Nokia N9

» see nokia.com/n9 as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the last words ~

the n9 sat in the part of nokia's lineup i could read about but could not buy. in 2011 i was a computer engineer in ankara on a symbian touch device with windows phone already on the horizon. the n9 launched in a small set of european and latin-american markets that did not include turkey. the people who held one knew it was the last of its kind.

nokia announced the n9 on 21 june 2011, four months after stephen elop's february memo paired nokia with microsoft. the device shipped 23 september 2011 with meego 1.2 harmattan, a swipe-only ui on a polycarbonate unibody in cyan or magenta. the os was a linux distribution descended from maemo through the brief intel-nokia meego partnership. nokia ceo stephen elop said publicly that the n9's commercial success would not change the windows phone roadmap.

the n9 reviewed well. engadget called the gestures more elegant than ios, and the verge said nokia had finally shipped something that felt designed rather than assembled. nokia did not care. the lumia 800 launched two months later running windows phone 7.5 on the same chassis. the n9 sold an estimated one to two million units before nokia stopped making it. there was no n10.

~ the record ~

~ the orphan launch ~

the burning-platform memo leaked on 9 february 2011. elop wrote that nokia was standing on a burning oil rig and had to jump to a competitor's deck. eleven days later he announced the microsoft partnership. the n9 was already three years into development on meego, and nokia was contractually committed to ship it. the device went out with a sticker on the box saying nokia would not be making more like it.

~ the long tail ~

meego harmattan kept a small community alive for years after the hardware ran out. people maintained ports of new browsers and chat clients. the n9 outlasted the company that built it, since nokia sold its mobile business to microsoft in 2014 and the brand was leased to hmd in 2016. jolla picked up what was left of the swipe ui and shipped it as sailfish os on a different phone. nothing else lasted.

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