N9 FAQ: facts vs. fiction
 

Introduction
This is not a complete guide. This is intended to save one or two people a minute or two which they would otherwise have spent asking / answering the same questions over and over again.

External references
If you haven't seen these, you should. The aim of this FAQ isn't just to reproduce these official references.

• Nokia N9 specifications page
• Nokia factsheet (presumably intended for media/sales people)
• Nokia Swipe (UX Guidelines)
• Developer device spec reference

Acknowledgements: Commander
General

What is the N9?
It is a consumer phone announced by Nokia at the Nokia Connection event on 21st June 2011 in Singapore.

So is it the market-disrupting device?
We were promised a "market-disrupting device" on the 21st of June. Most of us assumed that means the N9. However, Peter@Maemo Marketing states that what comes after the N9 will be the real disruption. What this means is open to debate.

What is the N950? Can I buy an N950?
It is a developer device. It has a hardware keyboard. Nokia have indicated that it will not be available for purchase. Instead, it will be distributed by Nokia via the usual developer channels. Further information on the N950 is available in a number of places, including this post.

So when can I buy an N9?
Over 2 months since the announcement, and we are still waiting for solid info on dates. Sadly, none yet - only some hints (a countdown which was removed from a Nokia website, some suppliers expecting the phone "in September").

The Nokia website doesn't list my country (e.g. UK, US) so will it even be released for me?
Fact: importing electronics sucks. Indications are that the list found on the Nokia Check N9 Availability page only indicates availability in Nokia Store. It may well be available through networks or third parties in countries which are not listed; for example, the UK Nokia Store is closing at the end of June 2011 so they won't be selling it through that [non-existent] channel, but perhaps an operator will pick it up. As time goes forward, availability seems to be going down (not up).

So... how much is the N9 gonna cost?
We don't know yet. Some people are quoting Eldar Murtazin as saying it will be €450+tax, but that's based on a rumour which is at least 6 months old. How reliable is that as a source? You decide :rolleyes:

Operating System / Software

I heard that I won't be able to put my apps into folders on the home screen. Gnaargh?
This is not possible currently, but according to konttorri this should be possible following an OS update (date unknown).

What are the chances of halfway decent MS Exchange support?
Actually this looks promising, as bugs are being fixed.

How about last.fm scrobbling?
Looks like MeeGo forum user (and N950 recipient) Olka is working on it.

Will Alien Dalvik come to N9?
There is a 'alien dalvik on the N9' thread which contains links which might suggest that Alien Dalvik is coming to MeeGo/the N9. However, later posts in the same thread indicate that it seems unlikely.

What is the Aegis security platform? What is MSSF? How will it affect my use of the N9?
I have not yet developed an understanding of either, so I'm not going to attempt to explain them. qole's blog post on this topic is a great read. More discussion is here on gmane.org.


Display

Is there an HDMI port on the N9?
Nope. There is no physical HDMI port on the N9. Confirmed by everyone who has handled the device since the launch.

Could there be some kind of HDMI-via-MHL-via-MicroUSB setup, like Samsung Galaxy S2?
Probably not. There's currently nothing to suggest that the N9 could support this.

Media

The N9 is capable of 720p video playback, right?
The N9 is capable of playing video using its "Wide codec support: H.263, MPEG4-SP & ASP, H.264 BP/MP, WMV9 / VC-1 and Mkv (Matroska)"

Matroska isn't a video codec.
No, it's not. But let's stay on-topic...

So the N9 is capable of displaying 720p video, right?

• Not at native resolution on the screen. Weasel words from Nokia marketing might make you think that it can, but the N9 display resolution is FWVGA (854 x 480 pixels), but 720p video is 1280x720 pixels. However, the N9 screen is 16:9, so it should show scale wide-screen video quite nicely.
• Not via HDMI either. There's no HDMI connector :mad:
• Should be possible via DLNA. Harmattan includes Rygel UPnP AV MediaServer and MediaRenderer. Still waiting for further information on exactly how this can be used in a practical situation.

Does the N9 support Flash?
This has caused some confusion. The answer is:
The N9 has native support for Flash video.
The browser does not support Flash out of the box.

Will Flash be added to the browser at a future date?
We don't know. It's easy to extrapolate based on the non-existent Flash 10.1 update for the N900, but all we have for now is speculation and hope/despair/indifference. There's some hope that Fennec-for-N9 may get Flash. It's still very much wait-and-see, though. Jalyst's summary of the situation: "A Nokia dev responsible for testing/tweaking Fennec on Harmattan has finished testing the latest flash binary using his build of Fennec & has confirmed all is working well. The only road block left, is trying to convince management to license a signed binary. His latest responses re: how that's progressing are positive, yet still quite vague..."

Does the media player now have an equaliser?
Can anyone point to anything on this? Perhaps someone who has had hands-on experience?

Can the N9 receive/transmit FM radio?
There is no mention of FM capability on the official N9 spec. The FM status of N9 thread has not yet reached a firm conclusion.
The N9 contains hardware, which is physically capable of both receiving and transmitting FM (TI WL1271?); however, it is not known what OS/driver/software work would be required to make use of this.
It seems that there's no aerial connected to the FM transmitter.

