Nokia is in a cleft stick, though.

If they don't provide a date, people will ***** and whine about it. If they do provide a date, there's a risk they won't make it, and people will ***** and whine more.

If they provide even vague information about what they're tidying up before release people will be "OMG it's got this glitch (or that glitch or the other glitch". If they don't provide information, they're being secretive and shadey.

We have people saying "I want it yesterday" and people saying "They shouldn't release a device without full portrait mode". Well, you can't have both.

In a perfect world, they'd design a completely bug-free device, which would ship on exactly the date planned without any issues. I suspect that what other manufacurers do is not actually supply a release date until the device is 100% ready, then waste a few weeks building up marketing hype. In the sense that nokia told us "We'd like to have it ready by ddmmyy but might not... oops, no - we found something and need to sort that first" they are being more open.

None of which solves the problem for people who were buying because they needed it for a certain deadline, but that's not really Nokia's fault.