Nokia N9 runs ICS.

When Nokia first announced their collaboration with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, it’s safe to say that the Android community, in all probability seemed a little disappointed. Most mobile users appreciated the overall build quality and design sense of Nokia, but the Symbian and MeeGo OS just didn't seem to make a too big an impact. Symbian refused to change too much with the times and MeeGo didn’t really appeal to the masses. Hence, handsets like the Nokia N9 never really made it to our side of the pond. But for those who managed to get a device and aren’t too happy with MeeGo, here’s some good news - the guys down at the NitDroid Forums have a little trick that they’ve been working on, code named "Project Mayhem".

Project Mayhem entails porting Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich onto a MeeGo running Nokia N9. SO far the port has been reported as successful, however it's still in Alpha phase, so cannot be used as a daily driver. This was not an easy task as finding the Android drivers for Nokia N9 was tough. There aren’t any Android-powered phones with similar hardware specs from whom the developers could have taken the code for the drivers from.

From the videos it seems that this “ROM” is still a bit glitchy and, as expected, in the alpha phase of ROM's functions like the Camera and Wi-Fi don't work. Things that work are the ability to dual boot and choose the OS after powering on the device, 3D drivers, Open GL, rotation, touchscreen, headset buttons, USB networking, LCD off in sleep mode, Alarm, Mounting of "My Docs" as SD Card, Software video decoding, Network registration i.e. Phone calls, SMS, Data (GPRS/ EDGE/ 3G), Bluetooth, Charging, but without any notifications of how much battery has already been charged.

This is a long list of the features that work, but a few more options still need to be checked off the main list, before this ROM could be deemed stable and be used as a daily option. So it's still a long way to go!

In our opinion, a handset as well sculpted as the N9, with existing hardware would work really well with a stable Android ICS ROM running. It might even make Nokia sit up and take notice. Hopefully, they won’t feel too bad for going one way, instead of another. If the ROM does become stable, the Nokia N9 could become quite a popular device for those looking for a good looking Android smartphone.