Microsoft and Nokia have announced about their cooperation back in February, and it became the most discussed announcement of the year. So for now the main goal of both Nokia and Microsoft is to release Windows Phone products and to intrigue the public with them. The first wave of Nokia’s WP-powered phones will be targeting the European market, while with the second wave of products the company has plans to get more customers in the U.S. and Australia. The second wave will start only next year, while for the first wave the companies have only a few months to work on.

All of these might be the reasons why Nokia decided to get a new Chief Technology Officer. Richard Green, who was dismissed from Nokia, will be replaced by Henry Tirri. The reason for firing Richard Green is assumed to be the constant disagreement with the company’s CEO Stephen Elop.

Henry Tirri used to be the executive VP and member of Nokia Leadership Team.

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Nokia’s store in Helsinki is now starting to take the pre-orders for the Nokia N9! The Nokia N9 was launched back in June with a promise to get released in several countries only, including Australia, Russia and a few more. Many other countries were excluded from the list, maybe because Nokia is going to launch the first Windows Phone-powered smartphones there.

The pre-orders have started only a few days ago, but Nokia’s new smartphone based on MeeGo seems to be really popular — the 64GB version of the Nokia N9 is already “pre-sold,” so those who still want to get this handset should stick with the 16GB version. Unfortunately, we have no info about the price of the smartphone, which is very strange. But we hope it will be revealed soon.

The handset comes with a list of interesting features, including 3.9 inch AMOLED display with 854 × 480 pixels, 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP3630 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB or 64GB storage options, an 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash and 720 p video capturing capabilities. And the most amazing feature of the handset is definitely the buttonless, slim design.

The most wanted color from the three color options (black, blue and pink) is black.

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It doesn’t matter how Symbian Anna, Belle and MeeGo succeed — we all know Nokia’s goals are related with Windows Phone. We have heard for many times about it and it’s not a secret the first WP-powered device of Nokia already exists and is being tested. Of course, I am speaking about the Nokia Sea Ray, though there are several other WP-based smartphones to be launched by Nokia in the nearest future.

Well, every day we hear news about Nokia and its adopted Windows Phone strategy. Yesterday we even introduced a new concept that looked quite attractive, though there is a huge number of Nokia’s WP-powered concept phones. I am mentioning it to make it clear how intensively Nokia is working on these phones, but at this time I must sadden you because the latest statement of Nokia’s Australian branch says:

“We won’t be releasing a Nokia on Windows Phone until Q1 of next year. Can’t be more specific than that sorry!”

In some aspects this announcement doesn’t change anything because we initially were aware the WP handsets will be launched not earlier than Q1, 2012, but the latest events make us hope they will appear sooner. One more thing — probably this statement refers to only Australian market, and other regions will offer the handsets before 2012. It mainly depends on Nokia’s plans — whether they are going to launch Windows Phone-based devices worldwide or there will be specified countries. Though I must say China is in the list already, which can mean Nokia’s WP-strategy refers not only to the U.S., but to other areas, too.

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Nokia has prepared a new smartphone application for more productive in-car use of Nokia devices. The application is called Nokia Car Mode. With its optimized user interface it gives a chance to experience simplified access and  use of Nokia Drive.  So this application makes the voice-guided car navigation with Nokia maps simply a pleasure. The rest of enhancements include traffic updates and music and voice call features while driving.

Nokia Car Mode will be available for those Nokia devices that are running the Symbian Belle OS sometime in the forth quarter of this year from Nokia Ovi Store.

Nokia Car Mode is the first application, which is actually using MirrorLink (something known earlier as Terminal Mode). It is a standard platform providing smartphone-to-car connectivity by 20 major brands that are members of Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC).

MirrorLink gives a chance to connect the smartphone with in-car displays, various control system features and finally audio systems. And the greatest thing is that the connectivity is reciprocal, thus you can use the car to control your device.

Among already the announced devices the Nokia 701, the Nokia 600, the Nokia 700, the Nokia N9 and all models which will be upgraded to Symbian Belle will support the application.

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We have a new official statement from Nokia Mexico saying “Nuevo Nokia N9 – ¡Próximamente en México!” (which means “New Nokia N9 shortly in Mexico!”). So another country is going to receive this MeeGo-Harmattan device!

The carriers that are going to distribute the handset in Mexico are not known yet. But it’s great that the country will get the device. Now it’s time for the U.S. — I hope some retailer stores will at last think of shipping the Nokia N9 to the U.S. So far there is only one retailer in the U.S. that is accepting pre-orders for the MeeGo handset, that is Overseas Electronics. The bad news is that the retailer is offering the smartphone for a super high price — $924.99. Still I think that the price will be lowered close to the release of the Nokia N9 in Mexico and in other countries.

