Ah, but the 770 was not a phone... This is the whole point of this discussion: telcos don't care about Nokia developping a voip phone as long as it uses wifi. It's when it uses the cell network that they get touchy. Heck, even Apple said that they don't mind voip on the iPhone as long as it uses wifi only.

So, I certainly agree that Nokia had voip in mind when developping the 770. Nokia is a phone company, voip was a natural to them. And at that time it looked like wifi networks would grow to be a real alternative.

3 years latter and the picture has changed. It is now pretty clear that wifi will not be an alternative. It was easy to predict (and I remember I said so at the time): the telcos, most notably t-online, were already buying existing wifi networks (like in train stations in Germany at the time) and made sure that they were not cheaper than umts. Wifi has become a niche system, restricted to the odd internet cafe or to speed iTunes downloads at starbucks. And people want ubiquitous data, especially if they are going to use their device as a phone. So 3G it will be, and at the conditions the telcos dictate.


Only: I am not really sure what the point of the N900 is. Most recent Symbian phones (all E- and N-series) already can browse the web, get e-mail and have a built-in sip client. That sip client already can be configured to run over umts, btw. Even that (voip over umts) is old news, my N80i has been able to do that for 2 years. And it has the perfect ergonomy for it, because... well: it is a phone.

So: sorry, but I miss the point of the N900. What is revolutionary about it? It runs a free os? Heck, even the iPhone runs BSD and we know how "un-free" it is. It can browse the web? Duh. You can write software for it? Fantastic. It's got a gorgeous screen? So what?

I mean: I like my N810, it's a very nice little computer, but I am not really sure where Nokia is heading to. Actually, it looks like Nokia does not know where they are heading to themselves. So, please tell me: what is the point of the N900?