As they transition into their first act as handset hired guns, Nokia produce a sexy piece of industrial design featuring the OS which caused them to finally thr

As they transition into their first act as handset hired guns, Nokia produce a sexy piece of industrial design featuring the OS which caused them to finally throw in the towel, in a form so simple they couldn't screw it up. And they didn't. And they may have accidentally produced the second most interesting phone of the year? ...which also happens to be a dead end. The N9 would be underpowered if it were released today; the trick where videos continue playing as they're swiped into the multitasking ether is cute, but time will tell how well it can perform those tricks when it's been piloted for a few days (or months) by a careless human without so much as a reboot, especially as compared to the dual-core, spec'd-out superphones it will have to compete against this Fall/Holiday. Also, something something apps. Even if you only need 10 of them. I'm in the "you need the ecosystem to draw the developers to make the two or more third-party apps you give a damn about" camp. All that notwithstanding, aesthetically and (to the extent that I can infer anything of value from the video demos up now) in terms of ui/ux execution, this thing looks really good. Physically, it somehow looks as just I would expect of an object which, when slid across the surface of another, would cause music (or anything else) to come out of the second object. Even if it's an unexpected hit, in 5 years it'll still probably look like a 3303. But for now I think it looks more like the future than any computer we've carried in our pockets to date. Regardless of the quality of the software experience, the hardware execution makes me feel like Nokia is positioned well in the role they're assuming. It actually makes me wish they'd compete directly against HTC/Samsung on Android as well, although admittedly I have no idea when, if ever, their agreement with msft would allow them to do such a thing. If I could ignore the part of me which is fairly confident they'll release a slight variation on this running WP7 within the same general timescale that the N9 is on the market and shift most of their resources/support in that direction, I may actually have considered purchasing a Nokia in 2011 or 2012, something I would not have assumed at any point in the last 3 or 4 years.