07/09/2018

While waiting for Sailfish 3, we found the “white unicorn”

Waiting for news from Helsinki, we decided to try to find the almost unobtainable Nokia N9 white, called “the white unicorn” of smartphones, as rare already around 2012.

We all know the story (we fans of Meego):

In 2011 the Nokia N9 already anticipated the “swipe” gesture, true multitasking, a dedicated notification screen (swipe to the left), the curved screen, the NFC and even tethering.
His design was years ahead of the rest, so much so that Apple took inspiration for his iPhone, years later.
The rest is an old story still shrouded in mystery: Microsoft bought NOKIA and put the Windows in the body of the N9, calling it Lumia.
A group of ex nokia engineers emerged and founded the startup Jolla Oy.

By pure chance we came across an ebay seller who sold a sample with boxes and accessories and we immediately opened the wallet: on the other hand, the price was around € 100, converted by the pounds.

Update: finally the Nokia N9 is arrived.

And it’s a white colour exemplary, in a blue box printed somewhat differently from my old cyan N9:
the packaging was printed on opaque cardboard, like if it was one of first print done by Nokia.
(Our previous Nokia N9 cyan had a box with glossy cardboard and special paints on the Nokia N9 writing: inside, however, it had the booklets of the Nokia Lumia first series. It was probably one of the latest prints.)

Opening the packaging is a small box with the User Guide inside – which in this case corresponds and is for Nokia N9! The booklet is printed in 1 color, in black on opaque paper. Together with the logo, the old “Connecting Peoples” slogan 😅

And here it is, the Nokia N9, surprisingly with the plastics still applied! This is a sample left in the warehouse closed: a “new old stock”, the promises of the seller were true …
The plastics make it temporarily bad, but this should have preserved the shine of the plastic (PVC I think).

What to do now?

With a Nokia N9 in 2018 … The ideas go from “we remove the plastics and we finally use it!” and a more cautious “let’s wait and see to flash it with the European ROM”, “let’s sell it now” or “let’s preserve it religiously with the plastics!”.
Ah and also: “let’s port Sailfish on it!” 😆

While waiting for further updates and a video review or other photos, here is a gallery with photos retrieved on the web…