Nokia N9 – Meet MeeGo Harmattan
The N9 is an absolutely stunning device – sleek, minimal, with a curved glass front and no visible buttons. What was more shocking, however, was the software. Nokia’s MeeGo ‘Harmattan’, powering the new flagship, was not only good, it was as stunning as the hardware.
This is Nokia’s iPhone; the attention to detail and design ethos is really befitting a modern smartphone platform. The OS feels alive, with UI elements swooping gracefully under your finger, alerts and dialogues popping onscreen with a bounce. The software and hardware feels like it was designed from the ground up together as a seamless whole. Multitasking is performed by swiping a finger from any side across the curved glass screen; notifications from all your services (Facebook, Twitter, mail, etc) have a dedicated section on your homescreen. The design language and iconography is a breath of fresh air. Performance-wise the device screams, as everything is running as native code and the GPU controls everything onscreen (a la Core Animation on iOS).
If you haven’t been paying attention:
1) I hate Nokia
2) I have been gleeful over Nokia’s death spiral
3) Nokia’s N9 makes me eat all of my past words
4) They should keep MeeGo alive because Windows Phone will fail
Previously here:
Mike Cane’s xBlog 