Stochastic Geometry Random tangents

So, as before, the first thing to do is to unbox the N9. And, as before, others have done this in a bit more detail than me, but c’est la vie. On with it:

A quick rip, shred and tearing of bubblewrap later, and the contents are quite minimalist:

The phone itself, some paperwork, a rubber protector for the case, a USB-to-microUSB cable for charging and connecting to the PC, a mains-to-USB convertor for charging and a wired handsfree headphones set. All neatly packed away, nothing shifting around in the box or ill-protected – in fact the phone itself comes in a sort of all-over peel-off plastic protector.

But enough about the perhiphirals and accessories, on to the phone itself:

N9 face-on

First impression? Shiny. Very shiny. Every surface is polished and it feels odd in the hand after the solidity of the N900. It feels as light as, or lighter than, the old e71 did. The way the front panel rises off the surface like a glass blister is a bit odd to the touch for some reason, but the feel in the hand is natural – there’s a slight curve to the back of the phone that sits well, at least in my hand.

It also feels quite different from the N900 with its sliding screen – you get a very rigid physical feel from this phone.

Looking at the sides for controls and ports is a very fast exercise indeed:

N9 left side

N9 right side

N9 bottom

N9 top

Basicly, there’s almost nothing there compared to the N900, which was adorned with ports. You have nothing at all on the left, a multifunction button and a volume up/down rocker on the right, the speaker grille on the bottom and the headphones socket on the top, along with two panels which open to reveal the microUSB charging/data port and the microSIM card holder.

N9 top, opened

Wait a second, microSIM.

Ah, feck. The N900 uses a normal miniSIM card. How do you review a phone when you can’t use it as a phone?

Well, turns out the difference between a full-size SIM card, a miniSIM and a microSIM is purely physical in nature – cut bits off and you can turn a full SIM to a miniSIM or a miniSIM to a microSIM.

SIM Card sizes

MiniSIM-to-MicroSIM cutting template

And there are microSIM adapters that will bring a microSIM back up to miniSIM size as well:

microSIM to miniSIM adaptor

So my plan was to cut down my miniSIM from my N900 to a microSIM for the N9 and use the adapter to move the SIM back to the N900 post-trial. I checked with Meteor on twitter and they confirmed that replacing a damaged SIM wouldn’t be a problem. So, out with the ruler and scalpel and scissors and DIY SIM to microSIM template…

Trimming down SIM card

Unfortunately, it turns out that Meteor’s SIM cards have odd contacts, and if you use the contact pad as a landmark when deciding where to cut, you get the cut wrong – you have to cut through the actual contact pad on the side opposite the angled corner when doing the trimming. So a second trim was required, and then shimming the now-mangled card back into the holder in the right place:

Trimming and Shimming the microSIM

But ultimately, it worked, and I now have a fully functioning N9 to test for the next two weeks. I’ll follow the same path as I did with the N900 trial – I’ll compare the N9 to the N900 and the e71, field test it for a while to see if it can replace a netbook the same way an N900 can, and generally muck about with it and see how well it does the things I need it to do…

So a while back, I got offered a trial of a Nokia N900, which worked out reasonably well – to the point where I went off and bought my own, which is still my primary phone today.

However, my N900 is two years old now and starting to show its age a bit. The core functions still run well, but two years is long enough to have found the rough edges – some of them in places where rough edges shouldn’t exist, like in the telephony functions. Yes, it’s more a netbook with a phone function than a phone with a netbook function, but still – the screen rotation and UI responsiveness have caused dropped calls in the past, and I’ve had to reboot from lockups a few times, and if the camera app crashes with the lens cover open, that’s a hardware reset; and there are other small niggles. It’s still my primary phone, and I still maintain that it’s better than an iPhone (or an Android for that matter, though the gap there is smaller); but I have been looking at the Nokia N9 since its initial leaks with avarice.

Original leaked N9 design

The original N9 has since morphed into the N950, and the new N9 is a more iPhone form factor, lacking a physical keyboard, but I still wanted to give it a try, so I asked WomWorldNokia if I could do a trial with it the same way as I had with the N900. They didn’t have one at the time, but put my name on the list and the other day I got this on twitter:

And in my email is the paperwork for the trial, which I sent back that day and this afternoon, the package arrived at work. So tonight I’ll unbox it, and for the next fortnight I’ll use it in place of my regular N900, and we’ll see if I have to try for an upgrade 😀

Nokia N9