How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

Hi guys,

I was recently at a talk by Brian Kralyevich, who was the product lead for the N9. He told some stories about the development of the N9 and I thought you guys might be interested.

He loves the N9 but was obviously very jaded from his experience at Nokia. He complained that the Finnish were very slow and their product cycles took way too long, apparently the N9 took 3 years. Also, according to Kralyevich, the higher ups were all adamant that the N9 have a hardware keyboard (what we now see as the N950), and he kept telling them no, that was the wrong choice, but they wouldn't listen to him. So he flew to Espoo (he was based in London, like Peter Skillman, etc), and had a one on one meeting with Elop and convinced him to ditch the hardware keyboard, and that's how we got the N9 we know today.

:)

Re: How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

So now we know who was behind that decision. Too bad he was such a smooth talker; could be the world would be just a bit different if he hadn't interfered there... :p

Re: How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

Wow. That's interesting. Would love to hear more stories. Funny how it was Elop that helped deliver the device as it was delivered.

Re: How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

Well that was common knowledge (or so I thought?)
The development team of N9 went through crazy number of iterations and was not really going to release anything until Elop put down his foot and ordered the current OS package to ship.

Re: How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

Was the talk recorded? Is there some place we can watch it?

Re: How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

To me it was common knowledge that there was nothing to praise ("beautiful industrial design") in the 5 minute dummy design of the N9.

Saw a new 7110 early on the flee market last Sunday. It sold in 15 mins. These things hold memory. N9 nobody would not recognize in a bucket of nails.

Re: How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

I knew Elop will be involved onto ditching business.

I kind of understand ditching keyboard for general public. But I don't see the reason N950 and N9 cannot be selling at the same time. Nokia has put so much effort on designing N950 and it went to production then all cancelled? And N9 isn't much thinner than N950 anyway...

Re: How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

Well, Elop did also want it for the Lumia 800. Any hardware or design breakthrough Nokia accomplished could be carried over to Windows Phone hardware.

Re: How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

They didn't want to market two phones. Heck, the N9 was only released to create excitement for the Lumia 800 and to keep the employees happy.

Also, according to Kralyevich, everyone agreed that the future of the smartphone was a full touchscreen with no keyboard.

Re: How the N9 lost the hardware keyboard
 

Unfortunately it wasn't recorded and was partially an Amazon Design recruitment event, which was pretty good because Kralyevich was able to answer direct questions on design decisions.