Nokia back in business

In recent years, Nokia has endured what could euphemistically be described as “a bit of a ’mare”. While Google and Apple carved up the hi-tech smartphone market, Nokia became the sleeping giant. Well, the counter attack starts here.

The N9 is the world’s first ‘pure touchscreen’ — you’ll notice there are no front-facing buttons — and thus looks so incredibly sleek it resembles a Pixar-style computer-generated object. It’s due out later this year, with a Windows-powered version rumoured to follow soon after.

ESSENTIAL FEATURES

• The N9 has a curved, 3.9in Gorilla Glass display, while the polycarbonate body enables superior antennae performance, resulting in less dropped calls.
• There’s no ‘home’ button. Instead, you can quit an app or return to the home screen by swiping inwards from any side of the screen. A double-tap unlocks the phone.
• It’s packed with productivity-boosting functions such as the copy-and-paste: swipe back over a word to copy it and swipe forwards to paste it.
• The powerful 8-megapixel camera with autofocus (you can also tap to focus) has Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash and a super-wide 28mm lens.
• It comes loaded with Nokia’s highly-regarded Ovi Maps. Unlike Google Maps, it offers satnav-style, voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation.
• The super-fast browser supports Flash and HTML 5, and the handset allows for pinch-to-zoom and double-tap to focus on a particular column of text.