NOKIA

N9's Weird Selfie Camera Revisited

It was the year 2011 and Nokia was still the largest phone maker in the world. Android was just getting some traction but the Finnish giant was still sticking to its own Symbian OS. With its market share dwindling, Nokia decided to try out a new OS called Meego. This gave birth to the one and only Nokia N9 - the first and the last commercially available Meego smartphone from the company, all thanks to its newfound relationship with Microsoft's Windows Phone OS.
While many know the N9 as a failed but beautiful phone running Meego, there was one feature that we all might have missed. On this today, we take a look at the weird secondary camera of the Nokia N9. It could have been one of the first smartphones to actually feature the bottom right corner front-facing camera. Definitely, the inspiration for Xiaomi's first premium full-screen smartphone, the Xiaomi Mi MIX.
Back in 2011, when selfies were not exactly invented (I mean popularized), it was simply the secondary VGA camera with very little purpose. In fact, if you read the GSMArena post about the Nokia N9, you would see that many did not even know what it was at first.
I mean, you can not blame folks back in 2011. Selfie cameras were not mainstream back then, and the placement was the weirdest of all. Without leaksters like Evan Blass or Roland Quandt or Steve Hmmerstoffer (OnLeaks) in the industry, very little was known about a phone before it was launched. In fact, even after a phone was announced, there would still be a few details that were left unrevealed. So you usually have to wait for a review to know exactly what's what!
Another highlight of the N9 was, of course, its Meego OS. While the operating system did not really catch on, it was definitely way ahead of its time. Everything in the OS was gesture based (what we call swipes today), very similar to what we see in Android and iOS smartphones. It's really a shame that the OS did not catch on, probably because it did not have any strong backers. Well, Intel did back it up for a while, but Intel was not into making smartphones. Nokia ditched Meego after the N9's release and switched to Windows Phone.
After the Nokia Lumia 800's release - its first Windows Phone-powered smartphone, the end of Meego was nigh. Google was supporting Android while Microsoft was backing its own Windows Phone platform. With these two giants focused on their own operating systems, hardly anyone else could have survived. And today, we are left with Google's Android dominating a major chunk of the smartphone space followed by Apple's iOS.
So, in this episode of Throwback Tech Thursday, let's remember the Nokia N9, not just the first and last Nokia phone with Meego, but also the inspiration behind the legendary Xiaomi My MIX series' camera placement!
Despite its tragic fate, the Nokia N9 was definitely ahead of its time! What are your thoughts?

G. C.