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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars The most beautiful design ever - battery sometimes a concern April 1, 2012
By Rohit Garewal
Amazon Verified Purchase

Let's just get this out of the way right now. The Nokia N9 is the most beautiful phone hardware I've ever owned. Not a surprise, as only Nokia and Apple churn out engineering this elegant. I'm somewhat of a phone junky, as I've owned most of the headliner phones from the major OS's: iPhone 4s, galaxy s2, galaxy nexus, Samsung focus, etc.

Hardware: I'm typing this on my iPad, so don't have the typing patience to get too much into this, but wow this hardware is elegant. The curved screen complements the swipe os perfectly, the unibody construction is so well out together, the large generous speaker on the bottom provides plenty of volume, and the clear black screen really does provide such a vivid picture that icons look like they're floating on the screen. But really, you have to hold this phone to appreciate it. The old king of design (iPhone 4s) has been supplemented.

One more thing on hardware, and this was huge for me. The antennae on this phone is pure Nokia, I.e. excellent. Typically, I have difficulty getting signal in many places in San Francisco with AT&T, but the N9 keeps a signal everywhere I go. In the east bay in the hills where my iPhone and nexus routinely would lose signal the N9 has 2-4 bars. It's really amazing.

Software: the Meego experience is simple and effective, and I love it. Before Meego, my favorite OS was WP7. To be clear, when I rate an os, personally I'm excluding available software (ie apps). The reason is I'm thinking of the engineering and the thought out into the OS design, not how many developers chose to support it. I'm not saying apps are not important, far from it, but the number of available apps is so individually relevant (or not so) to the Individual user you have to decide how important that is to you.

Much like wp7, Meego provides most used functionality with the minimal amount of screen interaction. Close an app, slide down. Switch an app, swipe right. Get notifications, swipe left. Minimize an app, swipe up. That's it. Simple, effective, and gorgeous.

The N9 also comes with an incredible amount of connectivity out of the box. Gmail, exchange, Picasa, Dropbox, skype, twitter, Facebook, and more. I especially love how Skype is built in. Make calls and message directly from within the app.

Battery: my only gripe with the phone. With everything enabled (especially gtalk, Skype, and Facebook chat) the battery is done after 12 hours of light usage. Start using the phone and youre down to 8 hours...that's is horrible. When you're NOT logged in to the messaging apps, battery shoots up to 2-3 days of light usage, and 16 hours of heavy, which is brilliant. Im not sure if this imitedto a few vocal N9 users, or if this all phones, but this is my experience.

Summary: if you don't need a lot of external software, but need a heavily reliable phone that does mail, messaging, camera, Skype, music and video brilliantly, it is amazing. If you need more, definitely take a look at the lumia 900. It's not out yet, but supposedly has the same hardware design with a great os as well.