Nokia’s Ideas Project is looking for your feedback on the N9 user interface and is offering 10 Nokia N9 smartphones in return. They are looking for ideas to improve some of the key features shown off in this video and other innovative ideas for the next generation of mobile touch screen devices.

So if the N9 isn’t launching in your country and you were looking forward to one, here’s your chance. Head over to the Ideas Project and start brainstorming. The ideas will be reviewed by Nokia’s interface designers and 10 winners will get a N9 each.

Timeline:

• Begins: October 12, 2011 at 09.00am EET (GMT+2)
• Ends: November 15, 2011 at 5pm EET (GMT+2)

Panel of judges:

• Nikki Barton, Vice President, Smart Devices UX Design, Nokia
• Peter Skillman, Vice President, Services ＆ MeeGo Design, Nokia
• Anton Fahlgren, Senior Design Manager, Nokia

Challenge hosts:

• Ronan MacLaverty, Developer Advocate, MeeGo
• Heli Haapkylä, Manager, Crowdsourcing, Nokia

Good luck!

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Here’s some more good news for prospective N9 owners, the popular Sports Tracker app is also coming to MeeGo and the Nokia N9. While the app is expected to be released in November, the developers have already shared a few screenshots of what it looks like, and I have to say it’ll be one of the better looking apps on the N9.

The Sports Tracker app on the N9 will feature all the tracking capabilities you’ve come to expect from Sports Tracker and also support for the new Sports Tracker Heart Rate Monitor. It you’re keen on keep up with the developers, you can follow them on  Twitter and Facebook.

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The popular is video playback tool VLC is coming to the Nokia N9, and if you’re willing to use beta pre-release software, then its here already. The app is still in the early phase of development, but if you’re itching to play that seemingly unsupported codec on your shiny N9 or N950, then there’s hope.

However, there are a few known issues like the fact that the UI is isn’t optmised for the phone, so its tedious work. Hardware-accelerated video decoding is not supported (however, color space conversion and scaling are hardware-accelerated). So its best not to throw those HD videos at it yet.

If you’re feeling courageous, head over to this page and you’ll find all the instructions you need to download and install the app.

Hat tip to @nsuffys for the find.

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In some very big news coming on the sidelines of Intel’s AppUp Elements Conference, the LiMo Foundation and the Linux Foundation today announced a new open source project, Tizen, to develop a Linux-based device software platform. Tizen will be a standards-based, cross-architecture software platform which supports multiple device categories including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

Nokia Conversations has just let word slip that the Nokia N9 is now well and truly on its way to consumers around the world at an unsubsidized price of EUR 480 for the 16GB and EUR 560 for the 64 GB variant. Sadly there are no specifics about which countries are getting the device, so you will still need to visit your local stores to find out.

The only thing that’s certain is that the N9 will soon start popping up in the wild and you will start seeing more and more unboxing videos. Nokia had opened pre-orders in certain countries a couple of weeks back and consumer demand seemed to have been huge, with the Finnish pre-orders threatening to exceed the supply.

In another post, Nokia while promising future software support for the device states that ‘The first updates will be based on feedback received from operators and consumers and they make the device even more intuitive than before. The availability and content of the updates will be communicated closer to the download start‘.

While it seems the N9 will not be coming to a lot of the major markets around the world,  you should be able to import the device from other markets very soon. With Nokia World and the first Nokia Windows Phones under a month away, are you considering getting the N9?

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The best foursquare app for Symbian and MeeGo Harmattan devices (N9/N950) has just received an update that brings with it the ability to view photos associated with the venue and read and leave tips. You cannot add photos yet, but hopefully that’s coming in the next version.

Apart from that it now also remembers your search history and adds some UI modifications to make the app look even more pretty. If you are using a N950 or a N9, the 4squick experience should be better for you, although UI is still directly from Symbian^3 build so everything is a bit small due to the higher resolution in Harmattan.

