Nokia N9 Countdown

Oh yes. It is in.

The demo units are in Nokia retail stores for public fondling, resting irresistibly. Unfortunately they were tethered to the display table for security and power supply, but even so the N9 does not feel too heavy and sits quite comfortably in the hand.

The casing is polycarbonate has a solid look, not a cheap look, not glossy slippery, relatively fingerprint resistant except for KFC finger licking good situations. It looks exactly like the promotional images, colour is solid all around the beautiful deep black screen. Beneath the glass is a bright AMOLED display which maybe standard in premium smart phones, but Nokia glued it so closely to the glass that the images floats just below the surface.

The Swipe works as advertised, very responsive and accurate. App switching is much more natural than on iOS without having to press a home button and in easy reach of a thumb. One hiccup was the Angry Bird App which didn't show up in the Open App view despite opening and playing a game.

Taking photo is quite easy despite a lack of a dedicated button, the camera app is in the shortcut menu activated with a upward swipe from the bottom of the screen, though a few shots will probably be missed as it still takes time to activate. Focusing distance is pretty close, though not quite like a Ricoh compact.  The bad about it is the position of the lens which is a bit too close to the centre, my fingers kept getting in the way while holding it in a natural grip. Maybe it was because of the security cable, something to be confirmed with a real untethered phone.

Boot up time is a bit long for my patience, but I guess it will be left on most of the time. Something strange happened the second time I tried the phone, one of the unit was slow or non-responsive. It was possible to swipe between the home view, but somehow I could not open the phone app or message app, despite rebooting.

Currently none of the telcos are saying anything, and it is on pre-order only in the Nokia retail shop. For the 64 GB model, it is going for $899 and comes with a free bluetooth NFC enable headset.