And, looking on ebay, the price range merely brings it down to being comparable to what I paid for my E61i, and still more than I'm paying (total) for my G1.

Still no reason for me to pick an E70 over a G1.

Has Nokia hinted at any sort of a release date yet?

Wow, not my experience at all. You using microb or tear? With tear -- especially with Java and Plug-ins disabled -- I find browsing full websites very fast. Even without those off, I find most webpages load quite quickly.

Both MicroB and Tear are pretty slow, with MicroB obviously being slower.

First I've gotta say, after my most recent attempt at Tear, which was much more successful than the first, having more than one browser window open seems much more doable.

Back to the N900 Rover-as-a-phone thread...

I think Nokia has lost all it's momentum here. The NIT 770 was revolusionary, but so was the HTC G1. HTC is spewing out top featured stuff, the Hero being the most recent addition to a new but supposedly huge selection of Android devices before the end of 2009. And Android is planning for bigger screens, netbooks. Maemo has all the potential in the world, but Android is just moving so much faster.

Whatever advantage Nokia had on this all-in-one market... They can still compete if they try, but the advantage, it's all gone.

This is my quite temporary opinion, and it doesn't negate the need for a N900-as-a-top-of-the-line-phone because the N97 still isn't impressing anyone any much.

Now, the bigger 7"-11" tablet product we all want to see... That market is still pretty much open. Wide open, a big open space between the netbook, the 7" media players and the eBook.

But only until Apples iPad enters it. Chances are Nokia would be the Sensa of that market... p@marketing can't do a thing against Church of Steve. Especially since they're so insistant on dropping the "internet tablet" branding when there is really nothing else working for Maemo atm than the NIT community.

Maemo as a phone OS should be quite interesting but... Only if it changes pace completely because Android is moving awfully fast now.

Apple prove the argument, "if it ain't broke why fix it, or in this case replace for something entirely new". Three generation of iphones only to differ in specs but, still have the same look that everybody has come to love it for. A very good lesson Nokia could have learned from Apple with the N810. On the outside it doesn't look that much different from the iphone/touch. The slide out keyboard and open software is the plus for me and why I bought one over the other. Now instead of continuing that trend that nokia had going when they made the n810 from the n800 and 770 before it, we are given the impression that they are completely dropping the device. They are scare shitless worried about their profit margins that they are giving up on innovation and creativity to just following the crowd. But, whatever! The only way i would buy the n900 phone, if I like it, is if it comes out on Verizon, which I am due for an upgrade that I haven't decided on.

offtopic:
wow. the keyboard of N810 is then very bad...

E61i&E71 outperforms E70's keyboard by a million lightyears. buttons are too far away and too flat so one can't type very fluently without looking keys all the time. It took 2 years to gain decent typing speed with E70, it took 2 weeks to orient into E71's keyboard and after that no way I'm not typing with numb touch screens or with my E70.

Not really, according to some other people:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/featu...n_the_west.php

You can see that E61 is pretty much tied with E70. You may be talking about some other phone. Also notice how bad N97 results are. This is what you can expect from the upcoming N900 tablet, as its keyboard should be similar to N97's.

The E61 and the E61i have different keyboard feels. The E61i isn't just "an E61 with some add-ons". They did a non-trivial re-design of the device (but not as dramatic as the changes between the E61i and the E71). Different case, etc. The E61 and the E62 go together in this regard. The E61i does not.

For Nokia devices that I've used, the E71 is pretty much the pinnacle of key feel and feedback. The N810 is kind of the low (unless you count the virtual keyboard of the N800, then that's the low). The E61i was acceptable. I don't recall the key feel/feedback of my coworker's E70 being something that impressed me compared to the E61i, E71, or my (not Nokia) G1. My memory would place it near the E61i for feel/feedback quality. (layout is a different issue -- I greatly respect the split-thumb layout of the E70; but for feel/feedback quality, E71 is definitely better)

I would agree that the N97's keyboard looks like it'll be disappointing, but looks can be deceiving. I didn't expect the G1 to have an amazing keyboard either ... yet, I absolutely love it. I'll wait til I get a chance to test one, before I judge it.

Actually, going back and re-reading that chart, the E61 isn't on that chart all. It's the E61i.

I can agree that they're in the same ball park, from my limited E70 exposure. But I would probably have put the E61i above it. The E71, however, has a MUCH better feel than the E61i.