There’s a new Nokia phone! Look! Here’s the Nokia N9 video. Wooooo…oh, no, wait, I just remembered: it’s a MeeGo phone. And as we heard from Intel’s CEO earlier today that Nokia/Intel partnership was the tech equivalent Paul McCarney and Heather Mills’ marriage.

With Steve Ballmer and Microsoft circling like the chubbiest vultures in the desert and Stephen Elop rocking the burning boat metaphors, Nokia needs to have begun its public resurrection by now. Keeping the MeeGo mission going is a gross misuse of time and effort…

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Hardcore Nokia fans will tell you that the N9 is brilliant while the rest of the world gets on with their lives. For a long time, one of Nokia’s biggest problems has been an obsession with specs.

The original iPhone turned the specs war on its head by making customers realise that the raw hardware numbers matter a lot less than the user experience.

The plan is clearly that Windows Phone 7 and Nokia hardware will create a holy marriage of decent UI and killer specs and that’s certainly possible. But Nokia needs to change the way it presents itself and its products too.

Nokia needs to make a phone that has personality, a phone that doesn’t just slot into a carefully numbered box. Sticking with the letter plus number naming convention won’t get customers excited.

“The Nokia/Intel partnership was the tech equivalent Paul McCarney and Heather Mills’ marriage.”

Android phones have personality and a story to sell (the idea of “openness”), iPhone adverts give you a clear demonstration of how you’ll use the phone if you grab one but Nokia?

Nobody really knows what Nokia stands for anymore, other than a kind of stolid solidity. It’s been a long depressing stretch since a Nokia phone was a hot ticket, arguably as far back as the N95, before owners realised the fantastic features were hampered by frustrating controls.

The Windows Phone 7 era should have started by now. The MeeGo era was stillborn and the Nokia N9 is going to go the way of the Nokia N8, a device for the tinkering hardcore left on the shelves by the rest of the gadget buying world.

Nokia should be putting all it’s efforts into producing a Windows Phone 7 device that is as sleek as any HTC device and ready to battle iPhone 5, not chase after the iPhone 4. Nokia cannot keep fighting the last battle.

A camera with a massive megapixel rating will make a certain strain of geek go gaga but in this Hipstermatic/Instagram world, to most people, it’s nothing more than a number.

I hope Nokia gets itself back on an even keel but watching that Nokia N9 teaser it feels like its tactics remain the same. Nokia is like a punchdrunk fighter still muttering to itself that its a contender but Windows Phone 7 is this fight movie’s unproven trainer.

Nokia should be in all out Rocky-training-montage mode, instead it’s slobbing about playing with former glories. It’s time for it to get focused, get fit and give us a phone that’s actually worth caring about.

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  • Wesleymclintock

     well said, im a nokia fan but i have become very delusioned with them recently, there last truly  ‘great’ phone was in fact the n95 8gb. well for the high end anyhow.
    The n96 was a laghing stock, whilst the n97 sounded really good when it was announced to go up against the iphone 3g…..except it took soooooooooo long to arrive it finally went up against the 3gs….also it was crap.
    There was a couple well recieved phones though. n900 and the n8 were decent enough.

    • Anonymous

      Thanks Wesley.  

  • Wesleymclintock

     well said, im a nokia fan but i have become very delusioned with them recently, there last truly  ‘great’ phone was in fact the n95 8gb. well for the high end anyhow.
    The n96 was a laghing stock, whilst the n97 sounded really good when it was announced to go up against the iphone 3g…..except it took soooooooooo long to arrive it finally went up against the 3gs….also it was crap.
    There was a couple well recieved phones though. n900 and the n8 were decent enough.

  • toni

     I think that that Nokia N9 is amazing. The user inteface look far better than Android or I-phone. Well done Nokia.

  • stoli89

    The N9 is not a smartphone but a tablet based on a full LINUX operating system.  In other words…it’s a mini-PC and does not conflict with Nokia’s smartphone OS refocus to WP.  This little tablet should provide another interesting choice for power users.

  • http://twitter.com/shadymilkman shadymilkman

    Mic your post belies your ignorance. android and “openness” if it is to be commended for that, then MeeGo can be the same, because it actually IS open (actual FOSS)… you can spout marketing about ‘open’ if you want but you sound like an uninformed dullard. anyway this phone isnt designed to be a competitor to the iphone or the like, its for ppl who dont want to be in a walled garden, who can handle making a mistake with their device. if you cant gain that perspective, that there are people with other demands than the traditional cookie cutter slate device, then you shouldnt be writing in tech.

    what would you have the company do in the meantime, now that they have moved to WP7? should they sit there and release nothing? how does that help them as a company to sit and wait for a device thats still possibly a year out? 

    write better.

    • Anonymous

      Now then Shadymilkman, I didn’t say Android was as open as Google claims it is, I simply noted that’s the story it likes to sell. 

      And I’m fully aware that there are people who want features beyond the “cookie cutter” device but Nokia needs to recapture the centre ground. And on the subject of “writing better”: capital letters and punctuation make comments a lot easier to read.  

