Cameras is what Nokia does best, the N8 is fair testament to that and the Nokia N9 aspires to mimic the N8 in its quality, but with a much smaller camera footprint that does not protrude from the back and flows in beautifully with the rest of the body. Infact the module of the N9 is 70%(!) smaller than the N8, but according to Nokia, still manages to give the N8 a run for its money.

(click to enlarge)

It packs a f/2.2 aperture, the largest ever in a mobile device, an 8.7 megapixel sensor that lets you shoot in 4:3 and 16:9, with the 16:9 mode actually providing more width, unlike other cameras where the top and bottom is cropped to produce the 16:9 effect. That’s not all, the N9′s camera has pretty long list of other accomplishments that Nokia’s camera guru Damien Dinning shares with us:

• Industry-first imaging sensor which is FULLY optimised for BOTH 16:9 AND 4:3 images
• Industry-leading Carl Zeiss optics
• Super wide-angle optics – the widest in the industry. Up to as much as 60% more viewing area than other broadly comparable devices
• f/2.2 aperture – largest ever in a mobile device
• Extremely responsive, especially switching from stills to video and vice-versa and shot to shot
• Touch AF for both video and stills
• Full time continuous AF in BOTH video and stills plus face detection
• HD video with stereo audio (still one of very few devices that provide high quality audio recording in video)
• Seamless workflows optimised for speed or editing & sharing
• Zoom in to images directly in the post capture view, edit and share all without leaving the camera – the most seamless mobile imaging experience
• Non-destructive editing of images – go back to the original image at any time. Undo or redo edits even months later
• New high power dual LED flash – 20% more powerful than our previous most powerful LED flash despite its compact size
• Geo tagging with place names rather than just co-ordinates
• AMBR – Automatic Motion Blur Reduction
• Not forgetting the touch to share of images between handsets using NFC technology

Impressive to say the least, but I suggest to jump over the the Nokia Conversations blog, and read in detail how everything works. You’ll want an N9 in your hands even sooner.

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HTML5 seems to be the new buzz word for the cool kids, with most manufactures moving from Flash to HTML5 for their video streaming and other needs. So with that in mind, I though it’d be good to see how MeeGo/Harmattan, Android and iOS perform in an HTML5 faceoff.

The devices used for the purpose are an N9, the Galaxy S2 and Apple’s iPad 2. Here is how each of them perform. The tests were done by pointing the browser to html5test.com and noting the score out of a maximum of 450 points. You might be surprised by the results!

Lets start with iOS and the iPad 2, running iOS 4.3.3:

Followed by Android and the Galaxy S2 running Gingerbread 2.3.3:

And finally the MeeGo/Harmattan and the Nokia N9 running pre-release software:

Winner!

Surprised by the results? Its some times hard to believe that Nokia is the same company that makes the Symbian browser! To recap:

1. MeeGo/Harmattan: 283 and 14 bonus points.
2. iOS: 217 and 7 bonus points.
3. Android: 184 and 1 bonus point.

Finally some trivia, the latest Firefox 5 turns in a score of 286 and 9 bonus points, Safari tuns in 253 and 10 bonus points and the Symbian^3 browser, barely manages 36 points!

The Nokia N900 had a great browser and it seems Nokia’s made it even better with the N9!

[Update: Some people will say that its unfair to compare existing products with upcoming ones, and I agree. So for some perspective, as @coolkamio informs me on Twitter, iOS 5 manages a score of 304 + 9].

[Update 2: I've updated the N9 scores, based on the results from the Nokia Conversations post].

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Here is some great news for those of you who love FM transmitters on your Nokia devices, the N9 indeed has support for both an FM transmitter and receiver, the only hitch is that there is no software to take advantage of it, yet.

I personally am a huge fan of FM transmitters on Nokia devices, it is something only they seem to put in smartphones and I would very much like Nokia to keep doing that, its an extremely convenient and wireless way to share music and even the not so technically inclined people love it. FM Radio is also a nice thing to have in case you get bored on your own music collection.

The confirmation comes from Nokia’s very own Quim Gil on the MeeGo Forums. If you recall the Nokia N800, N810 and even the N900 all shipped with an FM receiver, but without software to take advantage of that functionality. I am hoping some of the smart hackers of the community can figure out a way to get these things working by the time the N9 ships commercially.

Major props to @mwkn for the heads up!

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For the loyal N900 users, the community keeps on giving. Fresh in the footsteps of the MeeGo Conference release, comes the Summer Edition of MeeGo goodness for the Nokia N900. MeeGo for the N900 is now called the Community Edition instead of the Developer Edition and the current release concentrates on making everything ‘faster and fancier‘. The focus has been on improving the performance, e.g. the application start-up time and boot up.

There release also brings critical bug fixes to the phone, SMS, browser and camera apps, while adding new apps like Terminal, Package manager and GPRS settings along with a bunch of community applications and an extras client. Click through to this page for more details.

If you are keen on trying it out, head to the N900 MeeGo Community Edition page and get downloading, you will find detailed installation instructions there. If you want to come back to Maemo 5 on the N900 as your only OS, there are instructions for that as well.

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Its been just about 24 hours since Nokia announced the N9 and since then the interwebs have been going crazy with tons of N9 chatter, every small seemingly inconsequential detail is also being lapped up, every hands on scrutinized and people are still hungry for more. Not for a long time has there been so much excitement about a Nokia device, not even the N8 produced the kind of euphoria that has swept across Nokia fans the world over.

