The Nokia N9 has reportedly been scrapped days before it was due to be made official at Mobile World Congress. Reuters reported that two industry sources informed the agency of the decision after seeing an internal memo sent from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to his employees explaining that MeeGo might not be the “platform for winning high-end smartphones”.

The Nokia N9 has had a rocky ride over the past couple of weeks after Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin caused a mass of confusion after implying on his Twitter account that the MeeGo smartphone was no more. He later retracted his comments, explaining that the confusion arose out of Nokia’s new naming policy and mentioned a new device called the N9-01. Following reports that Nokia has ceased development of the Nokia N9, the industry is now wondering whether the N9-01, thought to be a tablet or keyboard-less version of the N9, will be the debut MeeGo device.

Elop also mentioned in his message yesterday that there may only be one MeeGo device landing this year, suggesting that not all is well in Nokia HQ. The firm has an event scheduled for tomorrow, February 11 which is shaping up to be an interesting watch.

Specs of the upcoming Nokia N9 have been revealed during a Twitter conversation between two developers. We’ve been hearing about the potential tech line up of the first handset sporting Nokia and Intel’s joint OS effort, MeeGo for a fairly long time now, but as its early 2011 release date approaches, it’s far more likely that these latest leaked specs could be for real.

The tweets exchanged builds upon those leaked specs that we first saw way back in August. The 4″ screen has been bumped to a satisfactory 4.2” AMOLED display, the 1GHz processor has leapt to an impressive 1.2GHz offering and there’s said to be a 1600mAh battery, 1GB ROM, 768MB RAM and 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics onboard.

One developer also went on to explain that the N9 has a “dedicated gaming engine” which can display 190 million polygons per second putting it way ahead of other smartphones. We do recall seeing a good looking graphics set up and plethora of memory options on the spec sheet. To put all this in perspective the current flagship, the Nokia N8, clocks 35 million polygons per second, the Wii comes in around 100 million polygons per second while the PlayStation 3 manages 275 million.

The Nokia N9 is still largely believed to be heading for a February launch at the Barcelona gathering with a release pegged for shortly after. Are you looking forward to meeting the first MeeGo handset?

MeeGo’s official user interface guidelines could easily end up determining whether the platform sinks or swims — no one wants a phone whose UI looks like junk, after all. The minions at Nokia and Intel’s little pet project have posted new OS shots as examples of how to properly implement the interface in third-party apps, and we’ve got to admit — things are looking a lot cleaner, prettier, and generally more modern than the first round of pictures we saw back in June, thanks in part to a demonstration of the platform’s comprehensive theming capability that can totally revamp how UI elements look. We’re definitely seeing shades of webOS in the task switcher (pictured above), but then again, Nokia’s no stranger to borrowing ideas it likes. That’s all well and good as long as it makes for a great platform… and obviously, we’d need some hardware to do that. O N9, where art thou?

New official MeeGo screenshots show promise, influence originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Nokia N9, we reported way back in June about the QWERTY touting slider and at the time were dubious as to whether, as previously reported, that the N9 would run Symbian. We felt it would be far more likely that in fact, Nokia would chose to load MeeGo onto the handset and the latest developments would seem to support this.

A Chinese site has apparently got it’s hands on a working prototype of the as yet un-announced handset from our friends over at Nokia. They’ve been putting it through it’s paces and have graced us with a list of specs, the handset is noted to be an ‘early prototype’, but looking at the specs, we doubt this is likely to be far different, if at all, from the handset that Nokia will likely announce very soon.

Onto said specs then, the list kicks off with a 1GHz Qualcomm SnapDragon processor, which would tie in with a statement made by Qualcomm CEO (Paul Jacobs) back in February, that Nokia would be using there chipsets in the near future. The leaked spec also confirms a 4inch WVGA touchscreen, GPS, Wi-Fi, HSPA and Bluetooth; with the handset weighing in at 160g. There’s also a 5.0 megapixel camera, 720p HD video recording, 512MB RAM and on-board memory of 64GB. Which, with the exception of the last point, makes up a very believeable and certainly intruiging list of specs. Have Nokia finally got their act together and created a phone which will appeal in the mass market where the N900 failed or is it a little too late? Let us know in the comments section below and keep your eyes peeled for more info and any official announcement from Nokia.

Nokia’s newly appointed Mobile Solutions chief, Anssi Vanjoki, has penned an impassioned post over at Nokia Conversations today where he sets out his perspective on the company’s current position and future challenges. Describing the Finnish phone maker as “a challenger now,” rather than an incumbent, Vanjoki wants to introduce a “laser focus on quality,” with his two central aims being to reclaim Nokia’s reputation for high-end devices and to re-energize a flagging fan base. He specifically namedrops Ricky Cadden — who yesterday shut down Symbian-Guru because he’d lost faith with the company — and clearly considers grassroots support like that an important aspect of how Nokia’s success will be judged.

As to the actual software front, Anssi confirms that the N8 will be the final Symbian^3 handset in the N-Series, but describes a Symbian^4 device in that family as a “strong possibility,” a note which he follows up with a wink (seriously). Symbian is apparently still Nokia’s smartphone OS of choice — no Androids shall be found inside Nokia’s hardware under Anssi’s watch — though MeeGo also earns a mention as the “awesome” platform for delivering “market-changing mobile computers.” Just in case you were wondering, Anssi finishes off by telling us that these wondrous computers will be small enough to fit into your pocket — though, sadly, he fails to specify exactly what sort of pocket that might be.

[Thanks, Peter]

Nokia: the fight begins now, Symbian^4 N-Series device later originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 06:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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