That was already a major story months ago.
Not in all countries, but in many they are.

I had planned to address someone else's post re: "why pick this over the SGSII?"
And do it in much more detail... but this will have to do as a dry run.

You're responding to a post from 21/06.
"Much" has been ascertained about the hardware since then.
But alas there's still some unclear aspects.

Overall we now know that despite SGSII looking superior in many aspects;
A lot of them will/may end-up being moot...

The only ones that definitely won't be are:
*HDMI
*3-axis Gyroscope
*1GB ROM (Is this right? N9 only has 512MB ROM)

It's not yet clear how the Nokia N9's relatively weak CPU/GPU will manifest itself, if at all.
There'll need to be stress tests (real-world) done on both, to garner anything.
The only obvious area I can think of are games...
But I doubt there'll ever be much of a repository of top-notch commercial games for the N9 anyway.

No SDHC/XC is overcome by the fact that the N9 has great built-in storage (eMMC?) capacity.
That is already cheaper than a similarly sized iPhone4/5 would be.

We know that in actual fact the display overall looks just as good, if not better.
With the only downer being it's 0.4" smaller...

We know the camera's likely to take better quality pictures, & the software likely to be superior.

We know it's likely to take better quality 720p video, & the software likely to be better.
The one downer being it can't take 1080p video.

No MHL/HDMI is addressed by the fact that it's one of the few phones that does 802.11an + DLNA.
This is not a total replacement, but it's does help somewhat.

Then there's feature's N9 has that SGSII doesn't, or has, but doesn't support well 'officially':
*NFC
*BT4 (this is not 100% certain for N9)
*1-1 vid chat (both Jingle & Skype)

One has to remember that developing an entire smartphone OS is huge undertaking.
And one Samsung doesn't have to factor-in to their costs, aside from the UI tweaks they do.

So long as the N9 64GB's only say $50 more on avg...
Then I think a strong case can be made, that it's almost as good value, & certainly as good overall.
So long as the N9 does continue to get decent support after the release.

the N9 has 512mb rom and 1gb ram

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

I agree with in most aspects, however the SGII biggest "pro" is the market whereas N9 will have to do with ovi store.

I'd say N9 would have been great at the price if it was as open as N900 is (stand corrected here) and if it had a hw kbd but Galaxy SII stands out now.

Swype or no swype doesn't matter.

I prefer the internal storage over the external as the information is store is secure if device itself has a lock.

NFC etc are of no use to me, i am happy to pay around $500 for n9 but not $700-$800 as is being currently advertised by some sellers here in Oz.

My next one should be a SII but i will wait till some reviews come out for n9 meanwhile n900 goes with me everywhere.

My brother in law has one (gs2), and it looks sleek and terrific, but "no swipe" does matter: task switching is nowhere near as in N900, which itself seems inferior to the swipe interface.

Not saying it makes it a better phone, but it does matter.

Cheapest SII's around in Australia ATM are about $600.
If the N9 hit's $700 I reckon it's pretty close value-wise.
I've already come across 64GB N9's that are $749, no doubt someone will hit $700.

And value aside, as a smartphone I suspect it'll be just as good (if not better) overall.
But the jury's still (FFS hurry-up Nokia!) out on that one.
Until we finally have the retail product available for detailed comparison w/a SII.

I wonder how much faster browsing is with dual core compared to single core, thats the application I worry about regarding performance on the N9.

The N9 offers one-handed use (sg2 just too big for that) and I want those nokia play 360 speakers , they're just awesome.

Yeah this is what I'm really interested in....
I'm not sure SGSII's beefy CPU/GPU, will actually prove to be useful in many real-world scenarios.

That's another thing with these super big screens...
They'll start to become impractical once we hit 5"+ IMO.
For a smartphone anyway....
Which is usually meant to be easily usable with one hand.
Sure some hands will be fine, but the avg. size hand won't.

Meh, they're just 'meh' for me, not sure why so many think they're "teh awesomest!".
Just a gimmick IMO, there's more interesting things I want to see them doing with NFC.

What do you mean ONCE we hit 5"???