Nokia N9: A new talking point

The Nokia N9 has its innovations, but may be a bit of a punt until more is known. Photo / Supplied

Nokia has finally taken the wraps off the successor to its much-troubled N8 mobile phone, and there's no debating it's a gorgeous piece of hardware.

It's got a polycarb unibody with a subtly curved Gorilla Glass screen, some pretty sweet specs, talks to both of our contrary networks over the 850 and 900MHz bands and has nifty tricks like NFC (near field communication) - which allows merely bumping a Nokia Bluetooth headset on the back to pair the two devices. It's good. But there's one glaring problem - MeeGo.

MeeGo is the mobile operating system Nokia should have adopted ages ago, rather than persevering with its clunky, much-maligned Symbian software.

No other phones are running the MeeGo system, so the only thing that will spur useful development of apps - which are a major drawcard for smartphone buyers - is more devices.

Adapting other hardware to run MeeGo won't be a big task for skilled developers - but that's not an approach for mainstream buyers.

But even with the weird MeeGo OS, the N9 performed brilliantly.

It doesn't look like it's going to be high on the wish list for male power users - and judging by the colour and spec decisions, it seems that's all part of the plan.

It will sell in the three colours - black, cyan and magenta, and all will ship with 16GB capacity, except for the noir, which has a 64GB option.

Another "x" against the N9 is that it's only running a 1-GHz ARM processor and a pokey gigabyte of RAM.

That's not a bad spec - but flagship phones now generally sport dual-core processors, like the near-release HTC Sensation. Does this mean the N9 is only the high-end phone until Nokia's WinPhones appear later in 2011?

One very unique part of the 135g monobloc N9 is that it does not have a "home" button on the front.

As it's making fairly obvious overtures to buyers of Android and iPhone devices, it's a good point of difference.

All inputs are made via the crisp 3.9-inch 854x480-pixel touchscreen, which has a revolving carousel - with an app screen that just grows in size and a notification screen that includes recent applications, messages and calls (including Skype) as well as social network updates.

Internet browsing compared to the old Symbian system is a major step up - even demanding sites like the full nzherald.co.nz could be "pinch-zoomed" while rendering, and didn't take an age, even over 3G.

The map app rendered landmark buildings in 3D - complete with main signage - and could be rotated with a "pinch-twist" gesture.

Camera-wise the N9 is pretty capable - with a Carl Zeiss lensed 8-megapixel auto-focus camera on the back, and a front-facing one for video conferencing.

On paper, the N9 looks reasonably strong - although its price tag is yet to be announced.

And until Nokia shows its hand and talks in a bit of detail about its Windows Phone 7 devices and how many phones it intends to keep powering with MeeGo, buying the slick N9 is a bit of a punt.