Nokia N9 MeeGo phone tips & tricks & FAQs

Summary: The Nokia N9 is a beautiful piece of hardware with a pleasant operating system. There are not many out there yet, but there are some cool functions and features to explore.

 I posted my first impressions of the Nokia N9 a few days ago and have been using it extensively since that time. The more I use it the more I love it and I don’t know if I can resist picking one up after I send this evaluation unit back to Nokia in a week. Like the N900 before it, there are a ton of “hidden” features and functions in the N9 and I wanted to share some with you and also answer your questions from my earlier post.

Nokia N9 tips & tricks

I discovered some of these and others were sent to me via Twitter or comments:

• Swipe to view notification: You have likely seen the Android and now iOS home screen notifications and like the new iOS 5 notifications (I believe they passed up Android) you can swipe the notification to the side to launch right into that notification from a locked screen.
• Swipe to close: By default (there is a setting to change it) you can swipe from off the screen down and towards the center to close an application. I also recommend you get the free SwipeManager utility in the Ovi Store to give you control on swiping from all sides.
• Leave the power button alone: I found it a bit of a hassle to tap the power button to unlock the screen, but then a follower mentioned all you have to do is double tap on the display to turn on the display. This is also in the settings with a toggle to turn off.
• Quick Launch Bar: With behavior very similar to webOS, you can swipe up and hold your finger in place from the lock screen or from within an application to open the Quick Launch Bar that gives you four app icons to launch. If you get the free Shortcuts utility in the Ovi Store you can then customize what those four selected apps are if you don’t like the default ones.
• Task manager zoom: One of the three primary screens in the task manager that shows thumbnails of open apps. You can pinch and zoom on this to show more or fewer application icons.
• Swipe through inbox: Rather than going back out to the full inbox view, you can simply swipe left and right to move through your email inbox with ease.