[aurynn]

MeeGo Harmattan isn't as polished as iOS - it's got a lot of first-generation performance issues, definitely requires some babysitting to keep it running well, but it's miles ahead of Android.

It feels like the Harmattan team at Nokia really understood good UI and good design, and wanted to build a product around those ideals.

The N9 is also a really slick piece of hardware. Someone designed and loved this thing, and wanted it to be amazing. It doesn't have any weird bulges or outcroppings like all the Android handsets; the appearance of it is minimalist; even the camera module on the back looks like it fits the style. I always found the Android cameras to be just another annoying outcrop, never fitting with a cohesive design.

The N9, and Harmattan, have that cohesive design. It's a royal shame that it's the best phone no one will ever use...

[somebear]

I think the guys at Nokia design will be very happy with that comment. Fortunately most of them are still employed with Nokia and working on exciting stuff.

I feel bad for most of the MeeGo devs though. Most of them were laid off or quit in frustration over having their baby flushed down the toilet. Quite a large number of them ended up with Intel to keep working on MeeGo, just to see Intel drop the effort as well. Must be incredibly frustrating.

Disclaimer: I work as a software engineer at Nokia in Australia.

[aurynn]

Please pass on my remarks to the design team - I'm very impressed with their work, and I do wish that they continue their excellent designs.

I truly wish that Nokia had gone behind the N9 with everything it deserves. I feel it's the first time that Apple has actually been challenged in design, in integrity towards an ideal, in making something that exemplifies that internal drive. After seeing the WP7, even knowing it was coming, I know that their lovely design work was cheapened by that release. It's still good design, but it lost something tangible and wonderful, that sense of being something different and better. By shipping WP7, it became something that exists secondary to another goal, instead of a goal unto itself. Cheapened, as though a device that exists not symbiotically with the software designed to run on it, but any random garbage that can be sold with it.

It lost its soul.