Nokia N9 Ice Cream Sandwich port in progress

Much as we begrudge Nokia their wring (not to mention stubborn, deluded and more than a little incestuous) decision to go with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform for their current generation of smartpohnes, it’s hard to deny that their hardware and industrial design is top-notch. Home Android developer Alexey Roslykov seems to agree, as he’s been instrumental in porting Android to Nokia’s underground favorite the N900. Now he’s on to something a little more modern, in terms of both hardware and software: getting a full-fledged Ice Cream Sandwich port running on Nokia’s drool-worthy N9. The developer tweeted out the phot below with the simple desciption, “Progress“.

For those in need of a brief refresher: the N9 was to be Nokia’s saving grace for the smartphone world, the first device to run the MeeGo OS created by a collaboration between Nokia and Intel. As a showpiece for the next-generation OS, the N9 was well-received by reviewers, if not consumers (pricing started at around $650 equivalent) when it launched in fall 2011. Even at launch the N9 was something of a lame duck as far as competition goes: it came out more than six months after Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (a former Microsoft executive) announced his intention to switch the company’s smartphones to Windows Phone 7. By the way, almost exactly a year later, Windows Phone 7′s world market share stands at less than 2%.
Not much information on the status of the port is available, but if the overlapping lock screen, home screen and Ice Cream Sandwich widgets are any indication, it’s very slow going indeed. Even so, an apparent associate of Roslyakov notes that the software is running in a dual-boot configuration, presumably keeping the MeeGo OS intact. As a mid/late 2011 top of the line smartphone with a 1Ghz OMAP processor and a gigabyte of RAM, the hardware itself should be more than capable of running the latest version of Android; it’s just a matter of getting the correct drivers, software configuration and permissions going. It should be noted that a fully-functional Android port on the N9 may or may not be possible.