The 770's being sold directly from the Nokia website are listed as having the 2006 OS. It does not say "Beta". Is this the production OS or Beta?

http://europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,1522,,00.html?orig=/770

It says no such thing. Read the page carefully. They come with OS 2005.

Wow, that's quite confusing. The link to the features page shows the OS 2005 and OS 2006 links and both show that the 2006 OS Edition is in both.

On the other hand, what difference does it make when you can download OS 2006 free of charge and flash it as soon as it becomes available?

That's the European site. Here is the link to the US nokia site and it clearly refers to only to the 2006 OS. Furthermore, the Nokia "customer service" says its the 2006 OS but did not specify if it was Beta. I do have my doubts, though, and that's why I asked if anyone knows for sure.

http://www.nokiausa.com/770/1,7841,feat:1,00.html

So, the US site is less honest than the European site. But you know as well as I do that OS 2006 is only in Beta and it's highly unlikely that Nokia would ship a Beta version of the OS.

Or...the 2006 OS is closer to being finalized than we thought, and _are_ putting it in the next shipments. I think an official 2006 update is really close now.

I'm not sure that honesty is the issue here; I suspect that Hanlon's Razor is more apt - especially for larger companies.

There was a comment on one of the mailing lists about the 770's that were going to be given out as prizes at GUADEC having OS 2006 loaded on them; so I suspect that =DC='s comment may be correct and perhaps the real release is almost here?

Brad.

I'd have thought that OS 2006 would be released for download at the same time that it began shipping on new devices - it would seem strange for Nokia to begin installing OS 2006 on devices coming off the production line more than a few days before the same firmware is put up for download. But maybe that's just me!