Video: 30 minutes with MeeGo-Harmattan on Nokia N950
Here is a half an hour long hands on with the Nokia N950 MeeGo-Harmattan Dev Phone.
Though this isn’t the consumer handset, this does show much of what you can expect from the upcoming N9 (hopefully even more polished as I’m not sure if the Developer edition is as up to date as N9 – hence partly why things look slightly smoother/faster in N9 demoes)
This video is by Idelafr from Test-Mobile.fr and as you can guess is in French.
I’ve sort of indexed the contents of this video. There may be bits that I’ve missed out.
- 02:40 – Pin lock page
- 03:50 – Drop down status bar. A maemo thing to have quick status options (well before Android btw)
- 05:30 – Dialler. Seen before, nice touch that numbers remain in one line, just the font gets smaller. I already miss Symbian Smart dialler but I do like how easy phone book is to manage.
- Noticing tiny lags now and again
- 06:37 – in call screen
- 06:57 – smart search
- 07:30 – browser
- 09:30 – adding bookmark as an app
- 09:50 – Multitasking
- 11:30 – Messaging. This looks great.
- 12:40 – Email
- 12:25 – Calendar
- 14:48 – Camera
- 19:07 – Gallery
- 20:17 – Music Player
- 22:38 – Maps
- 25:00 – Calculator
- 25:17 – Documents – I like how you can have an overview of pages to jump between them.
- 25:33 – Notes
Idelafr from Test-Mobile.fr
About the Author (Author Profile)
Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and facebook.com/MyNokiaBlog. Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.comSubscribe
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Sites That Link to this Post
- 30minütiges (!!!) Video vom Nokia N950 « S60inside | August 13, 2011
- Videos: Bunch of Nokia N9 feature | August 14, 2011
Nice. Also Hope the Turkish date for the N9 will stick.
BTW for us in the UK or who are going to be in the UK, for the Love of GOD do not buy in the UK too expensive. The best value out of exchange rate you could get is by getting in Denmark or Sweden. At the moment there is an online retailer in Denmark that will sell the Black N9 64G at €657.
Regards
Cheapest reseller in Sweden sells it for around €616 but I’m unsure if they deliver to the UK.
http://www.mobilgiganten.com/mobiltelefon/N9-64-Gb-Black.aspx
thanx for the info: there you go guys another website for you. I’ll to sweden for the weekend and buy it.
Does the N950 have a some sort of debugger running in the background? It could explain occasional lag.
(I didn’t spot any lags in that video though!)
N950 phone is slower than N9 to start with.
Dev’s weren’t/aren’t given the bleeding edge builds for their N950′s because it’s not necessary for the dev work.
Only the the latest SDK/tools etc. are required.
They will be getting an update soon, but only for compatibility with the OVI updater.
I think the CPU is only 800MHz, also it hasn’t gotten any SW updates since June or so.
I still want to see some front facing camera action! Alors!
PS – its 26:33 not 25:33 for notes. Just thought to give you a heads up Jay!
It looks so unfinished
Please elaborate, it looks very ready to me…?
In that video it seems like it has inconsistant web scrolling, graphic pop-ins, cluttered app organization, laggy performance, weird ux paradigm with virtual back button and swipe gesture, inconsistant menu dialogs, volume rocker does not bring up status dialog or music controls “hopefully it does this on the lock screen at least” and the general look of it feels like an untold story. Looks like something of a mix of Symbian, Android, Iphone and WP7, it doesn’t feel like it is its own OS but more of an unbranded demonstration of ideas for an OS.
It isn’t terrible but just doesn’t seem to have a workflow for a Phone OS. Alsmost seems more like a computer OS with multitasking taking prescedence over search, social and discovery.
I also don’t like how it feels like there is no home in the OS. Just seems like every OS should have an instant method to get directly to a screen you know will have your most used features.
? The home will be the multitasking screen were you will find like on your browser the latest apps used. (on your browser you find the latest pages visited)
Or the lock screen where you can swipe directly to the app you need. Or when you want from swiping from the bottom where you get the most used features.
Allone because auf the keyless ui and the consistent swiping it is it’s own os.
This phone reminds me of the 3220? The first phone with build in antenna.
It’s something great.
You didn’t point any specific part so it is a little hard to know what exactly you meant but I’ll try:
“Inconsistant web scrolling, laggy performance”:
I’ve no idea what do you mean. Seemed to be working fine to me, where on earth do you see lag?
“virtual back button and swipe gesture”
I don’t really see what’s the problem here. There has to be some kind of wayt going back button when going through content with several sublevels. It is not confused with swipe gesture by any means.
“inconsistant menu dialogs”
A conscious choice. To get rid of the universally hated multi-level menu structure of Symbian menu had to be flattened. And then the dialogs will be context-dependent. Or are we even speaking of the same thing?
To me, this looks very finished. The UI is very consistent and nice looking with nice performance. And what makes it especially good that this is the very first product release we are looking.
Then about the other stuff:
“It isn’t terrible but just doesn’t seem to have a workflow for a Phone OS. Alsmost seems more like a computer OS with multitasking taking prescedence over search, social and discovery.”
That is very odd statement from a phone that has one homescreen dedicated to social, rss and other notifications.
“I also don’t like how it feels like there is no home in the OS. Just seems like every OS should have an instant method to get directly to a screen you know will have your most used features.”
Personal preference really, can’t be argued.
he’s a WP7/Microsoft fanboy so he has to say N9/N950 is not good. you shouldn’t take his criticism seriously. it’s just typical fanboy whine. anything not WP7/Microsoft is bad to him.
Haha, I admit I do love Mango and it is my favorite OS that I compare others too. I love the N9 too, just not the OS so much.
