The Nokia N9 Is An Example Of Extreme Product Making And Craft

The Nokia N9 introduces an innovative new design where the home key is replaced by a simple gesture: a swipe. Whenever you're in an application, swiping from the edge of the display takes you home. The three home views of the user interface are designed to give fast access to the most important things people do with a phone: using apps, staying up to date with notifications and social networks, and switching between activities.
　　
The industrial design of the Nokia N9 is an example of extreme product making and craft. The body is precision-machined from a single piece of polycarbonate and flows seamlessly into beautiful curved glass. The laminated deep black display means that the user interface just floats on the surface of the product.
　　

The Nokia N9 also packs the latest in camera, navigation and audio technology for a great all-round experience.
　　
"With the Nokia N9, we wanted to design a better way to use a phone. To do this we innovated in the design of the hardware and software together. We reinvented the home key with a simple gesture: a swipe from the edge of the screen. The experience sets a new bar for how natural technology can feel," said Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia's head of Design. "And this is just the beginning. The details that make the Nokia N9 unique - the industrial design, the all-screen user experience, and the expressive Qt framework for developers - will evolve in future Nokia products."
　　
It's taken a long time for Nokia's MeeGo-packing N9 to make its way into our top secret labs (the N9 moniker was first applied to early E7prototypes), but it's here in our dirty little hands, at last, and it's glorious -- well, as glorious as a stillborn product can be, anyway.
　　
The N9 is the latest and greatest in a long line of quirky, interesting, yet ultimately flawed touchscreen experiments from Nokia that includes the Hildon-sporting 7710, a series of Maemo-based "internet tablets" (770, N800, N810, N900) and most recently, the N950 MeeGo handset for developers. What makes the N9 special is that it represents Nokia's last flagship phone as an independent player. MeeGo is already dead, and future high-end devices from the manufacturer will run Windows Phone and use Microsoft's services. So, is this the company's final bittersweet hurrah? Did MeeGo ever stand a chance against Android, iOSand Mango? In its attempt to stay relevant, is Nokia throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Most importantly, how does the N9 fare in today's merciless dual-core world? Find out after the break.
　　
Support for folders on the center/home screen: You need to manually create a folder, but then can drag and drop shortcuts into the folder and the first four appear on the folder thumbnail image.
　　
New features for the Camera and Gallery apps: Camera updates include enable/disable flash icon with red eye, flash on for video recording, and new video filters. Gallery updates include face tagging and face recognition, along with video editing similar to what you see on the iPhone.
　　
Bigger keys on Swype keyboard (MUCH appreciated)
　　
Integrated account support for Dropbox: You can now share files to Dropbox, similar to how you see share used in Android.
　　
Music player supports playlist creation
　　
Threaded email option (another MAJOR improvement for me): This is toggled in the settings and not from within the email application.
　　
Browser improvements: History appears below the top sites section, copy and paste is now supported within the browser, and you can save passwords.
　　
There is talk in the forums that support for video calling with the front facing camera was also added, but it seems you need a 3rd party client that supports this as Skype video calling is still not yet supported.