I just do not know why we have to speculate about the release date...
There are some important Nokia employees on this forum who could answer our questions.

Again, I do not know why Nokia is not more open here. Give us something. There are all these conflicting dates, the "selected markets" are unclear and what is holding up the release anyway...

At least give us the reason. Is it really the software? The pre-release firmware seems to be fine. Yes there are rough edges, but if you going to wait to iron all those out we won't see the phone before 2012.

So there must be some grave show stoppers, but how come they are not in the pre-release phones, or are they?

I beg you Nokia, qgil I am looking at you, talk to us. You say openness, but you don't follow through. Openness does not only apply when it is convenient.

Some of us pre-ordered the N900 weeks ago, on the promise of openness alone. The hardware and software may be open, Nokia clearly is not.

Again, we are not asking for much. You cannot name a specific date, fine. But nothing?

Most, if not all of us here, know the N900 is the 'in-between' phone, the big tease of what Harmattan will bring. We are mostly already 'fanboys', we are the multipliers.


!!! Disclaimer !!!
This is not a thread about the actual release date. This is about openness and communication.
So please no shipping rumors.
!!! End Disclaimer !!!


Having said all of this, I will wait, patiently. I will appreciate the work that everybody at Nokia, again you qgil, is doing. I will love my N900 from the distance. I will continue to read the shipping threads. I will always hope it ships tomorrow. I will check my Amazon account twice a day. I will be thankfull to everybody here.

I don't know why everyone keeps freaking out. I understand you've made the decision and it's hard to wait, but they have always said October. It's still October. Their own website says "end of october".

If there is no word on November 1st, feel free to freak out. Until then it's a bit pointless to talk about it.

@liveslow: I know. I am not really freaking out. And it is not about the release date. Maybe I was unclear here. It is about information or the lack of it. The Nokia customer service claims the website to be wrong.

so did your n900 ship out?

It's general Nokia policy that they do not publically announce release dates. I'm sure part of that reason is because they service a huge part of the world so the dates wouldn't be the same everywhere anyways.

I think Microsoft serves a large area too, but I'm pretty sure Win 7 will be out tomorrow and I'll get my copies.

If you are a member of IEEE or ACM then you had your full legit copy months ago (not RC, but final)

I just wait for normal copies as if I were an ordinary mortal. It's humbler that way

Well, I ordered back in September and figured I would go ahead and pay for overnight. Now that I've sat on it for a few weeks, I changed to standard shipping. Are a few extra days over and above the ship date worth an extra $100? Not so much.

FOSS does not mean Free and Open marketing...

Also...
This idea, this concept of a (mostly) FOSS mobile computer married to a telephone is so dang unique. It is not a "smart phone" so much as it is a plain old phone with an attached computer that can be made smart and is limited only by the users imagination and not by what a carrier or manufacturer thinks should be its limits.

What is also unique is the openness of the development process . I'm sure it is very new to Nokia as well... I mean to me it appears that some of our own community were involved in alpha testing and a traditional beta program didn't really begin until the 300 or so Maemo Summit devices were released. It has all been pretty transparent.

The "OMFG I'm about to loose my mind" kinds of posts may be new to this community but not in any of the cell phone forums. Instead of this more open process, a US carrier would announce a time and date that sales for the new model would begin to their employees. The employee's would let it out or marketing would "leak" it to the forums and the same sort of "pass the time" threads would pop up prior to the release.

What I'm intrigued by (Knowing that we have been privy to so much more pre-release performance data than any other cell phone in the past.) is the amount of "If the N900 doesn't have 'X', it's a deal breaker" or, "I can't believe Nokia will ship a phone that can't do this" posts in addition to the "When is it going to ship" posts... Sometimes both types of posts were made by the same people.