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The Nokia N9: What The People Want
By Phil Barker on June 24,
 2010 at 00:00,

What should the next Nokia N900 featureWe’ve been thinking a lot about the next Nokia N900 – or Nokia N9, as it will likely be called – and the features we’d like to see from this range-topping handset. We also asked for our readers’ feedback, however, so join us after the cut to find out what the public wants from the Nokia N9...

The Nokia N9 will sit in the range above the high-end Nokia N8, and will most likely be the replacement for the excellent Nokia N900. The Nokia N900 currently features the Open Source Maemo operating system, but with this being replaced by MeeGo it’s likely that the Nokia N9 will also feature MeeGo. What else would you like to see?

Reader Vivek points out that the Nokia N900 “is the world’s greatest mobile device”, but that updates should include a camera resolution of more than 8-Megapixels, and a front facing camera with a 2 or 3- Megapixel resolution for crystal clear video calls.

We’re big fans of the Nokia N900’s hardware QWERTY keypad, and it seems like Vivek agrees that the Nokia N9 should also boast a similar design, stating: “The N9 or next N900 must have a keyboard and perhaps a much better keyboard with more spacing than the N900.”

Dan goes on to sing the Nokia N900’s praises, point out “the Nokia N900 is by far the best handset I’ve ever owned and until a device comes along that improves on everything it does I will not part with it”. Dan also pointed out a love of the resistive keyboard, and the fact it can be used with a stylus.

From the Nokia N900’s replacement, Dan would like to see a MeeGo OS and “similar but slimmer form factor to the N900”. “Keep the keyboard and stylus, improve the cameras and add HDMI.” Hear hear!

Highlighting just how loyal some of the Nokia N900 owners are, it would appear that Mark wouldn’t change a thing hardware wise. He pointed out that he’s happy with the camera, and that he’d really miss the QWERTY keypad if the Nokia N9 did without it.

However, Mark would like a change in software, complaining about the music player interface, and the fact the Nokia N900 doesn’t currently support turn-by-turn navigation in Ovi Maps.

What do you think? We’d still like to hear your opinions – is there anything else you’d like to see featured in the Nokia N9? Leave a comment below and let us know.

Tags: Meego N9 Nokia Nokia N9 Nokia N900
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  • Ali

    Much stronger CPU and RAM, Stronger Camera (HD-720 30 frames is a must!), better front facing camera, less thickness and weight, iodized aluminium and glass surface,,HDMI and DLNA, same storage, keyboard and stylus!! Leave the rest to the app developers!…and then seat back and enjoy how it sells for 2 years !!

  • ibnturab

    Keep the hardware for N9, get rid of Meego/maemo and run it on Android. Who cares about Meego, aside from 10,000 computer programmers ( the only 1000 that are still using n900). Most normal folks (no programmers), want something simple to use and has many applications. Why reinvent the wheel. There is an open OS out there that is working, why not just use that. I love nokia’s hardware, but software is a different story. Symbian was cool from 2003-2008. But now, its a dead.

  • Patrick

    Xenon flash is a must even if it adds a lot of bulk! Without it the phone is almost useless! No more s#!%y LED flash!!! So, physical QWERTY keyboard & Xenon flash pretty please!!! :)

  • Cristian

    1024 x 640 screen resolution,
    4″ screen,
    Multi-touch – 5 simultaneous fingers touch,
    HD 720p video camera,
    DivX playback,
    3D accelaration (Graphic processor),
    HDMI out,
    USB – 2 ports capable of USB sticks, hard-drives, printers and external devices

  • pav

    ‘What the people want’ is a single convergent platform which Nokia is committed to. Looks like Nokia is throwing multiple platforms at its smartphone strategy, is confused and is confusing everyone else. The company continues to dabble with names like M****o – rather than focusing on and communicating user value. As a user am unclear of what M****o means to me. Apps? Experience? More likely a low cost system, widely ignored by developers, to accompany the megapixel bloat.

  • troy mcclure

    I remember when I was at a conference a while back and saw the Nokia my friends were using sending live video to Qik.com and I was floored. Nothing Ive seen since then has awed me as much as that Nokia phone.

    One thing about cameras, megapixels arent as important as quality lense. There is very little need for a 8+meg camera if it has a generic crappy plastic lense. The lense makes a much bigger difference.

