Jolla recently unveiled their Meego based Sailfish OS during the Slush event in Finland. We also got a short demonstration of the Sailfish operating system in action. Sailfish is the outcome of continuous development on the Meego platform which Nokia discontinued in favor of Windows Phone.

Now a new hands on video of the Sailfish OS running on the Nokia N950

  source – Engadget

For those who don't know it, the Nokia N950 is the true successor to the Nokia N900 and the QWERTY toting sibling of the Nokia N9. The device features a 4 inch display, 16GB of internal storage which can be expanded through microSD, 12 megapixel camera and is powered by a 1GHz processor with 1GB of RAM.

Nokia Developers have just posted that the latest Meego Harmattan PR1.2 (3.2012.02-6_PR_RM680) Beta update has been released for the device along with it's change-log.

The new Harmattan 1.2 released for the Nokia N950 comes with a number of user experience improvements. Some of the new features include support for Five new languages, face recognition, enhanced copy-paste, software update notifications and games in the Nokia Store, and folders in application view.

If you have a Nokia N950 Developer Device and hope to update it to PR1.2 beta please note the following:

• No downgrading to Harmattan 1.0 or 1.1(.1)
  You cannot downgrade your N950 (or N9) software after you upgrade to PR1.2. You will have to wait for the next version of the software to be released to be able to update your device again. Developers are advised to ensure that their apps work correctly on version 1.0 and 1.1 before moving on to developing for 1.2. Use of remote devices or purchasing additional test devices are suggested to ensure the applications experience is consistent across the various software versions.
• Upgrading your N950 to Harmattan 1.2 beta
  The update to beta 2 is available as an OCF (One Click Flasher) update and not available as an OTA (Over the Air) update. The OCF update will erase your device. You can use backup-restore from Harmattan 1.0 (1.2011.34-2) and 1.1 (2.2011.39-5) but not from beta 1 (1.2011.22-6 or older)
• Included fixes, limitations, known issues etc.
  A list of significant bug fixes and release notes are available on bugzilla. A list of known issues, limitations and differences between the Nokia N9 and the Nokia N950 have also been made available.

• New languages
  
  • Persian
  • Hebrew
  • Kazakh
  • Thai
  • Vietnamese
• Software update notifications for content in Nokia Store
• Face recognition for gallery and face tags for Facebook
• Support for folders in the application view
• Mail for Exchange global address book lookup
• Mail thread support in the Email client
• Extended copy-paste support
• Media sharing with DLNA compatible devices
• Improved browser history view
• Compass support in Maps
• QtWebKit update to version 2.2
• New font taken into use
• Front camera support
• Video editing support in the Gallery application

Bug Fixes

There are ~122 public bugs fixed in this release. The complete list is available at harmattan-bugs.nokia.com.

Other Improvements:

• MeeGotouch Framework
  
  • Visual hint for differentiating swipe close gesture from normal swipes
  • Timestamps shown in notifications
  • Notifications sorted by timestamps
  • Improvements in Event Feed area
  • Music controls in Lock screen
  • New feedbacks added to MeeGoTouch theme
    
    • priority2_callbutton_press
    • priority2_callbutton_release
    • priority2_close
    • priority2_close_multiple
    • priority2_move
    • priority2_popup
  • Kernel updated to be in sync with the upstream kernel version 2.6.32.48
  • Connectivity
    
    • Android NDEF Push Protocol disabled
    • NFC polling enabled in lock screen
    • Separate switch for controlling mobile background connections while roaming
  • Camera
    
    • Self Timer support
    • Composition grid + on/off control
  • Calendar
    
    • Better handling of To-Do lists, recurring events and timezones
    • Private flag support for events
    • Support for read-only events
    • Ability to forward/reply/reply-all for received events
  • Clock
    
    • Clock alarm becomes silent by flipping the device face down instead of snoozing
    • Updated time picker
  • Gallery
    
    • People view added to the grid toolbar
    • Improved multiple selection indication in grid view
  • Music Player
    
    • Audiobook and podcast support
    • Ability to create playlists
    • Ability to delete music files from music player library views via object menu
    • Possibility to see songs that are on the current play queue
  • In addition, there are numerous bug fixes related to the implementation of new features, improving the overall user experience and reliability of the device.

The developer only Nokia N950 has received a firmware update taking it to PR 1.1. The N950 runs Meego which will be updated to 2.2011.39-5 and the file size of the update will be 278.6 MB

The update is available OTA and you can check for it by heading to Settings > Applications > Update

The update brings Swype and allows you to share images on Twitter among other new features and improvements. The full changelog of this update follows.




Release Notes For Nokia N950 device software PR1.1 (39-5)       18.10.2011

General:

The Nokia N950 PR1.1 software is apart from some hardware and license related differences a close match to Nokia N9 release 1.1 software. The major feature in this release is that it includes two variants of the software: the Global and Chinese variants. This over the air update uses the Global variant, the Chinese variant will be available later (as a separately flashable image).

Other points of interest:

• General Help (Info buttons) is disabled in the UI.
• Developers should check out the developer section below, and review the OneClickFlasher release notes, as these are used to switch between variants.

Changes from Nokia N950 Beta 2 (34-2) to Nokia N950 PR1.1 (39-5):

• Application close by swiping from top to bottom is now always on.
• Improved memory handling to boost application startup and overall performance.
• Multilanguage keyboard and support for Swype.
• Support for Chinese language (separate variant).
• Added plugin support for Google, Picasa, Flickr and YouTube.
• Number of small UI tweaks e.g status bar notification icon updates.
• Number of bug fixes and changes have been implemented.
• Galaxy on Fire  application has been added.
• Need for Speed Shift application has bee added.
• Widgets Gallery and QT Quick components gallery application have been removed.

Developers

• If the device becomes unresponsive you can to perform a hardware reset. Press the power key on top of the device and keep it pressed down for 8 or more seconds.
• eMMC erase may fail in some devices (see One Click Flasher release notes for details).
• Reminder: you will need enable developer mode manually after flashing with a new image (i.e. when changing variants)
• Developer mode is OFF by default. User needs to enable this option in order to download and install the developer tools.  See Settings->Security->Developer mode.
• Allow installations from non-Store sources is OFF by default. User needs to enable this option in order to allow installation of applications from other sources.  See Settings->Installations. 

Updating from Beta2 to PR1.1 over-the-air using SSU

• Users will get a notification (appears in events view) that they can accept to start the update process.
• Alternatively users can manually check for updates by going to N950 Settings->Applications->Manage Applications
• Users may get low memory and connectivity messages during the installation process.
  These messages can be ignored.
• Galaxy on Fire II and Need For Speed Shift are not part of SSU update download.

The Nokia E7 and the Nokia N950 may look similar from the outside, but they are two very different monsters. Check out this video comparison of the two devices and see how they stack up against each other.

Check out this hands on video of the Nokia N950. Like the Nokia N9 the Nokia N950 device runs the Meego mobile operating system but will not be available for public consumption. The device features a 4 inch touch display, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 16GB of expandable storage, a 12MP camera, and a 1GHz processor with 1GB of RAM.



source - FoneArena