Nokia officially introduces the MeeGo powered Nokia N9, the first pure touchscreen phone

Facing a desperate situation, Nokia might have pulled a miracle out of its hat with the introduction of the Nokia N9. On Monday, we showed you some pictures of the device and the Finnish based manufacturer made the official announcement about the phone at Nokia Connections in Singapore.

The first thing to understand about this phone is that there are no front buttons. The Nokia N9 is so intuitive that a swipe or gesture on the curved  3.9 inch AMOLED display is all you need to navigate through the MeeGo OS. To leave an app and go back to the home screen, the user swipes from the edge of the screen. The phone itself is constructed in a one-piece unibody design with the body made from polycarbonate material to improve antenna reception. Under the hood is a TI OMAP3630 1GHz CPU matched as usual with the PowerVRSGX530 GPU, Nokia's first.

The web browser on the handset is powered by WebKit 2 which means you can access a site even while it is still loading. Switching between open windows on the browser is quick and easy and support for HTML5 allows you to see rich web applications and offers fast video playback, but there is no desktop Adobe Flash support for now from what we are seeing.

On the back of the phone is an 8MP camera featuring Carl Zeiss optics with a  super wide 28mm wide lens. The camera on the model is faster than the shooter on any other smartphone says Nokia, and captures video at 720p at 30 fps. Touch-to-focus and continuous aurofocus come standard, too. 

Nokia N9 complete spec sheet

The newest Nokia Maps edition is on board to give you free turn by turn directions for walking and driving, without the need to be connected ot the Internet. Also, in 85 major cities, the Nokia N9 will tell you the fastest way to arrive at a location using public transportation. Along the route, there are markings for cafes, hotels, shops and more.

The Nokia N9 is NFC enabled and offers Dolby Headphone and Dolby Digital Plus which makes it the first mobile phone to offer personal surroundsound through headphones. The UI arranges three home views in a carousel. One is an app to launch and organize your apps. The second shows your social feeds and notifications for calls, texts and calendar events. The third view shows all off your live apps and apps that you have recently used. Pinch and zoom to show either 4 or 9 live apps at a time.

The Nokia N9 will be available in three colors, black, cyan and magenta. 16GB and 64GB models will be available. Pricing, carrier availability and a launch date have not been announced, but rumors are that it will be available in about a month from now. Has Nokia completed a long Hail Mary pass? Certainly the no button look has a definite sexiness to it. What do you think? Is this a phone that you would consider buying? Let us know your thoughts by writing in the comment box below.

via Nokia