Nokia Oyj has unveiled the Nokia N9, a Meego-based, button-less touch screen smartphone, one of Nokia's finest works to date.

Nokia sold more mobile phones than all the other handset-makers combined. But that was four years ago. Nokia phones are now only being bought by one out four cellphone users, as smartphones run by Google Inc.'s Android operating system and Apple Inc.'s iPhones continue to gain following.

To stem the losses, Nokia has inked a strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp. to replace the retiring Symbian OS with Windows Phone 7 for future Nokia mobile phones. The Windows-based phones for Nokia, however, will only be available starting in the fourth quarter 2011.

Following the deal with the software giant, there were talks that Nokia was abandoning the MeeGo, a Linux-based open source mobile operating system project started by Nokia and chips manufacturer Intel Corp. in February last year.

Nokia announced in May that it would release dual-SIM phones and more offerings from its Symbian lines pending the release of the Windows-based smartphone. Nokia did not talk about the N9 or MeeGo. In fact, it was reported just a week ago that Nokia CTO Richard Green was leaving the company over disagreements with management's decision to ditch MeeGo in favor of Windows Phone.
However, the Nokia N9 doesn't appear to be just a front act to a U2 concert that's being organized by the Finnish handset maker. The N9 stands-out. In fact it's the only Nokia offering in years that is not being panned by critics.

The MeeGo-based Nokia N9 comes with a curved design and a 3.9-inch AMOLED display. The N9 will come in black, cyan, or magenta and offers either 16 GB or 64 GB of storage. The smartphone has an 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera that allows for autofocus and "HD-quality video capture."

The N9 also has no hardware buttons and instead provides a simple one-handed control. "With the Nokia N9, we wanted to design a better way to use a phone. To do this we innovated in the design of the hardware and software together. We reinvented the home key with a simple gesture: a swipe from the edge of the screen. The experience sets a new bar for how natural technology can feel," said Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia's head of Design. "And this is just the beginning. The details that make the Nokia N9 unique - the industrial design, the all-screen user experience, and the expressive Qt framework for developers - will evolve in future Nokia products."

The Nokia N9 is scheduled to be in stores later this year.

It has been not a very good year for Nokia. Early this month, Fitch Ratings cut its debt rating on Nokia to the lowest investment grade and gave a negative outlook. Last month, Nokia cut its sales forecast, as sales were lower than earlier predicted. With the declining market share, Nokia said its stock slump to the lowest price in 13 years in Helsinki trading.

However, Nokia's fortunes appeared to have turned around in the past two weeks. Nokia won a patent fight with Apple Inc., in a settlement that awards a one-time payment and royalties to Finnish handset maker. As part of the deal, Apple will become a Nokia licensee and will provide payments to Nokia for every iPhone sold. The terms of the settlement were confidential but the deal is estimated to be worth at least hundreds of millions.

Nokia Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop has been in a lot of pressure to put in a suitable replacement to Nokia's aging Symbian line, as Google's Android has already grown to become the largest smartphone operating system for mobile phones, and rivals are prepping new smartphone offerings.

To buy time with the Windows phones, Nokia this July will start shipping Nokia N8s, E7s, C7s and C6-01s with the new Symbian Anna software update. And over the next 12 months Nokia plans to bring up to 10 new Symbian-based smartphones to market.

Meanwhile, Research in Motion Ltd., which also lost market share in the past year, will release the new touch BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 in late August this year. The new Bold looks a lot like the previous version, but boasts of a 2.8" touch screen and claims to be the thinnest Blackberry phone yet. The Bold phone has the best of both worlds: the physical keyboard that is a trademark for BlackBerry phones and a touch screen that makes the iPhone popular. The new Blackberry Bold will sport near field communication (NCF) technology and will run on the BlackBerry 7 OS.

Apple Inc. is said to be releasing the iPhone 5 this year though it has not provided details. The iPhone 5 is expected to have an improved lock screen, a separate flash unit for the camera, panoramic photo capabilities, 1080p Full HD videos, integration to Twitter, iCloud service, an 8-megapixel camera, improved speech recognition, and a faster processor than the iPhone 4.

Whether Nokia has put its cards on the table in its fight against the iPhone 5 and the BlackBerry remains to be seen, but the N9 is clearly Nokia's best offering in years.

The Nokia N9 has an innovative new design where the home key is replaced by a simple gesture: a swipe. With no need for a home key, the all-screen N9 makes more room for apps to shine. The N9 also has the three home views, designed to give fast access to using apps, staying up to date with notifications and social networks, and switching between activities. It has a laminated deep black display, so that "the user interface just floats on the surface of the product."

The Nokia N9 also features free turn-by-turn drive and walk navigation with voice guidance in Maps. The N9 also allows users to watch videos in true 16:9 widescreen format. Aside from that, the Nokia 9 is also the world's first smartphone with Dolby Digital Plus decoding and Dolby Headphone post-processing technology. The Nokia N9 also offers NFC technology to allow easy sharing of images and videos between devices by touching them together.

"It is a very attractive piece of kit and shows Nokia still do have excellent industrial hardware design abilities," said Nicholas McQuire, research firm International Data Corp.'s research director, mobility and telecoms EMEA, according to an article at The Wall Street Journal. "Software's always been a challenge for Nokia, but the UI [user interface] Illustrates that it is making real progress."
While Nokia has said it is abandoning MeeGo, still "the N9 is shaping up to be a pretty impressive device, and boasts some interesting design choices," Alex Colon said in an article at PC Mag.

Although the Nokia N9 is at least as attractive as other smartphones in the market, some say that the device could be the first and last MeeGo offering from Nokia as it has placed its money on the transition to Windows. And this does not bode well for app developers and customers wary investing their resources on a line that's heading to its deathbed. "But hardware is not the N9's problem - it's the software... [T]he problem is MeeGo is obsolete, even before the N9 goes on sale," said Daniel Ionescu, writing for PCWorld.

On the other side of the coin, if the MeeGo-based N9 finds success, Nokia could sell more models for its N series. With that, Nokia can have a two pronged approach in its fight against the Android phones and the iPhones.

Regardless, the Nokia N9 is just the appetizer to Nokia's main dish. With the front act already exceeding expectations, Nokia could regain its market dominance if its Windows-based phones outperform the N9.