While some may think that MeeGo is a no-go for Nokia, and that any hope of the company’s future smartphone success lies with it getting in bed with the likes of Microsoft, for the time being the company looks like it will keep on walking to the beat of its own drum. As MeeGo development continues, Nokia is nearing the point for it to release the first smartphone shipping with the new OS already installed. Right now, that device looks like it will be the N9-01, and we just got our first look at the phone’s rumored specs.

Eldar Mutazin reported last month that the previously-planned introductory MeeGo phone, the N9-00 (pictured), wouldn’t see the light of day, opening up space for its successor to step in and fill that role. While we can’t confirm the name, the phone has been referred to has the N9-01, an N9-00 variant without a QWERTY keyboard.

The N9-01 specs come about due to the work of some German MeeGo fans who dug through the published bug reports from the in-development OS, spotting a rogue device that didn’t match anything currently-known to support MeeGo. If that logic holds, and the information is accurate, you can look forward to the phone running on a 1.6GHz Medfield Intel Atom chip. We had previously heard that MeeGo phones would adopt Atom processors, an unpopular choice for smartphones.

Helping out the main CPU, the phone supposedly features a 200MHz graphics processor with 512MB of dedicated RAM (in addition to 1GB of system RAM), a 480 x 854 display, dual cameras, HSPA+ connectivity, HDMI output, and support for NFC. We’ve been hoping for the next MeeGo release to take place around April, so if this N9-01 is going to act as a MeeGo ambassador, look for its release sometime in Q2 2011, with a preview at the MWC this month.

Source: Nokiaport.de (via Google Translate)

Via: PhoneArena