What media syncing capabilities will the N9 have?
Software called Nokia Link is coming for the N9 according to NokiaGadgets.com.
Of course, you can always transfer stuff using Mass Storage mode (like the N900).

Design

Critically important question: what colours will the N9 come in?
The N9 announcement and all web materials show the N9 in an average of 2.5 colours and 0.5 shades: Black (which is arguably a shade, not a colour), magenta (which is definitely not pink) and cyan (which some people might mistakenly see as 'blue').

What is polycarbonate?
Wikipedia suggests that it is a type of plastic suitable for use in complex industrial design. One useful property is that it can be deformed at room temperature without cracking or breaking. In the case of the N9, the shell is coloured all the way through so that scratches don't show up as much as they do on coated cases (e.g. N95). Having said that, N900 case material also seems to be uniformly coloured as scratching does not reveal another colour inside.

Does the N9 have a microSIM? I saw some photos of an N9 with a regular SIM.
MicroSIM. Prototype devices had a regular SIM card, but all release models have microSIM (as listed on the device spec page).

Does the N9 have a microSD slot? 64GB of internal storage is nice, but I might need more...
There is no memory card slot on the N9 (confirmed by the device spec and everyone who has handled the device).



Thanks to everyone who has contributed information, links or meaningful discussion - particularly jalyst who has been busy digging up a great deal.

Re: N9 FAQ: facts vs. fiction
 

Magenta is not pink. Just sayin'.

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Thanks for the briefing about the N9; will you credit me for reporting the repetition of "energy to"? :D :D (kidding of course)

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and cyan is not blue...

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A Fact: The N9 is without Adobe Flash

My Vision: No N9 for me.

More Information http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devic...ifications/N9/

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And black is not a color. Cmon, try to stay constructive, or we will get another unuseful thread with 5k posts.

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well, this OP is trying to be extremely precise...so in that vein...nokia has said the colors are black, cyan, and magenta...FACT

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Any improvements for the media player? Does it still not have an equalizer?

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Nice thread.

Just a little remark:

The N9 is not part of the "future disruptions" strategy. That's planned for the next Meego device. (If it ever comes...)

Source:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=46

Re: N9 FAQ: facts vs. fiction
 

Thanks everyone for comments & contributions so far. Unfortunately my employer is expecting me to do some actual work (I have a suspicion that TMO doesn't count).

Back in a few hours to update further.

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Will flash come to n9 (10.x+)? This is pretty important IMHO.

What about myriad Alien Dalvik? There has been a rumour lately, some internet article saying it will come to harmattan (if nessacery, ill provide the link) what seems rather fiction than fact..

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I'll use irony tags next time.

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I highly doubt we will see Dalvik. The article that you're probably talking about is a pure speculation (or even less than that: they just say this is theoretically possible, but what isn't). Moreover, I would say that most of those quasi-articles are inspired by discussions from this forum.

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Bump! This thread used to be a really nice start, let's try to keep it going.

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update regarding fm trnsmitter. no antenna.

http://forum.meego.com/showpost.php?...&postcount=301

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Please rework section regarding 720p video playback. N9 is capable to play 720p videos. However, it cannot output it in the same resolution to 720p-capable displays (TV set or similar) due to lack appropriate hardware. It is possible to see 720p video as 480i content via TV-out cable.

N9, however, includes DLNA support and in future updates appropriate user interface will be added for it so that 720p video output will become possible for DLNA-enabled TV sets or other DLNA certified media players (DMP).

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1)
We don't know with certainty that MHL isn't implemented via 3.5mm or mUSB, or cannot be w/future updates.
Thereby providing the N9 w/a means of 720p/HDMI output.

2)
DLNA's apparently implemented, but I've seen no evidence that a GUI for it will be included.
There's suggestions that future updates may include a GUI, but so far no official promises that I'm aware of.

What I want to know is... if DLNA will improve the probability of reliable 1080p output?
I'd assume it has very little bearing, & that the underlying WiFi transport (802.11a), how it's configured...
And overall signal quality to the client device, matters far more, but I'm not 100% certain...

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What about PAL? I suppose it could be possible to output at 1024x576@25 in PAL widescreen mode.

But probably it would simply be a scaled up 856x480.

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@shallimus

I just started a similar (albeit w/a subtly diff. focus) thread here
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...59#post1047959
I was not aware you'd already stared one...
If you intend to actively maintain this one, then I'm happy to ditch it.
So as to avoid a "division of labour"? Lemme know.

Cheers

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Yeah just re-scaled, nothing to be excited about :(

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It is a clone output so no modification from the internal display resolution.

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DLNA in this context is simply being able to stream compressed data from N9 to DMP (i.e. TV set). It does not matter what resolution of the video file is there as all N9 would do in such case is only give out the stream, no decoding is happening on N9 side. Think about it as if N9 was a small http server and your TV was a "browser".

Regarding HDMI/MHL -- there is none and will not be. Sorry, too late.

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Fair enough, but that doesn't really serve to prove how DLNA augments the delivery of HD video formats to end devices.
If it does that & does it well then great, I'm not against it per say, any specific examples of where it's used to great effect?

