@jsa:
Hiya! Just a reply rant. My apologies in advance.

The problem with the phone is that making it have a phone radio embedded (and likely locked, and very, very likely not compatible with the service I prefer or already have, and farther more likely to make the unit needlessly more expensive if I decide not to use said radio) ...which makes it a smartphone--not the type of tablet device that we all bought and loved with the freedoms we want in such a very portable computing device.

It would be better if, as was suggested earlier, there were another version of the unit sold without the radio at a much reduced price and without the incredible barriers to openness to do whatever you want with the device you rightfully purchased and now own, in the same way as a laptop or desktop PC.

Best still, provide an empty cavity for a radio module and let people buy a module for whatever carrier they wanted and make the interface to that proprietary hardware module remain open as a network device or a PPP connection (like a lot of EVDO USB devices often do).

True.. it's all rumors so far, but we're mulling over the idea of what has been leaked. The idea of branding this, what can only truly be called a SMART PHONE, an Internet Tablet successor to the 770/N800/N810 line just because it runs maemo seems ludicrous to me. If the radio is so important to you as a selling point, wouldn't it be just as valuable as a separate module? Compared to the previous Nokia Internet Tablets, this rumored unit strikes me as a crippled device on price and possibly architecture. Assuming the leaked information is all true, I'm strongly reconsidering the Pandora since it precisely aims at all the functionality I need and want, a much better form factor and a significantly better price with an aim to make things more open, not less.

I understand that this rumors satisfy your sweet spot, but we're not all in agreement. That's natural. But, given the near-laptop freedom the previous Internet Tablets gave us--this appears to me like a major step backwards for the community built around a Linux tablet and to the idea of using any software or carrier that we want to use on our small device.


And!...for those folks that kept bringing up the Volkswagen stuff...
MINE! I already licked it! ---> http://pleco.org/vw/RedBug.jpg