The Tizen Store is pretty much everything you expect from a modern App Store, however it does have a couple of novel features. One of them is the ‘Discounted’ section. So if any app is on sale, it will automatically show up there. The performance seemed smooth, and the UI kind of reminds of the Nokia Store on the N9, and parts of Google Play.

Here is a detailed look at the Tizen App Store running on a a Tizen phone:

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The keynote did manage to answer a few of those questions, albeit in not complete detail. Tizen devices are coming this year, but Jong-Deok Choi, EVP, Samsung won’t be more specific. In terms of operator support, Roy Sugimura from NTT DOCOMO has stated that they will be carrying the first Tizen device in the second half of this year. Frederic Dufal, Devices Technical Director for Orange has also announced that they are committed to launching a Tizen project this year (end of summer, Europe only).

• The big change from Tizen 1.0 to the current 2.1 release is the ability to run native apps. Samsung has folded Bada into the platform, although this was not specifically mentioned in the keynote.

• The Tizen Store has been announced, and is open for app developers to submit their apps. Users cannot access it yet.

• Tizen 2 also has an inbuilt security layer, McAfee has contributed to this. 

• A Tizen App Challenge has been announced. Submissions will be accepted June 1 onwards, and a total of 4$ Million is up for grabs. 

• Also big news for gaming enthusiasts, some of the top gaming engines like Unity, Havok, Game Salad are coming to Tizen. 

• NTT DOCOMO will make a Tizen device available in the second half of the year.

• So will Orange. They like Tizen because of its open nature, and HTML5 focus. The launch will be a part of the ‘back to school’ campaign that will start at the end of summer. Europe only for now.

• We also got a look at the in vehicle application of Tizen, Jaguar | Land Rover wants to push the boundaries of what people expect from a in-car Linux based system. A competition to generate ideas, UI elements and functionality is also under way. 

• Finally, the next major release of Tizen will be the big 3.0. Expect this release in 2014 devices. The roadmap for the release isn’t complete yet, and the development will be done openly on Tizen.org. They encourage platform developers and other open source developers to contribute. 

•  There is a tremendous amount of push to bring big name developers to Tizen. Facebook, Angry Birds were named in the keynote. I saw demoes of Gameloft’s Asphalt 7 and Real Golf running on a Tizen reference device, along with games based on the Unity engine, games from Sega, and Opera Mini.

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The way this works in that they have a solution called PAG (Polaris App Generator) that lets the developer upload an Android app (APK) and it converts it into a TPK file that can be installed on the Tizen device. Then to run this modified TPK, you need to have the PAP (Polaris App Player) installed on the phone. Once that’s present, the modified TPK that you just installed will launch inside the PAP, and behave like a native Tizen app.

The company is giving away the Polaris App Player to users for free, in the hope that developers will use their service to deploy their Android apps to Tizen, thus making them money. While I have my doubts about Android Apps ‘officially’ being supported on Tizen, Infraware has a chance of succeeding as they don’t need to be a part of the platform, and have a business model as long as the developers and users are on board. Here is a video of the implementation in action:

While there is a noticeable slow down while running high performance games, most apps should run fine. Although, there will always be the issue of not all UI elements working properly because the app was originally made for Android in mind. The current implementation is based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, so that means none of the ICS and up only apps, will be available. According to the company, PAG can port 80~90% of Android apps to Tizen app without re-compiling. Some examples include games such as Angrybird series, Counter Terrorist, Treasure Detective, Fruit Slice, Drag Racing, Shut Bubble Deluxe, Cut the Rope Free, Air Hockey etc.

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At the Tizen Conference 2013, I got a look at Tizen running on Intel’s Ivy Bridge ultrabook. While the PC release of Tizen is still some time away, the following video should give you a good idea of what to expect in terms of the UI and functionality.

The free to download Tizen images for laptops will be made available through Tizen.org website. While the best platform to run that release would be Ivy Bridge and up, I’m told that work is being done to support older chips and netbooks (in a limited way) as well.

(YouTube link)

Thanks to Patrick from Intel for the demo.

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This is great news for those of you who thought the MeeGo was the way to go for Nokia, but before you get too excited remember that doesn’t meant that your N9 will magically start getting updates from Jolla. That being said, you never know what the community might be able to achieve.

Jolla is here. #MeeGo based smartphones will have a bright, new future. Stay tuned!

— Jolla (@JollaMobile) July 7, 2012

Exciting times if you’re a MeeGo fan.

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The application is still beta so there might be a few bugs here and there, but its a pretty great accomplishment for the community. Head over the Wazapp.IM and download the app.

