Understood. I was going to explain a little further but realized I had better not, sorry. Feel free to speculate either way.

It sounds to me like they could make a maemo-based smartphone (BTW, proposal: call all open, UNIX-based smartphones geniusphones?); but those models would lose the "Internet Tablet" moniker, naturally enough. It doesn't seem to rule out cellular data-only connections on Internet Tablets, which I hope would still be produced. (Of course, it had better not rule that out, as the N810W has a cellular data-only connection, but I mean doesn't rule out any particular network types.)

I just wanted to to chime in here and say that I sampled the edge network via my samsung phone on the at&t network and it was abysmal! Waaaaay too slow. It has to be 3G!

Didn't I say that recently? Like an E66, E71, or E90 with Maemo? And people all over these boards were shooting it down.


What I'd like to see, again, is:

A) an E66, E71, and/or E90 with Maemo (with World-GSM and World-WCDMA (850, 900, 1700, 1900, and 2100 MHz WCDMA) would be nice too, so you can use it in Asia, Europe, or in North America with either AT&T or T-Mobile). Maybe not those exact phones, but phones with those form-factors (or maybe one with a slide out qwerty, like an N810 ... but not literally, as I think the N810 has some things in the wrong places for it to be directly used as a phone; I'd base it on the sidekick slide, with a tilt screen).

B) an N810-GSM/WCDMA Edition (with World-GSM* and World-WCDMA ... and you might be able to use it with Stelera Wireless if it did WCDMA 1700). (* for GPRS/EDGE, not voice ... and maybe SMS/MMS, but I could be convinced that IM is enough and SMS/MMS isn't necessary)

But, based on things being said by various people here, I think it wont happen. Which is rather sad and short-sighted. These wouldn't be the first Linux phones (Motorola did that a while ago). The phone compromises people go on about wouldn't have to compromise Maemo as a whole (different builds for different targets).

(someone questioned if we'd lose RTCOMM... I don't think we would, Nokia already makes phones that can act as SIP phones and UMA phones; I bet RTCOMM would be just fine; what they MIGHT have to lose is the Skype client)

If it would cost more, then let us know how much it would cost, and give us the choice. If it would lose certain features, then let us know and give us the choice. But don't keep saying "no, can't be done, or you wouldn't like the end result" -- you don't know that, and you wont know it until you give us the full information from which to make our own informed choices.