Changelog:

• Venue photos support
• Tips support
  • Read venue tips
  • Add a new tip
  • Share added tip to Twitter and Facebook
  • Mark tips as todo / done
• Search history with top searches
• Multiple fixes and UI modifications
• A bit better Harmattan experience

4squick isn’t available on the Ovi Store yet, but you get get the .sis or .deb file from the download page. If you are new to 4squick, check out the video demo we did last month.

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Nokia has rolled out a beta of the Ovi Store for the developer only Nokia N950. While the release is still beta, it does give us an idea of what the Ovi Store will look like on the not so widely available Nokia N9. The design of the store is based on the MeeGo Harmattan UI that can be seen on the rest of the device with certain similarities with the Ovi Store on Symbian.

The N950 will find the Ovi Store automatically, but if you don’t see it, you can go to settings, applications and check for updates. Since the client is beta and the developer devices aren’t upto speed with the internal Nokia firmwares, there might be a few applications that have installation issues.

Most of the available applications will work on your N950 and existing publicly available firmware (1.2011.22-6). However, there are a few applications in OVI Store that are created with newer pre-production SDK that may fail to install in your device for now. These applications will work also on your device after we have the next SW update available. If a downloaded application does not install, your download history in Ovi Store means that once you have the newer firmware you can download/install the application.

I’m surprised Nokia is still calling it the Ovi Store, after killing the Ovi brand a few months ago. My Nokia Blog a bunch of screenshots if you’re keen on checking the store out in a little more detail.

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Online retailer Indiaplaza has listed the Nokia N9 on its website, with an expected availability date of October 2011. They’ve even gone on to list the price at a cool Rs. 32,368 which translates to a little over 700$. There is no word on whether this is the price for the 16 GB version or the 64 GB black variant.

But before you get your hopes up, for all we know the Indiaplaza page might just be a placeholder or something they’ve put up to draw more visitors. A quick query on Twitter told me that Indiaplaza’s reputation isn’t right up there with the best, so take this with a pinch of salt.

That being said, the N9 India page does say that the device will have manufacturer’s warranty and that means Indiaplaza will not be importing and selling the N9 on their own, but officially via Nokia.

The markets for the N9 have increased since the initial 23 country announcement and we’ve had reason to suspect that the N9 might be coming to India. The N900 came to India very late in the product’s life cycle, here’s hoping Nokia won’t make the same mistake twice.

Thanks for the tip, Avinash Shenoy.

[Update: It seems that the N9 has disappeared from India Plaza's website. So much for that].

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The popular and perhaps the best Facebook client for Symbian devices, fMobi is now available for the Nokia N900 as well. The full featured client packs in all the Facebook functionality that you would want like notifications, access to the news feeds, messages and even chat.

It features:

• News feed
• Chat
• Profile
• User info
• Messages
• Check In / Places
• Sound notifications
• Top Friends
• Liked Pages
• Groups
• Events
• Commenting / Liking
• View comments / likes
• Albums / Photos
• Notifications
• Landscape / Portrait
• Black / White theme

fMobi on the N900 (Maemo 5) comes with the chat functionality disabled out of the box, and because this is the first release there might be some connection popup issues if you don’t have a network connection and you enable chat. You can give feedback here, and download the .deb fMobi file for the N900 from this link.

That’s not all, here is something for you N950 and prospective N9 owners, fMobi is also coming to MeeGo soon.

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We finally have official word on when the Nokia N9 will launch – 49 days from today. The official countdown has gone live on the Nokia Sweden N9 page, so the launch date will probably be just valid for Sweden, but it does give us a pretty accurate estimate of when we can expect the device in other parts of the world.

Nokia Sweden has been at the fore-front of N9 marketing, they’re even giving 30 N9′s away. There is still no clarity on the which countries will get the N9, but we now know that the list has grown from the original 23 and includes South Africa, Italy, Brazil etc.

[via: Engadget]

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