The Nokia N9 also has a webpage on the Romanian website of Nokia. So Romania is going to be one of the first countries that will get Nokia’s handset.

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Nokia’s smartphones don’t have distinguishing names as other smartphones. Look at the same N8 or E7, they don’t have other monikers, but HTC, LG or Motorola always give some memorable names. Say, who will forget the HTC Incredible‘s or the Thunderbolt‘s names, or who will forget the Motorola Droid Bionic?

Do not think it is easy to choose a name for a smartphone. Not all smartphones succeed, and probably here its own role plays the NAME of the phone, too — Acer beTouch, Casio G’zOne Commando, HTC ChaCha. As you see it is quite important to choose the right name, and Nokia has entrusted this hard work to… its users.

Nokia’s Windows Phone smartphones will become available soon (2012?), so ever step the company now takes is very important. Each rash decision, each shortcoming can bring to a collapse. Of course, we welcome Nokia’s poll to choose one of 20 monikers that will become the name of the first Windows Phone handset of the company.

Currently, the leading ones are Genesis, Fusion, Evolution, Metro and others. I voted for the Destiny.

The release of Nokia’s first Windows Phone 7-based devices is expected to take place in October of this year. On October 26 the manufacturer is going to hold its annual Nokia World event. During this event Nokia usually speaks about its future plans and introduces its newest devices, so maybe we’ll hear something new about the upcoming WP7 smartphones there.

The most surprising fact that we just learned is that the Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices launched during the event will be exclusively for the European market. This means that the U.S. customers will have to wait for a while. Most likely, the devices will be released in the U.S. during Mobile World Congress 2012. This major event promising to give a large workspace for Nokia reps, will be held on February 27 – March 1 in Barcelona. So only after this event Nokia will ship WP handsets to U.S. carriers and retailers.

It’s really sad that the U.S. customers will have to wait for about 5 more months to get Nokia’s first WP7 device, but it’s a great chance to learn more about the handset from the European customer reviews. Besides, if something is wrong with the original device, all the problems will already be fixed by the time it goes to the U.S., so the U.S. customers will get an improved device

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I guess the fans of the Nokia 3D World Gaze are really excited to learn about a new update of the application from Nokia Beta Labs. Thanks to the update you can now use the pinch-and-zoom and smoother scroll down capabilities!

Among the rest of the interesting changes we have a new Setting panel. You can get access to this new feature using the swipe technology. The setting panel will help to change the distance dimensions from the usual kilometers to miles.

The application comes with an interesting Previewer feature. It is designed to show the location of specific items. For the territory of the U.S. the users can get an accurate information, e.g. state, street, address with the help of the Geonames, for the rest of the territories even the items with the titles will appear with the name of the authors. And from now on the nearest city will also be mentioned on the map.

This experimental application from Nokia Beta labs allows to have a close-up look at the “insides” of the planet and the world around you. Here you can have a look at the physical locations in their real dimensions, find the necessary data about specific locations, such as day and night regions, current location of the sun and much more.

The application comes with a unique icon to fit the overall design of Symbian Anna.

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It seems like the Nokia N9 will be available via one of the major retailer, Carphone Warehouse, which owns mobiles.co.uk. At the moment, the price and the release date of the N9 remain known, but on the webpage devoted to the device you can leave your e-mail address. Carphone Warehouse promises to send you any kind of information about the Nokia N9 as soon as it’s available.

The list of countries where the model will be officially available via the online retailer includes Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Malaysia, New Zealand, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.

In addition, you will find the following countries on Nokia’s website: Italy, Philippines, Indonesia, Belgium, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Czech Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Thailand and Norway.

The Nokia N9 is a cool smartphone running MeeGo operating system. With great design, the Nokia N9 is a winning combination of form and functionality. The new model comes with a 3.9-inch touchscreen display, 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, LED flash and 720p HD video recording capabilities, 16GB of internal memory for storage, 1GB of RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HSDPA and built-in navigation system.

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Last year we thought Nokia was going to release several MeeGo-based smartphones. But later we learned that the Nokia N9 was going to be the only MeeGo device of the company. Before it’s released, I would like to write a Nokia N9 preview to understand what specs, what advantages and what shortcomings this upcoming Nokia smartphone has.