The lack of a WhatsApp client was a huge blow to the N9, and I hope WhatsApp reaches across to the developer and helps him in his efforts, rather than try and kill the unofficial port.

[via: My Nokia Blog]

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Wazapp is a community port of the hugely popular IM application, and its developer Tarek Galal has realsed a first look video of it running on the N9. The video is proof that the project is progressing nicely, and shows messages being sent and received between the N9 running Wazapp, and a Samsung Android device running the official WhatsApp application.

When is it coming out you wonder? The developer has this to say:

If you cannot wait, a dedicated website for the project has been setup at wazapp.im and you can keep checking in, otherwise rest assured that I’ll let you know once its out. I hope that the makers of Whats App support this development, and not try and kill its functionality with an update to their official clients.

[via: My Nokia Blog]

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When the announcement was first made, an initial release was supposed to come out in Q1 2012, with retail Tizen devices only later in the year. While that hasn’t happened yet, there are promising signs. A visit to HTML5test.com shows that Tizen 1 is well into internal testing and its HTML5 test results are off the charts. It scored a very impressive 408 points, with 15 bonus points. That’s better than Chrome for Mac that manages 400 points with 13 bonus points. A few weeks ago, Tizen was at about 363 points with 15 bonus points. So the development seems to be progressing nicely and the upcoming Tizen Developer Conference scheduled for May 7-9 in San Francisco should be a perfect venue to show it off.

The first annual Tizen Conference engages and educates developers on Tizen technology and HTML5 app development for Tizen devices. This conference is for Tizen developers, app developers, platform designers, operators, OEMs, hardware vendors, software vendors, open source enthusiasts, and anyone engaged in Tizen. The Tizen conference will be hosted at the downtown Hyatt in San Francisco, CA on May 7-9th, 2012.

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Highlights include support for five new languages, face recognition, enhanced copy-paste, software update notifications for applications and games in Nokia Store and folders in the application view. If you own a N950, you can find all the details and download links here.

Here is a slightly more detailed changelog, if you have a time, a complete list of the bugs that have been fixed has also been published.

• New languages
  • Persian
  • Hebrew
  • Kazakh
  • Thai
  • Vietnamese
• Software update notifications for content in Nokia Store
• Face recognition for gallery and face tags for Facebook
• Support for folders in the application view
• Mail for Exchange global address book lookup
• Mail thread support in the Email client
• Extended copy-paste support
• Media sharing with DLNA compatible devices
• Improved browser history view
• Compass support in Maps
• QtWebKit update to version 2.2
• New font taken into use
• Front camera support
• Video editing support in the Gallery application
• MeeGotouch Framework
• Visual hint for differentiating swipe close gesture from normal swipes
• Timestamps shown in notifications
• Notifications sorted by timestamps
• Improvements in Event Feed area
• Music controls in Lock screen
• New feedbacks added to MeeGoTouch theme.
• Kernel updated to be in sync with the upstream kernel version 2.6.32.48

• Connectivity

• Android NDEF Push Protocol disabled
• NFC polling enabled in lock screen
• Separate switch for controlling mobile background connections while roaming

• Camera

• Self Timer support
• Composition grid + on/off control

• Calendar

• Better handling of To-Do lists, recurring events and timezones
• Private flag support for events
• Support for read-only events
• Ability to forward/reply/reply-all for received events

• Clock

• Clock alarm becomes silent by flipping the device face down instead of snoozing
• Updated time picker

• Gallery

• People view added to the grid toolbar
• Improved multiple selection indication in grid view

• Music Player

• Audiobook and podcast support
• Ability to create playlists
• Ability to delete music files from music player library views via object menu
• Possibility to see songs that are on the current play queue

[via: My Nokia Blog]

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In this post I have complied a list of must have apps for the N9, all of which are free. Most of these apps are available from the Nokia Store and clicking on the name should take you to the download page. Lets get started.

• DropN9: As the name suggests, its a Dropbox client for the Nokia N9. The app lets you download and upload filed in multiples and is a must have if you are a dropbox user.

• Internet Radio: An neat little Internet Radio app for the N9, that features a UI is similar to the default music player with album art being replaced by cover art for the featured radio stations. Discovery is helped along by ‘Hot Picks’, Locations, Language and Genre sections. Detailed post here.

• Phone Torch: No frills app that lets you use the inbuilt LED flash as a torch. Launch the app and it immediately turns on the LED and exiting the app closes it.

• Photo Enhancer: A free app from Nokia that lets you put filters on images and then share them. There are a bunch of options available like sepia, grayscale, high contrast and so on.

