One year seems realistic, given that Nokia doesn't even seem to have an internal hardware prototype, nor an early alpha of the operating system, nor even the SDK.

It does sound like it might be a game-changer when it eventually arrives, looking towards the future with its "everything-over-IP" approach. But it's a long time to wait, for those of us looking to upgrade in a shorter timeframe. I guess Nokia put a lot of time into the Symbian and QT acquisitions over the past year, which might have delayed some other things.

Shorter term, the S60 touch screen phones might overlap with some of the low-end internet tablet uses. The leaks of the 5800 touchscreen "tube" look impressive. Nokia has said that their first S60 touchscreen will be "mid range" and released this year, so maybe we'll see a "high end" 800x480 S60 touchscreen phone in the first half of next year.

In the meantime, it strikes me that Nokia could do worse than to re-launch the N800 at a lower price. It's popular with its owners, and another six months of N800 sales would swell the ranks of internet tablet users. If anything, the N800 was ahead of its time when it was launched, and was perhaps under-appreciated. Today there might be a lot of interest in "real mobile internet with a genuine Mozilla browser".

(PS: I've been lurking here for many months without posting, so now's my chance to thank everyone for all the informative and interesting posts.)

Roger.