not their main smartphone platform like it will matter.

there is no plans of new ui for symbian after BELLE,
unless s40 turns into a competing smartphone/tablet OS. simply won't matter :/

I'm mostly new to Maemo, having never owned a device and only getting into it with the N900, so has Nokia ever really showed itself putting any of its weight behind Maemo? I see "internet tablet" and "mobile computer" as descriptions of the Maemo devices, with the N900 being the only phone of the lot (and once the N9 is finally out, that too). As far as I can see, it was never meant to be a phone platform despite how well it fits in especially considering how smartphone platforms are now, and thus never meant to compete with Nokia's bread and butter, Symbian.

Is this at all reasonable, or am I just spouting crap now?

IIRC Noikia conducted some internal research...
And came to the conclusion that Symbian was ultimately deprecated, & that a sucessor would be needed LT.
Hence the birth of the Maemo project....
But yes, originally they did focus on a form-factor that was quite a bit more differentiated.

It's been discussed dozens of times, but in a nutshell they never treated Maemo seriously enough.

Symbian was seen as the "Golden Goose"....
And when they finally started to treat it with at least equal focus, it was way too late to deliver in a timely manner.
Everyone likes to say it was the Intel tie-up that slowed things down drastically.
But a harder focus on Maemo+Qt far too late, was a much bigger factor. Arii (former tech lead) confirmed that recently.

meego harmattan was code in 9 months.

which isnt bad, but it would be done earlier it wasnt for bad management

elop made things worse.

Samsung is a well-run company, very successful and even THEY know a loser when they see one. Nokia--Not so much.

OHNO! Tell me it ain't so! Somebody was able to replicate Nokia's only advantage??? Noooooooooo! hahahah.. Nokia is placing all the wrong bets and all of its incredibly fragile eggs in the same basket. You didn't seriously think that Swipe was going to make Nokia uniquely favorable?

Even with the N900, it doesn't fit in very well as a phone. As you correctly pointed out, it was never designed from the beginning to be a phone OS, it was and still is far better suited to an Internet Tablet form factor, not a phone. As a phone, it falls behind miserably and has problems--particularly compared to most of its competition. As an Internet device or a portable ARM-based Linux computer, it's great though. I've yet to see N9's being reviewed by reasonably critical reviewers who don't have some kind of self-interest involved in telling you its flaws... so we'll see how the N9 works out in practice, if it ever comes out.

Something about that number doesn't seem right--and it also doesn't take into account the time Maemo and Moblin existed beforehand... from which MeeGo came from. Nevermind that Harmattan is more Maemo than MeeGo.

Apparently the N9 is now available in the far east

fake :d:d:d:d:d:d:d

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/12/c...-in-australia/

...that price makes one weep

If you happen to be in Helsinki, Finland, you can get your hands dirty with N9 tomorrow:

http://translate.google.com/translat...fi%2Fstudio%2F

from? As in, the 64GB version is going to be even more expensive?