA serves little purpose besides a stamp of approval for OHA members; there is no formal legal entity, no communication processes for members nor frequent member meetings” VisionMobile

Google’s “unilateral Android project decision-making processes,” as the report phrases it, have been commented on before, with allegations that the company is enforcing stricter policies toward manufacturers modifying the platform in the name of anti-fragmentation. That, Android chief Andy Rubin argues, is FUD, pointing merely to the set of compliance standards that OEMs must observe if they want to use Google’s suite of apps such as Gmail.

[via ArsTechnica]

Previous Nokia comments and roadmaps for MeeGo, which suggested a range of devices were on the cards, have led to speculation that this second tipped model to use to the platform will be a tablet. MeeGo v1.2, with support for tablets – as well as netbooks and in-car systems – was released back in May.

Still, those roadmaps were formulated well in advance of Nokia’s decision to switch to Windows Phone, and in the aftermath MeeGo was relegated as a lab experiment rather than something the Finnish company expected to be its long-term salvation. Our own hands-on time with the N9 left us impressed with the OS and keen to see more devices running it, though earlier iterations for tablets were less convincing.

While initial indications suggested that ASUS would offer the X101 as a dual-booting machine able to load into either MeeGo or Windows 7, the company later decided to split the two platforms between two separate models. That’s left the X101 to be the low-cost option, with a sub-$200 RRP, while the X101H running Windows 7 is a hundred dollars or so extra. [Update: We mistakenly suggested the X101 would be sub-$100; it's actually expected to be sub-$200]

Connectivity includes WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0, along with two USB 2.0 ports, audio in/out, an SD/SDHC memory card reader and a power socket to charge the standard 3-cell battery. ASUS reckons that’s good for up to 4hrs runtime, which is on the low side for a modern netbook. There’s also a 0.3-megapixel webcam and stereo speakers, and the X101 will be available in white, red or brown.

Interestingly, ASUS preloads a copy of the British Council English Language Learning app, complete with interactive games, videos and audio files, intended to assist non-English speakers to get up to speed. Whether the X101′s target audience will really appreciate that – or whether, perhaps more likely, it’ll be the first thing to be deleted from that mere 8GB of flash storage – remains to be seen.

[Thanks to everybody who sent this in!]