Having checked the N9 for over a month, I can't agree more with OP Keferen where he talks about the inconsistency of the N9 user interface.

The interface designers' clear ignorance of things done so excellent in the N900 (out of the box and up till today not equalled by the competition) is really striking and personally I find it a relief to read somebody with feeling and understanding for user interfaces that goes beyond smoothly flowing icons and visual gimmicks, describing that feeling of one step forward, two steps back that comes with the N9.


Some classic records sound like: "get over it, the N900 was the niche nerd phone and the N9 was targeted to a different audience”

True only for the hardware. Not true for the Maemo 5 OS.


There is nothing nerdy or niche or developer grade about the OS. It is the most user friendly and consistent OS interface design ever seen on a mobile device of that size to date (even though WebOS gets close).

Unfortunately the Maemo 5 OS came packed in a single somewhat too “no compromise, "nerdy" hardware package that is the N900.

The N900 failed to appeal to all, including Nokia internals that mis-marketed it and it was not capable to sell itself to the iPhone crowd only by its sexy looks and lust triggering curves.

For the latter there really should have been a candy bar Maemo 5 N9 available, parallel to the N900, running the same interface like the N900 already in 2009 / 2010.

This device with capacitive multi-touch and default portret orientation screen would optionally upgrade to swipe interface soon after the release of the swipe based N10 (Harmattan) in 2011.

It would have sold so well throughout 2010 that by time of the eventual release of an N10 in 2011, a much larger base of fans and reviewers would have built up high levels of expectations towards ANY new release based on Maemo.

That would have made it unreasonable and out of the question for Nokia to take those very steps back in terms of interface logic, flow and consistency they really took with the actual N9, as they would have to pay dearly with bad reviews for trading in the beauty already present under the hood just for adding swipe and naturally evolved CPU / RAM power.


No wonder some scientists are still debating how the Egypt pyramids have ever been constructed and history keeps repeating itself over and over.

The essence of 2 year old concepts gathered in the N900 is hardly understood by it's own creators and users.



Again, thank you Keferen for the tremendous effort made. Unfortunately your recommendations are diamonds for the pigs. (new Nokia)


PS: what's the deal with the caps and paragraphs? I really hope you did not have to type the text on your N9 by some twist of fate.