A (not so) great comeback: The Nokia N9

This might be the most polarising review of a gadget I have ever written. The Nokia N9 is a beautiful phone, cool to the touch and deeply gorgeous, akin to the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is also a disgustingly obtuse phone, stuck with both feet in the past and unable to accept its fate. Let me explain.

The Dark Crystal
The screen is deep, richly black and instantly responsive. At the Nokia N9 launch, Marko Ahtisaari (head of Nokia design) said that he wanted “less looking into your screen, and more of interacting off the screen”. With a 3.9″ AMOLED display as beautiful as this, you will have a hard time peeling your eyes off the quartz-like display. Full specs can be found here.

The screen is tough and coated with a layer of anti-glare polarisation. It’s one of the best screens I’ve ever seen, almost beating off the retina display of the iPhone 4. Multi-touch input is the icing on the cake and will be described in detail later on.