• Simple Mirror: There is no way to use the front camera on the N9, unless you are making a video call. But if you would like to use the device as a mirror, does the job well.

• gPodder:  A great podcast client with full integration to the gpodder.net web service and a unique user interface, supporting YouTube and Soundcloud feeds in addition to normal audio and video podcast feeds. gPodder will help you manage and synchronize your podcast subscription and listening status (including resuming, streaming and downloading). Discover new, free content via gpodder.net’s podcast directory.

• File Manager: The N9 comes without an inbuilt file manager and the this free apps fills in perfectly. Its light weight and does everything you would expect from an app of this nature.

• Battery Usage: This app mimics the battery usage graph that you may have seen on Android devices. In addition to telling you which app eats how much battery, it can also tell you how much of that battery was consumed in the background and how much was drained while the app was actually in use. This will help you decide if you can leave the app running or whether you should exit everytime you are done with it.

• City Scene: The app lets you explore a bunch of cities in the US and Europe in 3D, much like Google Street view, but with a few extra features.

Shortcuts: The N9 has a set of 4 quick access shortcuts which you can bring up by swiping up for a short distance and holding it there. The problem is that you cannot change these without an app. Enter Shortcuts which lets you change the four of these by simply dragging an app of your choice to the current location of the shortcut.

Ionic: An ebook reader for the N9 that supports the EPUB format. It supports navigation by swipe or the volume keys, display themes, brightness control, orientation locking at many more. Create bookmarks with notes, jump to bookmarks or chapters. The Library feature allows ordering books by author or title, inspecting book details, and importing books downloaded from the web.

Sports Tracker: A long favourite of Nokia users, Sports Tracker lets you track and analyze your workouts, share workout data and photos with your friends. You can also track everything online on the developer’s website.

• ScreenshotMee: It lets you take screenshots using the proximity sensor, just activate the app in the background, navigate to the screen you want to capture and cover the proximity sensor on the top right of the device. Then you can choose to save the screengrab or take a new one.

• Photo Frame: Another app published by Nokia that lets you frame pictures and then share them. There are a bunch of frames available.

• Rainbow Brush: Brilliant photo manipulation app,  it lets you quickly and easily give photos a dramatic look by converting them to black and white, while keeping your chosen details in color. This effect draws the viewer’s attention to the colored areas, creating striking images. You simply use your finger as a brush to remove or bring back the original color from regions of your image. You can zoom in or out to ensure your get the right finish. Highly recommended.

• FlickrUp: A great tool to upload a bunch of pictures to Flickr, you can create photosets, define the resolution, set privacy settings in addition to adding tags and descriptions. Has a pretty UI as well.

• Mes Input: An app that lets you add different keyboard to the N9. Like with Swype, you can swipe from the edge to switch between them. For example, I have a keyboard which gives me quick access to smileys, similarly there are a bunch of other options available. You can even create your own keyboard at www.mesinput.com and use this app to install it on the phone.

• Resource Monitor: As the name suggests, this app lets you keep track of the resources that are being used on your device. You can switch between different views that show RAM, Storage and Processes.

• Date Event: The N9’s events screen shows news, Facebook and twitter streams, but it does not show your upcoming calendar entries and that’s where this app comes in. It displays upcoming entries on the events screen and lets you choose which calendar to pull them from. You can also select the number of days it should show entries from. It is still being developed and isn’t in the Nokia Store, get it here directly .

• 3D World Gaze: Cool app for exploring the world around you, built with the premise that the Earth is a giant sphere and we are always on top of it. What follows is that far-away continents and cities are in reality somewhere below you and not linear, like we usually think of them. Detailed write up and video demo here.

So these were my top 20 free apps for the N9/N950. I’m sure I’ve missed out on quite a few other awesome apps, please let me know in the comments section or on Twitter and I’ll do a follow up post!

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It isn’t activated out of the box, so you need to goto Settings> Time and Language> Text Input and enable it first. Then you can swipe away the default N9 keyboard and switch to swype (all of this is demoed in the video below).

As you can see, the keys are nicely spaced out furthering Swype’s goal to be both a ‘Swype’ keyboard and a good thumb type board at the same it. There’s inbuilt auto correction, word prediction and a bunch of other options. We go through everything in the video below.

(Available in HD)

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Along with the update, a bunch of pre-loaded applications including Twitter, Facebook, Store, Ovi Music, Galaxy on Fire 2, Nokia Drive, Angry Birds, AccuWeather, NFS Shift, Real Golf 2011 and the User Guide have also been updated.

