Most people who either already picked up the N9 or are seriously considering buying it this holiday shopping season know full well that it’s the first, last, and only device that the Finnish handset maker will release running MeeGo/Maemo/Harmattan. That means developers don’t really want to support it since there’s no future in the ecosystem, not to mention the fact that Nokia refused the launch N9 in some of the world’s largest markets, instead opting to release it in a limited number of smaller countries. Now that being said, Nokia’s got a track record of keeping their devices up to date. If you’re lucky enough to own a Symbian^3 device then you’ve already experienced the upgrade to Symbian Anna and you’ll likely see Symbian Belle on your handset in early 2012. Owners of earlier Symbian devices don’t get those sort of operating system upgrades, but they do get firmware updates that fix bugs that made it into final shipping hardware.
So what about the N9? Will Nokia keep their redheaded stepchild up to date? Absolutely! People are already reporting that they’re receiving PR 1.1, which address some of the multitasking issues and also better integrates Twitter with the platform. Now there are screenshots floating around the internet showing off PR 1.2, which we have no idea as to when it’ll hit the market. It tweaks the camera user interface, updates the look of the buttons, adds facial recognition to the photo gallery, fixes some issues with font spacing, and we’re pretty sure there’s a lot of little tweaks in there as well that’ll get detailed as soon as Nokia releases the update.
If you’re a Nokia N9 owner, then we’ve got to ask you: Why did you bother picking up the device? Did you want to have Nokia’s last real “Made in Finland”, both in terms of software and hardware, smartphone?
[More screenshots at Phonesfera]