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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When Nokia’s move to MeeGo was first announced, the burning question on everyone’s mind was whether the N900 would get MeeGo or not? The answer to that was that Nokia would not be officially updating the N900 to MeeGo, but the community would probably get something working.

Then Feb 11, 2011 happened. There was still no Nokia MeeGo device in the market and anticipation grew over what would happen next.

But fortunately for the community, the N900 MeeGo Developer Edition was announced and on 22 March the DE development kicked off and at the MeeGo Conference, the MeeGo 1.2 Developer Edition is available for download. Its not meant to replace Maemo 5, but all the basics functions such as cameras, making calls etc work. In terms of applications there are Opera 11, TwimGo (Twitter), Gluon, Extras client, XBMC, Marble and others.

But before we get to the video (embedded at the bottom of the page), here are some screens from the N900 MeeGo 1.2 DE Session.

Finally, here’s the video.

The cool bit is the the MeeGo for tablets release also runs on a device which is essentially 3 years old. Its hardly functional because of the low memory, but a good proof of concept nevertheless.

You can get the release and all the instructions you’ll need here. Installing it will void your warranty though.

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In what should come as great news for anyone who is familiar with application, Swype will come integrated at the platform on MeeGo tablets as the default text input mechanism. The latest MeeGo 1.2 build that just came out a few days ago incorporates Swype to give you a much better text entry experience on MeeGo.

I caught up with Peter Hargarten of Swype, at the MeeGo Conference exhibit hall and he was kind enough to give us a demo of how Swype works on MeeGo. The device is an EXOPC running MeeGo 1.2.

The people at Swype are working hard to make Swype for MeeGo even better, and as things stand, Swype comes integrated with MeeGo releases and the updates to the application will coincide with subsequent MeeGo releases.

Needless to say, Swype is a great keyboard which lets you swipe to enter text, or even use it as a regular keyboard. While Swype for MeeGo isn’t as feature rich as it is for some of the other platforms, I do look forward to future updates that will hopefully bring the experience on par.

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• MeeGo Gets A Second Conference: May 23-25 In San Francisco

We are just hours away from the start of the second MeeGo Conference, the first having been taken place in November, at Dublin. Unlike the last one, the spring conference promises to be focused on a the global direction MeeGo is taking in addition to the technical sessions for the developers. How much of that can be realized remains to be seen in light of Nokia’s recent shift towards Windows Phone as its primary operating system, but one thing is very clear, Intel still remains committed to the OS, and will be looking at other phone manufacturers, perhaps LG, to fill the void that Nokia’s exit has left.

This will probably mean that we are now looking at 2012 at the time when commercial MeeGo smartphones being to pick up, however, in orders to gain developers, Intel will be aggressive conducting their ‘Intel AppUp Application Labs‘ through the world, with events in Hyderrabad, Chennai, Barcelona, Paris, Munich, Pune and Delhi already in place over the next two months.

In terms of interest, the spring MeeGo Conference has seen about 1200 registrations and while there are clearly doubts in people’s minds about how MeeGo will progress from here on, there is still an encouraging level of developer interest. The conference will kick off with an keynote titled ‘The Future of MeeGo Starts Now’, hosted by Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at The Linux Foundation and promises to give a better picture of where MeeGo stands today.

A lot of sessions over the next three days will be streamed live, so you can keep on top of things wherever you are. Here is the detailed schedule and the dedicated live stream.

I will also be tweeting from the floor @TheHandheldBlog and you can also follow me on @v4ibhav for general happenings around the MeeGo Conference.

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The MeeGo 1.2 release is now available, well in time for the MeeGo Conference that kicks off on Monday. This update promises to provide a solid baseline for device vendors and developers to start creating software for various device categories on Intel Atom and ARMv7 architectures.

(N900 MeeGo 1.2 DE, Boot Splash)

If you are looking to for an update for your N900, then there is good news. While there are vanilla MeeGo 1.2 images available for the N900, it’ll make much more sense for you to try the N900 Developer Edition release that has additional applications, contributions and fixes.

While the final release will happen at the MeeGo Conference, you can still try the final release candidate here. If you are attending the MeeGo Conference, then make sure to attend the N900 MeeGo 1.2 DE Session. If you are not, you can still catch the live streaming of this session on May 25, 9:50 AM San Francisco time.

Back to the general MeeGo 1.2 release, on the UX and MeeGo SDK front we now have:

• Netbook UX 1.2 complete set of core applications for netbooks.
• In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) UX 1.2.
• Tablet Developer Preview.
• MeeGo SDK 1.2 for MeeGo Core OS and supported UXs.

Make sure to check out the post on MeeGo.com for more details. MeeGo development continues forward on a six-month cadence, so you can expect MeeGo 1.3 to be released in October, 2011.

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