Hands On Video By mobilenet.cz

Yesterday A few days ago I posted about the release of the Nokia N9, which with all its impressive features disappointed me with the lack of a physical hardware keyboard. There were however some good news as I learned from Twitter that the Nokia N950 has been quietly and officially announced! As promising as that was the bad news is that the device will have limited numbers and be only available to developers.

You can go ahead and read the release notes from the developer site. Which describes the major differences between the N9 and the N950. You can also find other notes and disclaimers about the device.

Nokia N950 phone uses same hardware components as the Nokia N9 phone with the following exceptions:

  • N950 is physically larger and is made out of aluminum, whereas N9 has  a polycarbonate unibody.
  • N950 has a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The N9 is a touchscreen  -only device.
  • N950 has a 4” TFT LCD display whereas N9 has 3.9” AMOLED display.   Display resolution is same on both devices (854×480). Due to the use   of different display technologies, developers should avoid one pixel   with fonts and graphical objects with lines one pixel wide. Also avoid  the extensive use of bright colors, especially white, when developing   for OLED displays as this increases the power consumption (typical   for OLED displays).
  • N950 has a different physical camera module than N9. Both camera   modules have very similar image quality (Carl Zeiss branding in N9)   and both modules support 8Mpix image mode.
  • In the N950 the front facing camera is in top right corner and on N9   it is in the bottom right corner. The actual camera module is same.
  • N950 supports Bluetooth version 2.1+EDR, whereas N9 supports   version 4.0
  • N950 does not have support for NFC
  • N9 has slightly more sensitive magnetometer and ALS
  • N950 has 1320mAh battery, the N9 has 1450mAh battery

Where can I get an N950?

While its very clear that the N950 will only be available to developers, what is not is how to get your hands on one. There is somethings called Nokia N950 Developer Kit for N9 apps at the very bottom of this page and says to email in writing a request for a kit to nokia.developer.launchpad@nokia.com by July 31, 2011.

N950 Developer Kit

Good luck trying to get one, it seems that to be considered you must either have published apps in the Ovi Store or “have started using Qt.” For those who don’t have any apps published, the latter gives a glimpse of hope. Perhaps looking around eBay in a few months would be the best bet.

So what gives? Basically MeeGo has been relegated upon its release to a side-project by Nokia. Its still not clear what the strategy (if any) behind releasing the device sidelined. Very confusing. Maybe its some kind of contractual obligation. At the very least I suppose you can say that Nokia is pleasing the fanboys by continuing what they started with MAEMO and the N900 — awesome device that I never picked up only because it lacked the precious 3G AT&T band that depending on which city you’re in might not have needed it due to the fact that it couldn’t be used at times.

I am attempting to get my hands on an N950 and if I do I’ll share here with you. So the keyboard that was missing on the N9 was never really missing since the N9 was actually the N950 all along.

 

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