Nokia N950 for MeeGo developers quietly announced; packs a slide-out QWERTY keyboard

After many months of rumors, leaks, and speculation, the Nokia N9 was finally introduced in its final form with the bold intention to shake the smartphone market. However, with its unibody construction and lack of a physical keyboard, the smartphone clearly does not look the way we were initially expecting it to. Remember the alleged N9 photos that surfaced on the web in the second half of last year? Well, it turns out that a device almost identical to the one that posed for the camera back then will see the light of day after all and will be officially known as the Nokia N950.

What you might not like hearing, though, is that the Nokia N950 will not be a commercial smartphone so do not expect finding it sitting on a store shelf near you. Instead, the device will be intended for MeeGo developers only and will come with no warranty of any kind. Being a developer's device means that the Nokia N950 will not be as pretty nor as reliable as the N9, but its hardware specification will come close enough to that of its commercial counterpart. Both smartphones will come powered by the same TI OMAP3630 chipset backed up by 1GB of RAM, yet the N950 will get a slightly bigger 4-inch TFT LCD display boasting the same 854x480 resolution and a different image sensor of seemingly identical quality. Besides that, we cannot omit the fact that developers will have the N950's QWERTY keyboard at their disposal, which will hopefully make building MeeGo software somewhat easier of a task.

There is no word regarding the Nokia N950's price so far and it is said that quantities will be limited. If you are a developer interested in getting one, you might want to act fast once the smartphone becomes available. In the meantime, feel free to watch the video below where the Nokia N950 makes a brief appearance.

source: Nokia, The Nokia Blog via SlashGear

UPDATE: Well, this didn't take long. Photos of the N950 have already been posted on the web for the whole world to see.


Images courtesy of Mobile-review.com