    Ive used Moblin up until the name change/merge to MeeGo and thought it moved along very well so I look forwards to seeing this on Nokias flagship phone now that theyve merged with Maemo.

    Pav: its nice to be clueless and proud. Im an average joe and it took me about 4secs to find out more about Maemo and that it merged with Moblin by using G-o-o-g-l-e.
    its pretty simple, in feb of this year Nokia announced that ‘Maemo project would be merging with Moblin to create the MeeGo’.
    So Maemo will now be called MeeGo.

  • mjoa

    @pav – most people don’t give a damn about what the operating system is called as long as it looks great (S^3 with the default theme admittedly doesn’t), works and (to some people) has apps. Nokia has a very good strategy called Qt, which has many many many developers. It’ll start paying off in the next few years. If not, Nokia is probably going to end up being a subsidiary of some other tech company..

    As for the megapixels, it has been mentioned that the pixel size on the N8′s sensor is the same as that on the iPhone’s, there just are 12M of them instead of 5M.

  • Matt

    Well its gonna have to compete with the iPhone 4g so its going to need an epic screen capacitive not resistive and some EPIC software updates.

  • FatBob

    Hardware:
    Better processor, more ram (at least 512MB, hopefully 1GB), a more powerful GPU, Resistive touchscreen with multi-touch capacity (yes, it is possible). Larger screen with higher resolution please?

    Software:
    1. Keep X11! Being able to ssh to my desktop is great, being able to X11 forward apps is even greater. That’s the biggest reason why I got an N900 in the first place. (I’m just hoping they don’t follow Androids lead in taking it out)
    2. Integrated OpenGL – OpenGL ES wrapper. This kinda goes back to X11 forwarding, but also applies to some apps that had Debian armel packages. I want to X11 forward Blender damnit!
    3. Better app store/marketplace. I run linux, I’ve been using linux for a number of years, and Maemo wasn’t difficult for me to adapt to, as far as installing software. But it made is highly difficult to sell software, like many people do on competing platforms, and in general, getting your app out there was somewhat difficult. qt should help alleviate some of this.

  • Bill

    @ ibnturab

    Android thi, Android that. In case you ain\’t noticed, it isn\’t for everyone, it\’s an open source OS YES, but people don\’t neccessarily want to use what the North American market use, Android\’s doing quite poor here in Europe too although quite popular. Plus competition is a good thing, as stated people want variety and eye candy plus something that workds, Android is two of those things (the OS looks a little bland). From what I\’ve seen on the Meego UI, it just looks about as practical to use and blow it out of the water for UI Design, MeeGo is the future for Nokia and maybe for others.

    Ideally the N9 should feature:

    4.8 inch capacititive SUPER AMOLED Display, 16m colours @ 1024×640 res0
    14Mp camera w/ xenon flah and dual led with 20 Optical Zoom w/ 720p HD Video recording (1080) for future version upgrade
    3MP Front facing camera
    64GB of internal memory, 1gb of ram
    2GHZ Processor
    Dual Touchscreen, 1 for the main screen, the other for the keyboard which can also act as game/music/media controls.
    The ability to videochat whilst do another task, or to videochat wih more than 1 person and share location with that friend via realtime tweets/updates/GPS location
    Built in Digital TV with the option for live SKY channels
    3D-HD super graphics for enhaced gaming and for movies (mobile blu ray)

  • Jargi

    @Bill

    Umm… can you supply me with some of whatever it is you’re smoking? 2GHZ processor, 1080p video, 3D graphics, 20x optical zoom… man seriously?

    The rest of the stuff you posted is almost equally ridiculous in this day and age. In 2-3 years, all of that stuff might be a possibility but right now what you see as features that `Ideally the N9 should feature` just plain don`t make sense. Not to mention the fact that today`s cell phone batteries wouldn`t last 2 hours in such a phone, so no that is not even close to what the ideal N9 should look like.

  • raed louzi

    i want it to send music from the media player some of or all my friends want’s me to send from my nokia n900 but i can’t i wish nokia can solve this problem and put it in nokia n9

    thanks for reading my comment for replying my email is r.louzi@hotmail.com or on facebook (raed louzi)

  • Rakib

    I m very much amused by nokia n9. I like it and want it soon for its larg screen and Q keypad and other advantages that it offers. please release it soon. please pls pls. I can’t wait a bit.