Sounds plausible. Then again, bigger names (in software) than Nokia have rewritten history repeatedly to match successive versions of their "roadmap", and more blatantly than the USSR and George Orwell ever thought possible :-)

edit: my comment was originally about benny's theory, but I find it applies equally well to GA's counter-theory which slipped in between while I was typing :-)

Sure, and it is only speculation on my part, but, honestly, with the way Maemo SW has been hiring constantly over the past year, I doubt there were any plans to pull the plug.

Well, you could both be right... In benny's timeline, the "hiccup" could have happened earlier than that, after the N810 announcement and its coming to market, during the period when the next model should have been maturing -- then the "good" side won, and the scramble we saw after spring 2008 was to catch up and compensate for the missed milestone ?

Not that it matters IMHO -- apart for the fun of speculation : as we stand now, the Fremantle series of devices had better be a runaway success, or it's not just a lull we'll be experiencing...

There is also the wimax thing, i wonder how much that cost nokia in man-hours...

No way. But I don't want to hijack the thread.

Maybe someone will write the book of this story, indeed interesting. Then again we are not in US West Coast, so perhaps not.

You can explain this to the designers and engineers that made an N810 smaller including a hardware keyboard. Also to the ones that implemented the WiMAX antenna.

On the software side there was OS2008, Mozilla, Skype, Location, Modest, SSU, WiMAX support... Elephanta vanished as a release but the features moved to Fremantle.

The fact is, we haven't stopped a single day. You will understand better when the Fremantle and Harmattan steps see the light in full splendor.

And (to bring this back to topic) yes, I agree the E71 is a great product. It's motivating to work in a house able to ship a device like this.

What has my interest is this same battery, same charger concept. That may be more important to my demographic when the next tablet device drops.
I may be a bit older than some of you fellas and there is a few things I know for certain in my life...

I know I'm never going to weigh 185 lbs. again, I know I will pro'ly never be an astronaut, and I know my eyes will never again be as sharp that a I could use a 2 or 3 inch phone screen to manage the data the future will require from me.

I have accepted that I will always carry two devices. I figure I was born about 10 years to soon for a true convergence device to be of practical use to me.

One thing that Nokia has been successfully with in the past two years has been getting me used to this notion of also carrying/packing/toting another smaller device instead of a laptop or access to a secure desktop...

My N800 fills that niche and a small BT phone fills in the other. If my next phone and device shared the same battery and charger, this older dude would be rockin'

Well, MicroUSB is it. I haven't been following Nokia's high-end phone lineup closely enough to say whether the BP-4L is still "it" . . . looking at Google, though, it appears as though the N97 is using the BP-4L, so it seems to be the likely choice for the tablet.

I think the BP-4L is Nokia's largest battery and the thinness makes it a great choice for many devices.

And to the E71, I LOVE my E71. It really is a great device and I love the size and speed and battery life.

That said, I am looking forward to the N97 with it's capability to combine my N95-4, E71 and N810 into a single device. Of course I am very interested in the upcoming tablet as well but for most of what I do with all my devices, the N97 may just be enough to fit the bill. But the gadget guy in me really can't wait to see all the goodies the RX-x1 will bring.

Nokia stopped releasing Maemo consumer products for a while (the N810 was late 2007 and just a rehash of early 2007 hardware), but the actual Maemo platform development has never stopped.

The products took a break but the OS carried on, and now the products are coming back again soon so that we can see the new OS version in action.

@Bobbe: true, general purpose internet browsing is better in the tablet, but most of the sites I need to browse on a tablet or phone (weather forecast, train schedules and similar) are working better and faster on the phone. Regarding PDA features, E71 is not shining but still better than the tablet, at least with maemo (built in Exchange synchronization, Calendar sync and so on). However, I was not able to sync to my Lightning calendar, therefore I still prefer to use GPE-cal on the tablet, for the moment.

@benny1967: that's OT, but by the way: have you tried the "A1 over IP" service? I was not able to make it work on my E71....

@qgil: yes, you guys did a nice work! I understand how much hard is to keep up-to-date a wide set of devices working with different OS. We're looking forward for the next tablet!

@YoDude: same battery/charger is a BIG plus to me too. I realized that when in my last travel I brought 5 different chargers. Next trip: no laptop, no razor and only one charger for tablet/phone. With the one for the reflex I cut it to two!