N9 owners are already starting to get a notification for the update that was promised to them back at Nokia World. The PR 1.1 release brings in a host of performance improvements and many new features. The total number of enhancements sits at the cool 308, so this update should dramatically improve the user experience of the MeeGo flagship.

The general performance of the Nokia N9 is said to be improved and there are tune-ups to the visuals of the platform. The popular Swype keyboard has now been backed into MeeGo, while the lockscreen got music controls.

The 8 megapixel camera got color filters, while multitasking reportedly got even better, thanks to the improved memory handling. And the nifty feature that lets you close apps instead of sending them to the background by swiping down is now enabled by default.

PR1.1 Features:
- Low power mode enhancemens, battery charging and silent profile are now shown in there.
- Tons of NFC and connectivity improvements.
- Performance enhancements.
- Visual tuneups (e.g. toolbar has a shadow now).
- Splash screen has been taken to wider use.
- Color management is less nervous than before (neutral sRGB space color palette is now used always, except in clearly outdoor situations, when oversaturation is applied to adjust how eye desaturates content in brightness).
- Lock screen music controls has been added (It’s in the top of the screen and at least I’m pleased with how nicely a nuance the controls look. Currently playing song is on big friendly letters, replacing clock when you are playing music).
- Swype keyboard has been added.
- Keyboard switching is very smooth with swipe gesture.
- Battery notification was tuned for 1.1 and should come every 2 minutes while in call, every 5 minutes when display on and every 30 minutes when display off.
- Turning device to landscape is supported allover UI it seems.
- Double tap was re-tuned a bit for 1.1. It’s a bit more reliable again.
- Tons of exchange fixes
- Facebook starts faster and has tons of fixes in both 1.1 and 1.2. I’d say it’s bearable in 1.1.
- wifi in general has been improved by leaps and bounds in 1.1.
- Magnifier works in 1.1 much better than in 1.0.
- Swipe-to-close is enabled by default in 1.1
- Top status bar lag has been fixed
- Browser has been improved heavily for 1.1, but not on the UX front. 1.2 has some feature improvements.
- LED bug that has been fixed for 1.1.
- 1.1 also includes a battery charging indicator in low power mode (LPM)
- A lot of work has been put to better interoperability of BT with cars
- pulseaudio issue has been fixed

How-to Video Below!

With all the Windows Phone devices Nokia announced today, the Espoo company also revealed a new color for the N9. The MeeGo-running smartphone that got many excited, will now be available in white, alongside its black, magenta and blue siblings.

Unlike them, however, the white N9 will come with a glossy finish rather than the matte finishes of the other N9 models. We are glad the white finish did not took Nokia years to develop because it looks stunning. Here is Frank Zilikens, head of product marketing, explaining why the N9 was not available in white on the first: 

Spotify has released a mobile app for MeeGo, allowing those lucky few with a Nokia N9 to access the streaming music service. The app which also works on the N950 developer device supports streaming over WiFi, EDGE and 3G, as well as support for offline playlists where tracks are cached in the N9 own storage for playback when you are without a data connection.

The N9 already comes preloaded with access to Nokia Ovi Music store, allowing paid downloads on a per-track or per-album basis. However, Spotify relies on a subscription, a single monthly payment 9.99USD or 9.99EURO granting access to the company full catalog of streamed tracks.

As you probably know, The N9 is already shipping to all some countries, Some Reports says that the FWVGA AMOLED Display of the MeeGo flagship is using a PenTile matrix, instead of a regular RGB one.

Its the same kind of matrix that we saw with Samsung first-gen Super AMOLEDs, where each pixel is composed of two subpixels rather than three. This gives less room for sub-pixel rendering and reduces the effective resolution, when displaying super fine detail.

To Make it clear with a pixel density of 251 ppi, the Nokia N9 still has an amazingly sharp display and its not that easy to spot the side-effects of the PenTile matrix. Still, if you look really closely, you will be able to spot the familiar dottiness.