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Comment by jarkkom | Hacker News Reader

N9 was not "proper" MeeGo, internally it was still mostly Maemo Harmattan, followup to N900, though they had few canceled hardware projects between N9 and N900. MeeGo was suppposed to be co-developed with Intel, but it was never going to go anywhere, because neither Nokia or Intel had no idea what they were doing. Nokia wasn't built to be a software company and Intel has given up on x86 in phones.

Only reason why N9 ever was released is because they simply brutally cut down the scope of the project, e.g. dropping Qualcomm-based variant for US/CDMA markets (that one was repurposed to be their first Windows Phone).

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I know, but despite being a weird hybrid between Maemo and MeeGo, it was really capable.

I used a N9 as my daily driver for 7 years. The card-based UI was incredibly elegant and easy to use with one hand. I prefer it to current iOS or Android. Besides, gestures blended really well with the curved screen edges. It had a great dark mode which also blended well with the AMOLED screen.

Offline GPS navigation was a pleasure to use, and unmatched till date. It had a terminal, which let me SSH anywhere to do quick jobs. I handled lots of tasks this way. For example, I used a remote Mutt instance running on my workstation to read email. The terminal was a real terminal running on the N9. For example, ifconfig could work on all network devices, including the mobile radio.

Messaging was highly integrated. Different services (e.g. XMPP, Skype, etc) were just addons. All contact management, chat and calls were performed from the same application irrespective of the protocol used to handle transport.

And lastly, it was an open device. You could install anything you wanted. It was truly Linux on your pocket.

I bought an N9 and had a very similar experience, and still look back on it warmly. It was an absolute joy to use, and I think the sleekest and most pleasant UX I've ever used.

Elop really robbed Nokia of what could have been an incredible product.

Have you tried SailfishOS? After some initial difficulties the project seems to be getting quite nice and the UX is heavily inspired by the N9. Same developers actually.

> Intel has given up on x86 in phones.

Intel gave up on x86 in phones right before Microsoft gave their Windows Mobile 10 Continuum demo, which was almost an eternity after the N9.

If N9 had been widely released and marketted and successful (it did well in small release, but who knows), that may have changed Intel's course. If Nokia hadn't abandoned it before release, it would have gotten application support; I joined WhatsApp around all this, and there were plans to support it as Symbian users were a large part of user base, so the next thing from Nokia was highly likely to be used, but not when Nokia drops it. Third party WA client development for the N9 was somewhat successful and became the start for a lot of other third party clients.

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