It’s about time Nokia had some good news to share, and today’s unveiling of the Nokia N9 smartphone, the company’s first MeeGo device, should be considered just that.

The Nokia N9 runs MeeGo 1.2 (Harmattan) and features a 3.9-inch AMOLED touchscreen, with minimal physical buttons. Additionally, specs include an 8-megapixel wide-angle Carl Zeiss camera, 1 GHz processor, 1GB Ram, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. 

Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia’s head of Design, championed the N9’s design in a statement today. “With the Nokia N9, we wanted to design a better way to use a phone. To do this, we innovated in the design of the hardware and software together. We reinvented the home key with a simple gesture: a swipe from the edge of the screen. The experience sets a new bar for how natural technology can feel,” Ahtisaari said. 

The phone uses three “home views” designed to give fast access to three things Nokia thought were most important: apps, notifications and social networks, and switching between activities.

The N9 also includes a near field communication (NFC) chip, allowing users to share images and videos between devices by touching them together.

The Nokia N9 will be available in three colors – black, cyan, and magenta with 16GB and 64GB storage options. The company said the new phone is scheduled to be in stores later this year, with availability and local pricing to be announced closer to release.

Nokia recently committed itself to a long-term device roadmap centered around developing smartphones based on Microsoft’s Window Phone 7 OS. Intel, which developed the MeeGo platform, said that while it was disappointed with Nokia’s decision, it would not abandon the platform.

Check out what Nokia calls “The Big Introduction” to the N9 below: