Nokia N9 mega review part 2

Store and Games

The Good:

• Store is still more or less the same.
• Just enough number of apps to install on first use and forget that this thing exists.
• Lag free gaming, low load time.
• Thanks to AMOLED CBD, in-game visuals look great.

The Bad:

• Lacks apps
• Not a great layout
• Recommendations (auto) are funny and unrelated
• No dedicated appstore like the one for Maemo

Nothing has changed much here. Its the same Nokia app store that we have been using for ages. Unlike Maemo, you have to install applications from and only from Nokia store and I assume these are QT apps. Nokia store lacks the variety of Google Play and iTunes Application store. This store is more like you install all the necessary applications the first time you connect and forget about the store. Only when you hear the news that some extraordinary application is released, you connect to this store again. Games catalog is okayish and doesn’t offer the variety that other stores provide. The below few snapshots will give a clean picture and I will not delve much here. Playing games is definitely fun. The superb display makes playing games a pleasure (though it is sad that there aren’t many highly visual games available in the market). The phone came pre-installed with Angry Birds demo, GoF2 and NFS Shift (demo unit only). Menu switching was fast, the game loaded very well and there is no lag at all while paying the game. Below are few snapshots of the same     This video on youtube should give a clear picture on how fast the game loads and how lag free it is.

Alarms and Calendar

The Good:

• Terrific alarm UI
• Calendar is highly functional
• Multiple calendars supported

The Bad:

• nothing in particular

This is among the best alarm apps that I have ever seen. UI is terrific and is extremely simple to use. The way alarms works is no different that the way it works in other Operating systems but just look cute the interface looks. While the home shows current time, timezone and alarms set, when you click on new alarm, you get to circles. The inner dial is for hours, outer dial is for minutes and you drag the numbered circle in inner dial to the hour and in the same way, you drag the circle in outer dial to select minutes, add options like alarm tag, recurring or not, alarm tone and save. Calendar is another app on MeeGo that I loved. Default view of calendar app is month view and from the bottom bar, you can change to daily view or list all events or go to settings page. Calendar app supports multiple calendars which means that you can have separate calendars for work and for home Editing and viewing an event is very simple and you have option to sync calendars to your online account.  

Notes and Document viewer

The Good:

• Clean UI
• Document reading is a pleasure and the color pop out thanks to the CBD

The Bad:

• Read-only
• No pre-installed office document editor

I need to explain much about these two, so I am leaving few screenshots for you folks   This is how good a document containing picture looks in landscape mode:  

RSS feeds

The Good:

• Clean and fast UI
• Feed sharing
• Nicely organized
• One click favorites

The Bad:

• No support for Google reader and other 3rd party readers
• Importing feeds via XML/OML file not possible
• If you have feed list that you track using Google Reader, find a third party feed reader.

While the Feeds application has very good and clean UI, it lacks in functionality. Feeds home gives you options to access all unread posts, favourites, feed lists, add new feed, sync all feeds and search for text in feeds. While reading a feed, you can share it or mark as favourite.

Internet sharing via hotspot

The Good:

• Lot of options

The Bad:

• none

Yes. Nokia N9 can act as Wi-Fi hotspot and you can share your internet connection to other devices. Do note that this works only when you are using 3G/EDGE services and if your mobile is connected to Wi-Fi, it automatically switches to EDGE/3G before enabling hotspot service. Once you end the sharing, a report is generated showing how much data is consumed.  

Battery

A 1450mAh would be disaster on a droid with 3.9″ display. Here, even on heavy usage, I got around 1 day of battery life. And when I turn on eco mode (turn on Wi-Fi and Internet and syncing when the device is idle, this his how it is: Yes, my dear friends. 17 hours since last recharge and there is still 53% of battery left. This was on heavy use of GPS (around 2 hours of continuous GPS/3G usage for sports tracker). That’s all we have for this part which concludes checking all (or lets us say most) aspects of the phone. There is no conclusion. The third part will have our thoughts about MeeGo and Nokia and the decisions that were taken. Do we support Nokia or do we not? You will know in next part. Adios! What we have not tried:

• Games with superb visuals (as they are paid apps)
• NFC functionality (yet to find a phone that has NFC or a smart poster here)
• Benchmarking (does it need benchmarks? I dont’ think so.)
• Video recording (for some strange reason, we missed recording scenic videos)