Design

The Nokia N9 comes with an innovative design. So far all Nokia devices had at least a few buttons on the display, but the Nokia N9 is an exception — it comes with a blank screen totally relying on the touchscreen capabilities. I think this was a good chance for Nokia to work over the Swype technology to make it as perfect as possible.

Anyway, there are still three buttons on the side of the device, one of them is definitely for the camera, but the functions of the other two are yet unknown.

The homescreen menu gives a chance to store more icons, so it seems to be rather good. The color versions of the device are rather interesting, too. Instead of the classical green and silver, we get black, magenta and cyan versions.

Display

The Nokia N9 is equipped with a 3.9-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of  480 × 854. It’s rather small — a blank screen with no buttons should’ve provided a larger display… Still this is a good choice for those who enjoy watching videos on their handsets. The device comes with ClearBlack technology, which makes the colors look even brighter. Besides, the display is protected by the famous Gorilla Glass Technology.

Hardware

The CPU packaging of the handset is going to include 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, PowerVR SGX530 GPU, TI OMAP 3630 chipset, which will allow the users to get most out of their device, including such features as fast web-browsing and high-quality display.

The most disappointing thing in the device is perhaps its battery. There’s a rumor that it will be a standard 1450mAh battery, which will not be strong enough to support a long run of the device, so the users will have to get an additional battery.

There are two versions of the Nokia N9 — 16GB and 64GB, while the RAM and ROM capacities are going to be correspondingly 1GB and 512MB for both of the versions. And there’s unluckily no chance for expanding the memory due to the absence of the microSD card slots.

Camera

The camera of the Nokia N9 is going to be 8MP with a list of improvements and nice features. Instead of the previous 3MP usage for the widescreen mode, the users will now sacrifice only 1.6 megapixel of it. You are getting 8.7 million active pixels supporting 1.45:1 aspect ratio, which is ideal for shooting in 4:3 and 16:3 modes. The second optimization is not only the use of the Carl Zeiss lens, but the idea of having it with its largest aperture.

That’s why the shots of the Nokia N9 are expected to be around 75 percent brighter than those of the Nokia N8. And finally we have the Xenon LED Flash with a 20 percent improved performance.

Software

The Nokia N9 comes with a list of interesting and useful applications and features. Most of them come available straight from the display with interesting and elegant icons. This makes the applications even easier to use with a quick access.

Homescreen

MeeGo OS allows to have 3 different options of homescreen — “Events,” “Applications” and “Open Apps.” The first one is designed to demonstrate the social networking alerts (including pre-installed Skype, Facebook, GoogleTalk and Twitter) and system notifications. The second one is for those who are spending most of their time on apps, allowing the user to customize various apps on the homescreen in a desired order. And finally, the “Open Apps” feature is rumored to deal with a list of third-party apps, which didn’t get the chance to get placed among the basic applications of the handset.

Apps

RSS Feeds

This application will help the customers to be updated about what’s goin’ on around. The system of the features is as simple as in case of the typical PCs. You should head to the websites you want to get the updates from and subscribe. Then all of these news will appear on your screen in the chronological order, similar to one for Facebook news feed.

Email App

This is an ideal option for all those who have multiple email accounts. Sometimes it’s too hard to have a quick shift between them. This application allows to use your email accounts simultaneously. You just need to head back to the homescreen and go to the account that you need at the moment. The application also seems to be good for working with the email attachments.

Notes

The idea of making notes for not forgetting your duties is really fun in this application. Here you can use various font styles and colors for different events. The application has an icon on the homescreen, which means that you can always have quick notes if required.

Availability

The Nokia N9 was rumored to come with a “worldwide edition.” But afterwards Nokia changed its mind removing the device from a list of countries, including even such territories as the U.S., Germany, the UK, Switzerland and Austria. Those countries are going to wait for Windows Phone devices from Nokia. Meanwhile such countries as Russia and Khazakhstan are going to get the device! Still both in the UK and U.S. some retailers will offer the unlocked version of the handset.

The price for the unlocked version from Amazon is rumored to be $650 and $500 correspondingly for the 16 GB and 64GB options.

Pros

• Swype technology
• Gorilla Glass technology
• 8MP camera

Cons

• Small display
• No physical keyboard
• Limited availability

Conclusion

The Nokia N9 is a great device featuring MeeGo “Harmattan” build. This is the first buttonless device from Nokia coming with great Swype technology and great features. It comes with interesting color options and seems to be cheaper than most of the other smartphones with the same features. Nokia has promised to release updates for its only MeeGo-based device, so you shouldn’t be afraid that the smartphone will be forgotten.

So… I guess the Nokia N9 is a good device worth being bought when it’s released!