By Tuckerrson, Yr 12 Intern

As the Nokia N9, Nokia’s first, its only and its last flag bearer of their in-house operating system, Meego, hits Australian shelves, I got a look at one of the most gorgeous devices I’ve ever seen in the mobile world.

I don’t want to go in for a review here, but I’ll give you a quick run-down of my impressions of this amazing product. The N9 is amazing hardware—I mean seriously, this has to be the best-designed phone I’ve ever seen, easily beating the iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy S II in my opinion.

It’s so hard to describe what makes this such a beautiful device [Get on with it Tuckerrson!—Ed.], whether it be the simplistic yet obviously Nokia design or the gorgeous 3.9” ClearBlack AMOLED display. Whatever it is, it’s something you have to see and feel to really appreciate.

The main feature however, is its operating system—MeeGo. Nokia has already publicly stated it will be killing MeeGo off. Like Android, it is based on Linux and is something really different from todays Mobile OS’. MeeGo is easy to use, looks wonderful, is very well integrated and doesn’t miss any key features found in competing OS’. Despite this, as you may expect from a brand new operating system, it lacks an ecosystem.

From the moment you first have a go of it, it gives you a sense of accomplishment; the accomplishment that Nokia has really made with this device—that is until you realise you’re dealing with a dead man walking.

Nokia’s decision to discontinue MeeGo, in favour of Microsoft’s Window’s Phone announced back in February, was something at the time I thought of being a really forward move for the company, a move that Nokia needed and could really be wonderful. Don’t get me wrong, it still certainly could be that, but having used both a Window’s Phone handset with the latest Mango update and the N9, I’m really starting to think that Microsoft was the one that needed Nokia.

Nokia has proved with this device that it can still execute a class-leading phone with the one-two punch of stellar hardware and software. But in the end, a dying ecosystem coming into the competition a year late was always going to struggle to compete with the big boys. The N9 is everything faithful Nokia fans have been waiting for, but sadly was killed before getting a chance to prove itself. 

To me, the device stands as proof to the world that you can teach an old dog new tricks, that Nokia has finally learned what the consumer wants and that it’s happy to implement that into a device and execute it wonderfully.

The N9 is the device that has restored my confidence in Nokia. It also has me excited for the Windows Phones that Nokia’s going to releasing in the near future. With their first Windows Phone device to be announced next week at Nokia World, I can tell you right now, I will be glued to my live blog feeds to (hopefully) witness a device that will bring me back to both Window’s Phone and Nokia.