Style Wars | Bangkok Post: tech

Not to be left behind by the wave of Android popularity and the force of the iPhone, Nokia has stood up again with an enticing new smartphone release _ the N9. Following in the footsteps of the N8 of late last year, the Finnish manufacturer is once again proving its worth at the top end of the market.

But it's not all roses. On paper, the new offering is underpowered, and it banks a great deal on an operating system that is an unknown commodity _ a gutsy roll of the dice for Nokia.

So let's take a look to see if this gamble might just pay off.

FORM

Out of the box, the N9 is a monolith design made of polycarbonate. The front panel houses slickly curved Gorilla Glass that tapers at the edges. The look is of brushed aluminium, but its unibody is durable and light at 135g. On the flip side, the back curves at the sides as well, making the unit rounded, slippery and, in a word, stylish. Kudos to the Nokia design team here, with notable improvement over the N8, which was smooth but awkwardly featured a bulbous camera housing on the back.

FUNCTION

Inside is a single-core 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, which is less powerful than its peers, as the N8 was, but it shows Nokia has confidence in the efficiency of its OS, and perhaps it should. It's Nokia's most power-loaded phone on the market, and we experienced no lag or jitters.

Outside, the specs are just as good. The 3.9-inch FWVGA AMOLED display with a 854x480 resolution is sleek, almost matching the bragging rights of the iPhone Retina display.

The eight-megapixel Carl Zeiss-lensed autofocus camera with dual-LED flash takes clear and balanced photos, and offers 720p HD video recording, but some have complained of graininess.

The N9 is not quite as committed to image capture as the N8 was, but is adequate for social media and everyday use.

An interesting exclusion is the lack of microSD card slot, which will annoy some but not even be noticed by most, with the option of 16GB or a massive 64GB of built-in flash storage.

The battery is sealed, so no backup option, but it has enough life in it to last a day of heavy use, and even more with modest usage _ better than many of its peers.

Another interesting point of note is the MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan OS. It's an improvement of the Symbian OS on the N8, but a new system is a real gamble here for Nokia. A Linux-based OS seems the way of the future, and if it catches on it will dominate. But (sadly) that's hard to see happening at this stage of the game.

A massive strength of the system is the always-on system for communicating with friends on services such as Skype and Google Talk. This is basically every phone carrier's worst nightmare, but they have held their customers captive for too long. Hopefully we will see full functionality on smartphones via Wi-Fi in the future.

VERDICT

Nokia delivers an impressive flagship phone in the N9. Users will like the stylish design and the clever OS. The future of the OS might be the only question mark hanging over the phone. It comes in a little cheaper than its iPhone rival and proves Nokia still has plenty to say, even if it can't commit to an OS with a steady future.

The Nokia N9 is available for 18,900 baht in black from the Nokia Shop, third floor, Emporium, call 02-664-8565. Email richardm@bangkokpost.co.th with any gadget thoughts.