  • Anon

    There’s a reason electricpig isn’t as popular and this says it.

    Under trash from a someone with little knowledge of the mobile industry. As shadymilkman said support is not a problem as it’s FOSS.And as for numbers don’t mean a damn thing – bollocks. Every manufacturer uses numbers to seduce the customer, Apple with their retina display crap and now the android crowd with the dual core and GHz processors.Nokia needs to lean more on Meego and less on WP7. The Meego OS is truly open and way more powerful than WP7, iOS or Android could ever hope to be!

    • Anonymous

      The idea that numbers mean a great deal to mainstream consumers is debatable actually.  

  • Law

    Lol this edior is supid, rela the phone isnt even announced yet, im sure it will provide enough selling points, u got so far n8 camra, e7 keyboard, meego os and way more high end expected statts.

  • http://kamuselektrik.wordpress.com/ kamuscasio

    Oooooh. i agree on the marketing part. the ads and teasers etc from nokia shows almost nothing about their products. That’s terrible.
    But, the spec wise. Come on!
    Don’t tell us people that the camera is nothing. Most people are still wise enough to think with their own heads, they know what they want. If nokia were to put 12mp on the camera, let them be, and let the users decide.
    As sleek as the crappy cheap looking shitty shiny iPhone-ish HTC with utter crappy camera, most people will still choose a phone with better spec. like the camera for example. Let the LG, Samsung or the HTC come with their dual core etc, their phones will still come with shittier camera than Nokias.
    And…not everyone is crazy about posting their photos to facebook or twitter. Some of us take photos because we want to save it, maybe to print it or have something meaningful. Like, having a real life..

    If you want an android, buy android. Go ahead. there are tons of new android phones coming every month. If you put them side by side you won’t even notice which one is which. All with the same spec and iPhonish look! Crappy battery too.

    Yes. Symbian is shit. meego is dead. but some people still prefer great camera with xenon and large sensor, built-in fm transmitter, the ability to plug any USB device to the phone, and great battery life…

    • Anonymous

      I’m not saying specs don’t matter, I’m saying specs aren’t everything.  

      • Guest

        I think this article was deliberate. Are you trying to get a promotion Mic?

        Does your boss count the number of comments on your article? 

        • Anonymous

          It was deliberate in that I deliberately wrote an opinion piece. Also: I’m a freelancer so there’s no promotions for me to chase. 

  • Dave

    The N9 is brilliant. ;)

    Or rather, I hope it will be. As someone who loves my N900, far more than my previous HTC Touch Diamond, it seems to me that Nokia and their former-Microsoft leader made a big mistake ditching the Meego project.

    It won’t sell as many or have as many ‘apps’ as Android or Apple but at least it will be more open and powerful.

  • Editor

    So let’s het this straight….Nokia is the boxer and based on the Meego powered N9 video you conclude that Microsoft is the unproven trainer and Nokia doesn’t ‘get it’? Your article has nothing to do with the video … and, even worse, your arguments are debatable at best. ‘You know how to use an Iphone by looking at their commercials’ a) that’s not true and b) even if it was, how does that make Apple ‘get it’? And Android representing the open story? Ask any developer trying to roll out an app to the hundred different locked down configurations out there to give you a definition on how open the platform is. As for ‘personality’…how vague can you get as a tech blogger. So rehashing old arguments, debatable reasoning andbasically nothing new to add to the debate. Seems to me that you are the one who doesn’t get it.

  • Anonymous

    This is the worst written article I have ever read. Mic Wright obviously has no idea what he is writing about. Idiotic. 

  • http://actualasianmale.com Al Pavangkanan

    This author needs to be put down faster than Nokia needs to put down Symbian.

    • Anonymous

      Hi there Al and Phantom, 

      I disagree with you on Nokia so you think I should be put down? Maybe think a little more about what YOU write on the Internet. 

      Cheers, 

      Mic  

  • sweetpie

    Absolutely biased, uninformed and highly useless article. Are you really capable of writing on an internet blog. How can you comment for sure for anything that has not even released yet. you must be some trainee blog writer who does not do any research and just write cause u don’t have any thing better to do!!!!! c’mon man get a life. i’m not great nokia fan, but i expect an informed and non-biased reading material on tech and gadget, and your article SUCKS!!!!! 

    • Anonymous

      Hi Sweetpie, 

      It is biased, it’s an opinion piece. 

      Best, 

      Mic  

  • Bear in woods

    Worst blog article I’ve ever read. One of the funniest lines; “Nokia needs to make a phone that has personality, a phone that doesn’t just slot into a carefully numbered box.” – if a niche phone made for mega nerds running on MeeGo isn’t exactly what you described then bears don’t poo in the woods

    • Anonymous

      The worst thing you’ve ever read? That is some achievement.  

    • Vszulc

       Has to be something that can SELL as well. You know… Sell to more people than you, and a couple of hundred other hunchbacked, Linux-freaks.

      Apparently Nokia is planning to make 92000 of these, which is prob. 80000 too many, lol!

  • Ymrel

    Ha-ha - quite funny article. Why it sounds like fanboy cry? It is not professional.

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