What about 802.11an, do we know for sure that there'll be support?

Oh, so you're a Nokia dev. involved in that area? :rolleyes:
Sorry, but not a very compelling argument as-to-why it's not present or do-able.

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... And Galaxy S2 is capable of playing 1080p though the screen has the same (!)resolution. Not suprising really.

Ad rules! meh
The official Divx company said that their Divx+ encode videos in .mkv .As a result, there is a high chance that a .mkv video is encoded with Divx+(Link) or at least playable with Divx+ decoding package.
iPhone users can get adobe flash playback with a 3rd party browser(i.e:skyfire). The mentioned internet browser also enables android users to play silverlight content.(e.g:NetFlix,IMDb and etc.) In addition, they said that it's likely they will start porting their browser into Meego platform. Even if they don't, users could still get flash playback by installing Firefox(Apparently). So to say that a platform does support flash content and another one does not is a certain misguide mostly caused by company ads like google (and others)

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Does anyone have exact info on the N9's h.264 decoder? There's different profiles of h.264 and N900 could only play the "Baseline" profile. With most h.264 videos being either "Main" or "High" profiles, I'm interested in knowing if N9 can play those without re-encoding.

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iPhone and iPod have the same limitation last time I have heard of them.I am not exactly sure whether this problem has been fixed by now, but most of the(iPhone) users won't even care about it because the iPhone is shipped with a converter.Same might happen to N9.
EDIT:Furthermore,the OP said that the N9 can play BP and MP.

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Ah, seems I missed that small text about h.264 BP/MP support. That's lot better that just base profile, although high profile would have been nice... It probably means that I still need to re-encode most videos.

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Please note that spec says that for H,264 HD only Base Profile is supported. What a pity, event X7 does that better... Is this SoC limitation? X7 has aging BCM2727... Is it really better than OMAP 3630?

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There has been 3rd party made decoders for OMAP that can handle bigger resolutions/profiles than the ones provided by TI. I guess Nokia hasn't dished the money to buy them and are using the TI ones.
Odd thing is that I read that High profile is about as slow to decode as Main profile (both use CABAC entropy encoding) so it's odd if N9 supports Main profile but not High? And I'm not really worried if it can't decode 720p, because the screen can't show it without resize anyway.

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Check DLNA specs. Or go to http://live.gnome.org/Rygel and check there, this is the implementation used on the Harmattan platform. Practically, all UI would need to do is to set appropriate bit in Tracker database and have rygel service started.

I cannot dive into details why and how Nokia does its own product development.
If you need some verification, you may check my profile on maemo.org (same nickname as on TMO).

These threads, unfortunately, full of analysis of technical details done by people with little or not engineering background, thus many factual errors are present. If a mere attempt to correct those meets opposition, so be it -- I'm fine not to fight insisting dark ages knowledge. ;)

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It is not that simple. Skyfire converts Flash content to HTML5 so that it can be displayed, but this is done remotely by special servers. I guess I don't need to mention how different this is from native Flash support.

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Different, yes. But to say that iPhone does not support flash as a disadvantage in the android forum(and as an ad probably) ... it's not fair IMO.(And vice versa for NetFlix support)

Therefore, N9 can locally play flash content with Firefox AFAIK, which is not too much different from native support.

Ah, and before I forget, have I told you that the N9 browser has the highest score in html5test.com versus the other mobile platforms?

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Source? I though it had been corrected as "Firefox on N9 has support for plugins, but there's no such plugin"

Has it improved? last time I saw them, iOS 5 still did better.

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This is what I have heard. Let's not make this an argue.:)
I meant Meego 1.2, in the current releases.

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I would say it's completely fair because it's true. From the N900 you can use VNC to connect to your desktop machine running GNU/Linux, Windows, or whatever... Thus you can play Flash 10 content without any problems and do whatever you want... but does that mean the N900 supports Windows 7 or Flash 10? Not really...

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I would say that N900 does support Flash 10(Via Iceweasel browser I have heard). Why not?:)

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Excellent thanks, seems like a GUI is most certainly a "hop, skip, & a jump" away! :D

Linked-in tells me you were (until recently) a "senior engineer" for Nokia.
I see no specific mention of work done in the area of video-out.
Good for you and thanks for your efforts...
But how does this prove you know anything about the implementation/s (current/future) of vid-out for the N9?

Not a dig at me I hope?
No the problem is there's little-to-no appropriate info, from which to derive a definitive answer.

Usually when you claim something as fact, you provide a basis for why you know it's true.
You don't just turn around & insult the person questioning the basis for your claim :confused:

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After Kontorri seemingly suggested it was...
Some other devs turned around & said flash support isn't there for fenec.
It's somewhere in this epic thread....
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=74181&page=170
What they said was pretty vague IIRC, so I guess there's still a slim chance.

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http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...296#post876296

There's some buggy recent-ish versions of flash people have tried amongst the thousands of posts in this thread
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37922&page=186
But flash 10x for ARM isn't officially supported, as Nokia hasn't bothered to pay Adobe for the licensing.
The buggy ones floating around are licensed to TI for OEM's using TI SoC's to "borrow".