Introduction
The Nokia N9 is a masterpiece, that symbolizes perfect harmony between hardware design and software. Designed by the great Marco Ahtisaari and launched in June 2011, the design is timeless till date and was continued with Lumia series. When it comes to software, the one-handed gesture based navigation and a “fluid” interface could have shaken up the mobile world. It met its demise on its launched day, as, soon after the Nokia N9 was launched, the Nokia Lumia 800 was teased, a sibling of rivalry. It was announced that it will be limited release, the first and the last of its kind, running MeeGO software while Nokia was transitioning to windows operating system.
These days, the Nokia N9 is still a marvel, one that is cherished by Nokia fans worldwide. The good news is, the Nokia N9 can be bought via 3rd party online retailers at an affordable price. Coming in trend setting colours such as the matte black, cyan and magenta and the glossy white, it is still a good device to replace your “dumb” phone for weekend use. There are many guides out there on how to get your Nokia N9 up and running in 2021. Unfortunately, the Nokia N9 does have a few issues to be sorted out If you even want to get it up and running. In this article I will share with you how to address this issue and get your device working back again. As usual, this is not to replace your daily driver, but simply to give a new life to your Nokia N9.
Issues: 1. You don’t have a Nokia N9.
Solution:
Try E-bay, Aliexpress or any online platform. But its more than likely that you would end up buying a Nokia N9 meant for the Chinese market which has a slightly tighter control over the apps and installation. We will come back to this later on how to bypass this limitation.
You can simply check on this detail in the settings.
- 001 — Europe (1), Latin / South America, South Africa
- 003 — China
- 005 — Asia / Pacific (incl. Australia / New Zealand, excl. China)
- 006 — Middle East
- 2xx, 3xx, 4xx — “Country Variant” and carrier-branded images
Issues 2 : You have a Nokia N9 but the hardware button doesn’t work anymore. This seem to be a hardware quality issue with the Nokia N9, after a period of time the buttons becomes recessed and simply cannot be pressed back to switch on and off. While you may be able to boot up the device while charging it after a few minutes, this may not work all the time. It will be cumbersome to carry an extra cable and charger to do this all the time but for now, it may be the only way of booting up the device or you could get the power button fixed.
Solution :
This step should allow you to convert the feedback of inserting a usb cable to give you a software option to boot the device. This is slightly tricky but follow the steps accurately and you will get this done in a jiffy.
Basically we need to get the flasher app to upload some instructions. But you may have issues of the flasher app detecting the Nokia N9. So follow the sequence as given here.
-Install Nokia connectivity cable driver first.
-download flasher app. Rename it to flasher if its written as winflasher etc. Place the app in desktop. Now , run CMD ( you do not need to run it as administrator). Type Dekstop\flasher . This should load some information on different sets of instruction and it will show waiting for usb connection at the end. Now, connect your Nokia N9( switched off) to your PC. You can type in CMD the following flasher -R to reboot the phone.
-type(or copy paste ) the following to install option to boot up your phone by connecting a usb cable.
flasher.exe –enable-rd-mode
flasher.exe –set-rd-flags=force-
power-key
****do take note that by doing this, the notification light may blink, and the focus light over the camera will be on all the time. I have not found a way to disable this but it don’t bother me much.
Once you have done this, each time you connect a usb cable to your Nokia N9 either to charge or to PC it will allow you to boot up the device.
- Once you have accomplished this , the next is to install app that allows you to switch off or reboot the phone.
- Basically you can just google up the necessary software like reboot or power at wesbite such as openrepos.net OR just use this opportunity to install the alternative store. So, install the n9repomirror app first then install the warehouse installer. Once done , run the warehouse installer and let it install the current warehouse. Now, you have access to the alternative store and install the necessary app needed.
Issue 3. Maps and Navigation!
Solution: Similar to how the Nokia N8 manage to get its maps running thanks to tienda store, you can do the same for your Nokia N9 which allows you to use the maps and navigation for off line mode.
Visit http://maps.tienda-sistore.com/ and download the necessary file and install it the respective folder as stated in the site’s tutorial.
With the above steps done, you should be able to boot up your Nokia N9 with hardware power button issue with ease by simply plugging the usb cable, able to install apps using the alternative app store,use maps and navigation in offline mode, and switch off the device with the dedicated app which is more than enough to replace your “dumb” phone.
The following is for those using Nokia N9 with a Chinese firmware where they need to flash it to a European firmware once they area able to boot up the device. So do this first if your device power button works well or follow steps 1 to get the device to boot up. Please visit
https://medium.com/other-oses/awakening-a-nokia-n9-in-2018-a-walkthrough-guide-a2dd596e540d for detailed instructions on how to get European firmware on your device.
In summary, you need to flash the firmware to European based firmware (005)
****Some files may have been deleted from the links shared in the original post. Please find the respective file from the google drive link shared here.
Conclusion
The Nokia N9 can still be used as a relevant back up device or even a multimedia consumption device. The 8mp camera with Zeiss optic takes good images, the beautiful fabula design is timeless, and the operating system is simply ahead of its time. So, time to reboot the Nokia N9?
The necessary files can be downloaded from here if you cant find it in the respective files. Alternatively do google the files if it is not compatible.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IuVZvD8tIdPEhVWHPgaZBikqf1gma4Ne?usp=sharing
You can watch the video here to understand the steps further and to see the Navigation in action
