The distinction is immaterial. During the gap in time, the world will have changed, and two (maybe 3 or more) products will have moved into spaces that, each in their own way, at least partially compete with the NITs.

Instead of being 'ahead' of the game, from building on the momentum of the 770/N800/N810, they will have let those other products spend time building their own momentum while the NITs aren't really doing anything special at all.

Certainly each product needs to be carefully developed. No question about it. But that doesn't mean it's ok that what's next isn't happening for another year. Where's the product that comes in between them, that steals the thunder of the emerging Android, Pandora, and MID platforms?

Strategically, not having something coming out within the next 3 months, before Maemo5's hardware, will be a blunder, IMO.

I'm not saying "rush Maemo 5 out sooner than it's ready". I'm saying that they needed to be ready to ship something in between the N810WME and Maemo5. Something that would distract people from Android and the MIDs.

If you read between the lines, that might be exactly what will happen.

Recall that Nokia stressed that the 5800 "tube" was "only" a mid-range phone, and that the high-end phone from its family could be expected early next year.

If you stretch your imagination a bit, you can think of the 5800 as being like an "N800 lite", so next year's high-end touch phone just possibly might be an 800x480 touch phone to "distract people from Android" until the Maemo 5 devices are available.

Of course the high-end touch phone will be S60-based like the 5800, but bear in mind that S60 is being open-sourced, and that Nokia has stated their intention to make it possible to write QT applications that will run unchanged on S60, Maemo and the PC. [edit: I mean API-compatible, not binary-compatible of course]

It could be very interesting.

Roger.

Something's really strange here. I remember a presentation by Ari Jaaksi, telling us that work on the N800 had already started when I bought my 770 in early 2006. This way, they managed to get out a new hardware pretty soon. - If they start working on the N900 only now that the N800 has long reached the end of its life cycle, this is really a change of - ah, strategy.

The current (expected) schedule makes me believe there was a time when Nokia didn't plan to continue the platform at all, therefore not actively developing a successor to the rapidly ageing N8x0 in time. They obviously (thank god!) changed their minds, but they're faaar behind now.

The thing I'd hope for is a OS2008-based N900 that will be upgraded once Maemo5 is ready, but I don't see this happening: It would be impossible to get this across in marketing. ("We got a great new device here! Can't do more than the old one, but, really, trust us, we will upgrade it in a few months!" - Would you buy this as a journalist?)

Maybe they manage to keep the crowd happy by "announcing" the N900 very early, then waiting months for it to become available. (Like they did with the N810WE, a device that could well be called vaporware meanwhile.)

I've got to say that my (probably incorrect) impression of the talks at the summit was that developer loan devices would be available around the new year mark, but perhaps I was basing this on the fact that the devices seem to be released every year and my assumption that Nokia would have been developing the new device since the N810 launch.

@lardman: that would be the "announce, but don't release" approach. and it would fit the schedule: some version of maemo5 would be available then, so it wouldn't be completely useless for developers. Nokia could show something at whatever event they choose to announce the device. And then they wait until mid-2009 to actually sell the first units....

possible.

but i wonder how much wishful thinking went into this.

Yes, changing resolutions is rather tricky. Take iPhone with 320x480 for instance. Changing the resolution for the next HW would then basically break the current 3rd party applications (or at least make them look bad) - especially since they still don't have resolution independence and are drawing their stuff using bitmaps.

Where do you get the idea that work on the N900 would have been started only recently?

How long have the omap3 chips been available for? When was the Beagleboard released?

where? here. internettablettalk.com.

anyway, based on the presentation i was referring to, telling us about when they started to work on the N800, I'd have expected that a successor to the N800 would appear around the end of 2007. instead, we got a keyboard. so even if the impression is wrong (which is the impression i get from your question ), the N8x0-successor is already late.

Engineering samples have been available since at least the beginning of the year.

The first public release, Rev.B, was released at the end of August with ES2.1, Rev.A boards were available slightly less publicly for a few months before that.