Well, you know that, I know that, but everybody does not know that. Does it say so on the package?

You're a Finn, right? Read the threads on whatever kauppalehti and taloussanomat and ilta-sanomat etc. about this phone. Do you think everybody there who says they're getting this really know about the step 4/5 thing? I doubt it. Nokia has been pretty quiet about this thing lately but at first they were clearly hyping it as the next "big thing", OPK included. I think they got a bit carried away with it themselves too and are on purpose not claiming it to be the flagship anymore (if they ever did, it certainly sounded like Maemo is the next great thing from Nokia for a while). It does not come with a disclaimer of "this is beta hardware, don't buy this unless you know how to use Linux etc." When it gets to the stores, it'll be sitting there on the shelf alongside all the other phones. No disclaimers or warnings. The mobile computer terminology stuff is nonsense, the N95 was marketed as a mobile computer too. This is a phone (with more/different extra functionality than some other smartphones) that perhaps got a little bit more mainstream publicity than it should have at this point of development, I agree. My personal opinion is that they should either stop talking about the 4/5 stage plan stuff, the phone is released now and development of next version is underway just like every other platform, or just released this as an Internet tablet with an optional beta-type downloadable "phone-functionality ugrade pack" or whatever if they're really this insecure about the N900 being a competitive phone. Then it would've been clear it's not a "fully commercial product", now it just sounds like excuses for not blowing the competition away and leads to these issues when people are disappointed that it's not better in all aspects than phone A, B or C.

But anyway, it's out there, sold as a phone, and full heads-on comparisons with other "smartphones" are fair game. To be clear - I don't think the N900 has anything to be ashamed of even in those comparisons, frankly, in my mind it's one of the top 2 or 3 devices phones available at the moment, but the fact is that it is sort of "unimpressive" in certain aspects compared to other top-end phones, and many "normal consumers" could care less whether they can drop down to a root shell or not (most would be afraid to do it anyway). I don't know about the home screen lag, really, but it looks sort of twitchy to me in the videos. Again, it's not a big deal to me, I'm just noting that "yes, I see some lag too in the videos". That is not the thing keeping me from getting the phone: the stage 4/5 talk is. As an owner of the N810, abandoned by Nokia too soon in my mind, it's painfully clear to me that Nokia will only fix a few of the worst bugs in this one before turning their full attention to the next version. "Fixed in Harmattan" whatever. No thanks, I'll wait.