Comparing the mighty: Apple iPhone 4S vs. Nokia N9

The challenge

Nokia N9 is the Finnish mobile maker’s first smartphone on MeeGo OS, co-developed by Nokia and Intel. Nokia announced the product in August this year. Certainly, N9 is one of key smartphones Nokia has ever produced. However, there is no chance the company will release more phones on MeeGo or Symbian in coming months. It is because Nokia has signed a deal with Microsoft to exclusively provide hardware support for its Windows Phone 7.5 Mango platform. We are here to compare Nokia N9 with the best smartphone in the world, iPhone 4S, which Apple shipped a few days back. In this comparison, we will review major features and potentials of both Nokia N9 and Apple iPhone 4S.

Apple iPhone 4S vs. Nokia N9

Comparison attributes

Design

At a single glance we can find the difference in design between iPhone 4S and Nokia N9. The first one is with the much-welcomed curved body, while N9 has a rectangular shape, which is not eye-catching. iPhone 4S has the dimensions of 15.2 x 58.6 x 9.3mm and it weighs at 137g. Nokia N9 is up with 116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1mm and a weight of 135g.

Winner: iPhone 4S.

Display

iPhone 4S sports a 3.5-inch Retina Display with a resolution of 640 x 960 pixels. Nokia N9 features a bit larger 3.9-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 480 x 854 pixel resolution. Both displays support 16 million colors.

Winner: iPhone 4S wins thanks to its high resolution Retina Display.

Operating System

Nokia N9 plays on MeeGo Harmattan, a mobile operating system co-developed by Nokia and the chip maker giant Intel. Apple iPhone 4S has iOS 5, known as the most advanced iOS version ever. It may be one of last products on MeeGo, which is almost disregard by Nokia as it signed a deal with Microsoft. Intel has recently blamed Nokia as a terrible partner to have for a project like MeeGo.

Winner: iPhone 4S; because it runs on one of world’s best operating systems, iOS 5. The new iOS version has about 200 striking features.

Processor

Apple iPhone 4S is built with a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor on Apple’s A5 chipset. Apple A5 chipset is known for its incredible performance. Nokia N9 mounts a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 SoC processor with TI OMAP3630.

Winner: iPhone 4S. Apple A5 display offers matchless processing speed and performance.

Memory

The new iPhone comes with three on-device storage options; 16GB, 32GB and 64GB and with 512MB of RAM. Nokia N9 offers 16/64GB storage options and is powered by 1GB RAM.

Winner: Nokia N9. It has better RAM than iPhone 4S.

Camera

You have an 8-megapixel camera with HD 1080p video capture capability on iPhone 4S. Nokia N9 also highlights an 8-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, but with 720p video capture. Both smartphones have moderate front cameras also for video chatting.

Winner: iPhone 4S. It has a stunning 1080p video capture capability.

Entertainment

Nokia N9 is with Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby headphone. The device supports most of commonly used audio and video formats including MPEG-4, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+ and much more. The new iPhone also spotlights many multimedia and entertainment features. It has 1080p video playback compared with N9’s 720p.

Winner: iPhone 4S.

Battery

Apple iPhone 4S is powered by a built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery that provides 200 hours on standby and 8 hours talk time. Meanwhile, Nokia N9 promises 450 hours on standby and 7 hours talk time.

Winner: Nokia N9

Network Support

iPhone 4S highlights Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, while N9 is up with WLAN IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, micro USB 2.0, GPS and A-GPS.

Winner: Nokia N9

The Verdict:

As per the above comparison, in most parameters, Apple’s new iPhone 4S wins over its Nokia rival N9. Running on iOS 5 that has many cutting edge features, iPhone 4S is indeed one of best smartphones we ever have in market. Certainly, Nokia N9 with a dying MeeGo OS can not raise any critical threat to iPhone 4S or others. Moreover, iPhone already has huge popularity among costumers across the world. The flagship smartphone has been dominating the technology market since its arrival in 2007. Nokia, which is going through the worst period in its history, will not be able to lift any serious challenge to iPhone 4S.