What I want to confirm is whether they mean to break the entire chat functionality in contacts - eg Facebook or all the Pigdin protocols. (Or the Skype chatline?) Which is what the message sounds like to me. (And if there is any way to stop Nokia removing functionality from their software.)

So if you want to use *any* chat, including gtalk, you might need to find a client, except there isn't one. Except apparently for IRC.

I've never got any use from the ovi chat. The other nokia phones used a yahoo system rather than the XMPP/jabber, which causes a lot of confusion, especially as everybody gets accounts on both (entirely seperate) systems. I got recognition of that issue from Nokia's twitter help a couple of weeks back; I hope this isn't their response. It would help with the confusion, in that it makes the problem bigger and more obvious.

It's not a good sign for anyone looking at the meego phone if this is the way Nokia treats maemo.