It is possible that the update isn’t available for all product codes just yet. But if your device hasn’t informed you of the updated already, you can go to Settings>Applications>Manage Applications>Updates and check for updates manually.

The updated Twitter application should bring the ability to Twitpic images, something we have missed since the start. The Facebook client gets a few bug fixes too.

Once downloaded, the update seems to take a while to install so make sure you have enough free time before you begin the update.

[Update: Find the Swype for N9 hand-on video here].

The official changelog:

• NFC tag reading to instantly interact with NFC tags
• Music controls on lock screen
• Photo and video shooting with color filters: black & white, sepia, vivid, negative, solarize
• More powerful multitasking with improved memory handling
• Swype for fast typing
• Faster MfE synch, synchronizing only active folders
• Noice cancellation reduces background noise so that your friends hear you better
• Close apps easily with swiping down, this now on by default
• New indicators for standby screen like charging and calendar
• Pre-loaded apps including: Twitter, Nokia Store, Facebook, Real Golf, Ovi Music, Galaxy on Fire 2, Nokia Drive, Angry Birds NFC, AccuWTwitter, Nokia Maps and the User Guide have also been updated.

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Once installed, curiously the app is called ‘IP Radio’. The UI is similar to the default music player with album art being replaced by cover art for the featured radio stations. This is followed by a ‘Hot Picks’ tab, Locations, Language and Genre. Needless to say, you sort a ton of pre-loaded stations by region, language or genre, and this makes discovery a real breeze.

If you like a station you’ve listened to, you can favourite it for quick retrieval. You can also search for more stations and finally tapping that man in the bottom right corner takes you to your history, neat. I’ve been playing with the app for a little while and it feels very polished.  I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending that you download it, just watch your data connection!

In case you have any problems downloading, you can use this method to download the .deb to your desktop and try side loading the app.

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So how it works is that you simply point your phone in a direction and it lets you see through the surface (and insides) of the planet all the way to the other side. You can use it to explore your immediate surroundings or fly to any part of the world. In addition to geographical features such as continents in their real physical locations, Nokia 3D World Gaze allows you to see geotagged media, day and night regions, current location of the Sun, and other content from locations around the world.

So while looking at an area of the world, you can tap the pictures button to see pictures from that region or the latest news. The N9 version even features Wikitravel searches based on city name. Have a look at the demo to see how it actually works.

The application has just become available for the Nokia N9 on Nokia’s Beta Labs and has been available for Symbian devices for a sort while now. Try it here.

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Soon enough, Nokia Connections came and Nokia unveiled the N9. The reaction to that device was incredible, ranging from people calling for Elop’s head because of his decision to kill MeeGo, to calmer, saner voices wondering if Nokia should keep the MeeGo project going, if for nothing but just to keep Microsoft in check. Then we found out that the N9 would only be available in a handful of countries, the world was literally shocked. It made no sense, why release a product at all if you weren’t going to ship it to major markets such as UK, India, US among others. While the world waited and hoped that Nokia would reconsider, another thing happened.

A device code named Sea Ray, which we now know as the Lumia 800 leaked. Infact, Stephen Elop’s entire presentation to the employees, which was supposed to be shared on the company intranet, got out. Some called it a controlled leak, while most just took the device in and didn’t care as long as the could look at an unreleased Nokia phone, specially a secret Nokia Windows Phone. The result was that a lot of the chants of ‘bring the N9 to my country’ stopped. Nokia’s policy was finally beginning to make sense, they weren’t going to release a device that looked just like the N9 in the same market as the N9, specially when that device would define their foray into the Windows Phone market.

The N9 shipped to positive reviews, mine included, but the consensus among the reviews clearly was that as much as they loved the device, they couldn’t honestly recommend the N9 to someone knowing that the Sea Ray was around the corner. But the N9’s core strengths really came through, a breath-taking design, a unique yet intuitive UI that made sense, and judging by the Maps and browser, Nokia could do software.

Finally, last week the Lumia 800 was revealed at Nokia’s megaevent with literally thousands watching. The stock market liked what they saw and the Nokia stock started climbing. A did a quick hands on and unboxing and then two days later a much more through (p)review. I really seemed to like the device.

This is when we all wondered, if we had not seen the N9 before would we have loved the Lumia 800 even more? The short answer to that question for me is yes. When you first look at that design, most people go head over heels over it and if Stephen Elop got on stage at Nokia World and showed off that design for the first time, we’d have had an even bigger WOW.

Now for the long answer, knowing that the Sea Ray was coming, should Nokia have released the N9? I’d again say yes. Why? First and foremost, the people in the countries where the Lumia 800 is going on sale haven’t seen the N9. So for a vast majority the design is fresh, new and amazing. The minuscule minority, which has seen the design before will still love it, its still less than two months old in the real world and Windows Phone doesn’t make it any less pretty. Infact, I’d say that the jazzy WP UI is a great match to the N9’s physical design.

Next, in various interview Elop’s stated that it was a great platform for Nokia to learn from, see what people like and go on from there. He’s made it clear that none of the N9’s strength’s are going away. We’ve already seen the design used with the Lumia 800, Qt is coming to the next billion and the Swipe UI will apparently make its way to Meltemi, Nokia’s now not so secret platform for low-mid range devices.

Finally, the period between February to October was long and painful. Nokia was bleeding marketshare and on top of that mindshare, which we all know can be as bad as loosing marketshare. The N9 showed the world that innovation was still alive and well at Nokia and that the Finnish giant was far from dead. The message was imagine if this is what we can do alone, think about what we’ll do with Windows Phone in a few months.

At the end of the day, the glory period for the N9 is over. Its all about the Lumia 800 now, no matter how you feel about open source versus the closed Windows Phone platform, its water under the bridge. With the marketing blitz planned for Windows Phone devices, only the die hards will cherish the N9 and don’t get me wrong, it’s a device meant to be cherished. The N9 will keep selling in countries where the Lumia 800 isn’t shipping as yet and I’m sure Nokia will provide great support for it, but its time for the Lumia 800 to hold the Nokia torch.

The N9 will remain a crown jewel in Nokia’s arsenal, a hacker’s phone, a Qt device to help prime the developers for the next billion. So I don’t fault Nokia for announcing it and then the Lumia 800, look at what Apple did with the iPhone 4 and 4S, those things even run the same OS! The N950 would never have been able to generate the kind of buzz for Nokia that the N9 did, it bided time for the transition and it was never a lost cause. Nokia’s goals with the N9 were just, lets say, different.

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This time, we delve a little deeper into the N9’s Swipe UI, go over some of its settings and look at the best ways to setup the N9 for daily use.

I also look at two must have applications for the N9, Swipe Manager and Shortcuts. Swipe Manager brings consistency to your swipes and with the ability to define what action each directional swipe does. For example, you can set it to open the app drawer if you swipe from bottom to top, events view if you swipe from right to left and so on. This makes sure that no matter what you want to do, close an app, goto the launcher, the app switcher or the events view, everything is just a single swipe away.

Next is Shortcuts, it lets you change the four default quick access app on the N9, which the phone won’t let you change otherwise.

What follows is the ten minutes with the Nokia N9 video:

Want me to cover something specifically? Let me know in the comments section below!

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With that in mind, I put together a little unboxing video (available in HD) for you. In addition to the obvious unboxing, I give you a bit of an overview of the product along with a look at the rubber case that Nokia ships with it. Also included in the box are brand new accessories that Nokia specially designed for the N9, all of which look great.

That aside here a few quick initial impressions as precursor to the detailed review which will follow:

• The N9, owing to the unibody design and the polycarbonate finish feels incredibly solid in the hand. Since there are literally no moving parts, it feels great in the hand.

• The display on the N9 is terrific, the screen very close to the surface of the glass and it feels as if you’re touching it directly; almost makes you feel like its floating on top. Easily gives the Super AMOLED Plus on the Galaxy S2 a run for its money, and because its almost the same resolution on a smaller screen (3.9″ v 4.3″), its a lot more crisp.

• The phone feels responsive, and you’re at home with the Swipe UI in a matter of minutes. Its very intuitive and makes you wonder why nobody else thought of it before. Enabling swipe down to close an app from the settings is recommended, it makes the experience better. There are two more apps that help tremendously, Swipe Manager and My Moves, more on them later.

• The camera is FAST. The shot to shot time is incredible and you want to keep taking pictures once you get going.

• The pre-loaded Twitter and Facebook apps are capable, they cover all the bases. The only thing missing is the ability to share pictures on Twitter and that ability is apparently coming in a future update.

• The out of box service support is great, you can directly upload to Flickr or YouTube. Have multiple Mail for Exchange accounts, other email accounts, and even make Skype calls from the dialer itself. There is also support for IMs on Facebook, Skype and Gtalk.

• The N9 makes it hard for you to find a fault with it, if you forget the direction Nokia is going in for a minute.

Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below, or on Twitter @v4ibhav.

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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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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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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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