since I am back in the UK, yes its a bit late.

I did select the o2 option when I paired but it failed - whether that was because I was in germany or not I don't know.

But in 9 months I have needed it a grand total of once, it would have been nice at other times also, but yesterday would have been really nice and I wanted it to just work.

could very well be that as you where in germany, there was some kind of roaming issue or similar...

and i find it unlikely that it would work any better with a interal radio. except maybe that you could pick up a local pay-as-you-go or similar and use that, rather then a o2 sim.

but then i dont plan on going abroad any time soon, so i have not really looked into the matter...

While right now I already have a good phone (N95) for voice calling and 3G and I am happy with the N810 as a internet device - this combination is a pretty costtly combo (even if you replace the N95 with some other HSDPA supporting device).

Just today at the cefeteria the person next to me saw my N810 and asked what phone is that with quite a lot of interest - and was dissapointed that it was not a phone firstly. He liked that it had a big screen and a keyboard to boot - but showed no interest on hearing the lack of phone function.

And this goes for quite a few obeservers who saw the device - and everyone of the common folks out there are looking for a single device with the phone.

So if Nokia does decide to include the Voice calling in the new Maemo 5 based device - I think it will find many more buyers.

I never go wireless through the phone while outside my own country. EU has reduced the insane roaming pricing on voice, but not yet on data afaik. And then there was this news story a couple of weeks back about the guy with a laptop and a <insert US tech here> - modem, who went to Canada for a while for studies and ended up with a $20000 (or was it $40 k) phone bill.

Johnx, pooint well taken.

However, a broad base of visitors to this forum, excluding you and a lot of others, see the N8XX as a cool, techie linux device that only they should be able to use.

Even your points are flawed. Heres why:

1) I will be paying a lot more for functionality I won't use.
You don't know how much manufacuring cost goes into adding voice capability. It will likely be a charge added at no cost to you or minimal cost. A lot more ? I dont think so.

2) It won't work on the carrier of my choice.
They will likely make a US, Asian and European version but either way you just do not know this and thus this points amkes me think you have another motive.

3) It will lead to restrictions in what we can do with the tablet.
johnx, it will not necessarily lead to restrictions or enhancements. You just do know this and this again makes me wonder if the problem isnt just that you want to keep this device out of the hand of a larger market.

You can see from a lot of the posts in this thread that some people want to drown out the true subject here with other on related junk. Its clear though that voice is coming. The writing is onthe wall.

more like, get the device to such a point that it can be usable by "aunt tillie" out of the box, but not compromising the techie potential of its os.

I for one use my N800 as a _mobile_ device. I travel everywhere with it. What would I want with a device that's somehow limited to e.g. Europe? I know I know, I just don't use that (whatever it is) functionality when I'm elsewhere, but that's limiting.

I quoted the above just to say that I find your thoughts about johnx' motives completely ridiculous. Wanting to keep the device out of a market? Please come up with something more realistic.

btw, i had a tought on the subject of internal vs external 3G radio.

with a external one, one can choose what device to go online with. ones tablet, ones laptop, maybe even ones desktop, or maybe even something borrowed from a friend. anything with bluetooth or usb will work, in theory...

Good point tso, just like I can use my nice, small, cheap GPS receiver with both my N800 or any of my Palm devices (with TomTom on one of them). And I've upgraded the GPS receiver once, without replacing any of my PDAs or my N800.

No one wants to carry around different modules for 3G.

Next you'll want to swap out your color display for a b/w for longer battery life and then swap out your bluetooth or swapout your wifi or your RAM module.

This is ridiculous and will never work and will never happen.

I am certain you will be able to swap out your case color though so Paris Hilton can have a pink one.