It is still early days and the N9 has just been announced, so may be we shouldn’t be reading too much into the check availability page, but from what it currently states, the N9 may only be coming to 23 countries around the world with major markets such as India, US, UK getting a miss.

So far the list is limited to:

1. Australia
2. Austria
3. Bulgaria
4. China
5. Croatia
6. Finland
7. Greece
8. Hong Kong
9. Hungary
10. Malaysia
11. New Zealand
12. Portugal
13. Poland
14. Romania
15. Russia
16. Saudi Arabia
17. Serbia
18. Singapore
19. Slovenia
20. Sweden
21. Switzerland
22. UAE
23. Vietnam

The N900 came to India after ages, months after it was launched in other parts of the world so I could foresee India missing out, in the US Nokia wants a fresh start with operator support so I can understand that decision, but the UK’s exclusion is surprising. Perhaps, they are choosing markets where the operator’s role is underplayed to an extent and the market is more responsive the SIM free devices. But that would make India an ideal platform, where Nokia’s brand is still strong.

May be the list will be updated and the above only represents the countries where the initial rollout takes place, time will tell.

Bringing a device to a country involves huge costs for Nokia, in advertising, promotion, getting the support centers staff trained, repair and so on, and if they plan to sell very little of these ‘proof of concept’ devices, then it makes sesnse to avoid certain countries. But for fans sake, I hope Nokia reconsiders.

You can expect the N9 by the end of Q3, at upwards of the 600 – 750$ (27,000 – 34,000 INR) price bracket for the 16, and 64 GB versions. It will come in Cyan, Magenta and Black.

Further reading: With The N9, Nokia Shows The World Its Still Got It.

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The N9 release is a monumental step for Nokia, it is the culmination of the years Nokia has spent creating a premium high end smartphone that not only excels in hardware, but also shows that when it comes to software, Nokia’s still got it. Feb. 11 changed everything inside of Nokia, yet Nokia’s MeeGo Harmattan project was not killed completely. Perhaps Stephen Elop felt that it would be a good way to demonstrate to the world what Nokia is capable of, or perhaps it was the internal resistance that forced him to release this one last MeeGo Harmattan device, the end result of the sweat and blood of hundreds of Nokians who had devoted themselves to create what in their mind was the pinnacle of modern smartphones.

The Nokia N9 was just announced at Nokia Connection in Singapore, but missing from the action was the leaked N950, which was supposed to be the developer phone. But if you are a developer looking to get your apps ready for the N9, there is hope, the N950 is still very real and will be made available to developers through selected developer programs, such as Nokia Developer LaunchPad.

More information about developing for the N9 can be found here.

[Update]: Another avenue where you can request a unit of the Nokia N950 is via the MeeGo Device Program.

Candidates must be community developers ready to start working on new or existing open source applications, to be published in apps.meego.com and the Nokia Store. Links to your current projects are relevant! Deadline for applications: end of Tuesday, June 28th.

Good luck!

Further reading: With The N9, Nokia Shows The World Its Still Got It.

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Digia is the company that recently acquired commercial licensing and professional services components of Nokia’s Qt software group, so if you can expect someone to make high quality Qt based applications, its them. At the MeeGo Conference, they had a concept eBook application written in QML running on MeeGo tablets, that presents a pretty impressive picture of what you can do with Qt.

The application aims to be not just a eBook reader, but also a recommendation engine and a store to buy books from. While the current application is still in development, it still presents a compelling look at what can be. In terms of deployment, the company is looking at both smartphones and tablets as a market once the application is ready for commercial deployment.

Special thanks to Kari Sievi of Digia for the demo, unfortunately due to the background noise I was forced to do a voiceover later on.

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Nokia Connection is an yearly event that happens in Singapore. Despite being regional in nature, plays host to globally relevant device launches, the biggest of which probably being the Nokia E72 in 2009.

This year its happening June 21-23 at the Marina Bay Sands. What is really getting the anticipation up is the broad proclamation of the event website which says:

“This is an exciting time for Nokia!

A solid strategy is in place and the execution of that strategy has started! Join Nokia Connection 2011 to experience first-hand, the new Nokia ecosystem that will be introduced to the world. This site offers a one-stop location for information on Nokia’s biggest event of the year“.

Biggest event of the year is something Nokia Connection has never been, that title always goes to Nokia World, which in all probability will happen during October at London this year. So what can we expect from an event just 3 weeks away. Lets look at the program:

The CEO will be there talking about the Windows Phone partnership, yes there will be a progress report, but not even the new Nokia can deliver a flagship in 3 months. So what next? New Symbian device? Definitely! Ghz CPU powered? You can count on it!

But what about Nokia’s MeeGo offerings? We were promised Jessie’s Girl in a few weeks, Nokia Connection seems like a perfect venue, specially considering there’s a Nokia Developer Workshop happening at the same time. After spending time at the MeeGo Conference, its clear there are still a ton of people interested in what Nokia has to offer.

Finally we have S40 devices. We might see some of those too, perhaps even dual SIM and Touch Type versions. There’s also talk of ‘related services’ that may be announced alongside the devices, given the new direction Nokia is talking, makes you wonder what it will be? Perhaps Nokia is ready to take the next step with Nokia Money and NFC?

This year Nokia Connection promises to be bigger than it ever has been, I still think Nokia World is Nokia’s prime event, but if its MeeGo what you care about, this one might just be the one you really care about. I really look forward to the announcements, is there something specific you would like to see?

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