Scrolling in the whole browser section seemed laggy but especially there was scrolling issues at the 7:32 mark where it would not show data or register touch inputs.
The biggest issue I have with the Swipe gesture is that in many cases it is a back button but in others it is a close button. Of course in reality it is always a close button but you see what I mean, just makes for an inconsistant experience when you close pages inside of apps differently than the apps.
As for menu dialogs I meant more about how some of the popup menus were gray menus off to the side and others were full screen black popups. Seems they should make this more consistant.
The notifications screen is great but it isn’t really meant to be a social integration but more an events/notifications screen. Clicking on the items takes you to the application instead of being an integrated experience that just lets you handle the actions right there. Also search and dicovery are also not very centric to the OS. They all seem very disjointed.
None of these things are terrible and it does look like a cool OS, just not very finished IMO.
How can that be confusing to you??
“Swiping from the edge” is similar to the home button, while the “virtual back button” (always found on the lower left corner toolbar) is to go back one page, inside a program/app with multiple layers or pages…
About the menus and dialogs, just look in here to know what their differences are and on what context these are used for…
http://www.developer.nokia.com/swipe/ux/pages/Dialogue_and_Menus.html
“Scrolling in the whole browser section seemed laggy…”
Yes, there seemed to be a some lag at that particular point, but I think it had something to do with the page just been loaded.
“The biggest issue I have with the Swipe gesture is…”
Where exactly is the swipe gesture a back button? It certainly is not a back button in Meego-Harmattan.
“As for menu dialogs…”
Check the link ssdh pasted.
“The notifications screen is great…”
I agree that the full integration of social networks to the OS itself would be absolutely great, but I don’t think there’s currently any OS out there that achieves that any better.
I give you the search point, it is there, but I guess it’s not particularly highlighted feature.
When you open an Application in Meego and swipe you pretty much go back and not home because there isn’t really a home. So if you are in the notifications screen and click a post from facebook it takes you to the facebook app, when you swipe you go back to the notifications screen. If you are on the multitasking screen and you click on facebook it goes to facebook, you swipe and it goes back to the Multitasking Screen. You are in facebook and you open a new screen and you swipe and it goes back to the multitasking screen.
To be fair this is an interesting issue with Harmattan in general because there is no home screen and there is no home or back button. From a UX standpoint it seems very frustrating. Especially if every appliation will need a virtual back button. Seems it would be better to have swipe go back or have some gesture that would act as a way to go back.
Just feels like they took two steps forward in using natural gesture ux and then 5 steps back with clunky virtual back buttons which are in reality going to be used just as much if not more than the swipe to go back to their three screens.
You seem to have put alot of thought into this. Thank you. Now that you mention it, this does seem kind of annoying. This UI is so new, it will take some getting use to. Maybe after using it for a while it may be more intuitive than it seems. I’m willing to give it a try!
What ever you said.. nothing is making any sense.
Really, it looks complete to me, they just haven’t set up the store yet.
Actually they have, but this particular device in the video had not been updated yet during time of filming.
Yeah I saw that, the UI on that store could use a bit more polish though, not sure if its the final. Meego Harmattan definitely looks amazing though.
Dev firmware is missing components than is in N9 firmware.
Yet a lot of blogs and people who used it for the first time already loved it…
If this is how an unfinished UI looks to you, then let’s wait and see what the finished version would look like…
WP7 has been out for a longer time, yet it still looks like more unfinished than minimalist..
+1
+1
I believe N9 is really coming soon, at least for Singapore. The facebook for Nokia Branded Retail posted a comment “coming soon” in http://www.facebook.com/NokiaBrandedRetail
I believe… (end of) this month =)
Remember that the concept humanity has of the word “soon” is totally different from Nokia’s “soon”.
well it seems that the n9 will be released in sept, not as soon as i thought. check out the comment posted by Nokia Retail Singapore in reply to one of the fans.
Damn, I need an N9 with keyboard…
Release N950 pls
that won’t happen as long as Elop is the ceo. He hates MeeGo. Anyone else would have released N950 also and marketed both phones like crazy. N9 is Nokia’s Jesus phone and any rational ceo would take advantage of that and make lots of money for Nokia. Not MS Elop. He just wants to bury MeeGo so that it doesn’t threaten his and his Microsoft bosses beloved WP7.
100% agree. how could nokia shareholders let do that. i still don’t understand.
Another Nokia Ad Fail Jay, if you wanna share..
http://www.esphoneblog.com/2011/08/10/nokia-marketing-snafu-iphone-used-in-own-ad/
It’s a fake. I can see by the pixels.
Fail made by ad agency, not Nokia, by using a stock photo.
The Nokia N950 don’t have a 12Mpixel camera like we see in the teaser.
N950 only have a “7Mpixel” Camera.
You can see in the video at 15:51/28:02.
It is 12mp camera but software has downgraded it to 7mp
Still this meego is no match for mighty iphone4
Hahaha, thx for a good laugh. That made my day.
No search function in the music player?
when you are in songs view and well almost every view that has some kinda list. you just pull down the screen and Magic happens and you have search field top of the screen.
Same way you can pull down your facebook app or twitter app to make it refresh the page.
btw. there is also music player in your lock-screen view where you can change song and pause/play with out unlocking the phone. (if you lock screen when music player is playing)
player is there instead of the clock/date.
WP7 has more than that – volume rocker brings music player controls in any app, not just on lock screen.
Surprisingly simple but very clever to put controls other than volume there. Wish it had more things though.
I have wondered that too, but what would you like to see there? Some have said notifications, which might be an interesting way to do it as long as they only show up when the phone is unlocked.
Only concern there is it would then take up too much screen. Kind of like how it is mostly out of the way when I just need to change volume in a game really quick.
surprised they’ve yet to offer a scientific calculator in their phones