Nokia takes its MeeGo theme code offline, likely preparing custom UI

It has been almost a year since Intel and Nokia began converging their respective mobile Linux platforms to create the MeeGo project. The effort has attracted interest among hardware vendors, but hasn’t quite reached the stage where it is ready for mainstream consumer devices. A growing body of evidence suggests that the wait might soon be over. Nokia had hoped to deliver its first MeeGo-based product in the fourth quarter of 2010, but pushed back the launch into 2011. Nokia’s MeeGo debut device was originally expected to be the rumored N9 handset, but the subsequent flow of conflicting rumors and leaks has left little in the way of clarity, leaving broad speculation in their wake. The latest round of rumors suggests that Nokia is still aiming to bring the N9 to market, but that it will be powered by an Intel Atom processor. This seemingly dubious suggestion got a boost last week when Intel showed off a smartphone with the company’s Medfield SoC. We are also starting to see some signs that Nokia is polishing up MeeGo for a product launch. In a brief and informal note posted on the Qt Labs blog earlier this week, Nokia’s Henrik Hartz acknowledged that Nokia has temporarily closed the MeeGo-themed branch of its Qt Quick components project. The contents of that branch will allow third-party Qt applications to conform with the MeeGo look and feel. Nokia says that this code is being finalized and that the developers are “unable to make certain pieces of the final user experience public” during the last stages of development.