Yesterday, I had my hands in N9 around 10min in Nokia Mountain View, CA. There was a "meetup" organized by Quim Gil and participants had a chance to play with it.

So, my short impression is here. I am not app developer, I am a kernel/HW driver developer, so I am primarily interested it as a tool. For specs, please see Nokia web-site.

First, it is solid and thin enough to be a modern smartphone - just 1/2 of N900. Anything about screen brightness or body scratchiness seems true. Touch screen is sensitive although Nexus-S may have a little better sensitivity - while typing on screen I had a couple of errors, definitely more than Nexus-S but it may be counted to slightly different virtual KBD size and layout.

However, both buttons - UP/DOWN and POWER are located on the same right size, in N900 style. Plus POWER button is bigger (regular size) and it is difficult to avoid pressing it while keep N9 in left hand. At least I accidentally switched N9 off once. I am surprised why Nokia didn't put it on any short side.

USB socket is covered and to open just press one side of cover (no host USB ). The adjacent SIM slot is actually a hole with SIM card holder (regular SIM for development edition which I played, it should be microSIM in production). Both slot are located on short side of body. Another short side has a headphone jack and mic/speaker.

No visible way to open a body but SIM card hole has an adjacent screw deep in hole. There is no even thin gap between screen and body.

Forward camera is in right down side.

Nokia variant of MeeGo user interface seems more interesting than Android's (Gingerbred on Nexus-S) - it is very easy to switch between app windows or kill it or thatever and it seems much more convenient at least for me. The downside is - it has only one home screen to place your widgets. However, to go to apps start just swipe right-2-left, select and press. To go to working apps - swipe a different way and you are in 4 or 9 small windows in something similar of N900. In comparison with N900 all windows are sharp and you can see that is going on on any. Swipe up/down is used for extensions if you have more 9 windows. You can kill any app here too. Each browser page is a separate window, of course.

The most significant point is - it is a WAY faster than N900, thanks to 1GHz by 1GB! The responsiveness is pretty good even with app start or changing windows. The only place which may be a little slowly than Android is a "Setting" switch - there is a small lag between you press a menu position and a function start.

Browser is fast too. But I should say that N9 power saving was switched off (I discovered it at the end) and it uses WiFi - no SIM card was inserted. Before me one man played a lot with browser (it has a "Nokia" browser based on WebKit2, not Microb) figuring the browser limits on github tests. I should say that there is no Adobe flashplayer and (probably) - no Java (N9 is HTML5 based), so his result seems to be 50-50. But graphic subsystem has OpenGL ES 2.0 interface, so high res moving pictures still good.

Multitouch works fine in browser and maps but browser wraps up only with some pages - seems to be a page design problem.

Map was designed specifically for driving, at least Nokia people stated that. It seems fine in 2D and good enough in 3D. Compass and slanting orientation work good and accurate. Positioning works with any GPS standard (A-GPS etc) and it may use "WiFi positioning" - I think it is a Google-like WiFi positioning. Maps for your continent are preloaded before device will be shipped to you and it can be used offline, w/out cell-phone coverage(!).

I was not able to test phone features because lack of SIM card but Nokia people said that N9 contacts still separately synced - Skype has no knowledge of your phone contacts but contact app uses all of them. Also they said it has all 5 mobile world data frequencies and in fact only CDMA and Japan phone variants are missed. But I didn't noticed GTalk (may be lack of time or it is hidden in "messaging"), skype is a separate.

Productivity tools are seems of course (M$ good - full sync with Exchange and Google calendars etc. I didn't test it but I believe it can work fine with docs and excel files.

Device has an embedded "development" setting - then I pressed it downloads 20+MB and Terminal apps occurs.

Camera... didn't test, they said it may do HD 720 30fps video...