I bought and have received the N900 and finally have it all set up with my contacts and various e-mail addresses. My next step in deciding whether or not to keep this phone is evaluating the GPS functionality of it. My previous phone is/was a Palm Treo 750, running TomTom with an external GPS receiver.

Aside from the hassle of needing an external receiver, it worked great: turn-by-turn directions, live traffic reports (subscription) and re-routing. I am on the road a lot for work and these functions have become a necessity for me.

I realize that the N900 does not yet have this functionality and I was led to believe via a Nokia online chat (maybe my first mistake) that this feature was possible, perhaps with an Ovi subscription. At this point, I don't care that Google mapping w/turn-by-turn is free on other phones or not (whether is actually works is another story). Subscription or not, I can't see keeping this phone without this functionality.

Is there anyone with ANY inside knowledge that once the Ovi store is open for business for the N900, that we will be able to get Ovi Maps 3.0 and use the premium services? There are all these rumors of an impending OTA update, plus the Ovi store for N900 has been 'coming soon' for months.

I know I'm not the only one hoping for this. Thank you.

Its in development. Sonix i think its called. Should cost $50

sorry, here is the link : http://www.sygic.com/

There'll be a GPS app from Sygic "later this year" on Ovi store. See this post

http://www.sygic.com/index.php/en/press-releases/press-news/225-sygics-turn-by-turn-navigation-compatible-with-new-nokia-maemo-phones.html

Yes, Sygic would solve the turn-by-turn issue (though it's not native to Nokia, which is extremely short-sighted on Nokia's part, especially if they want to make money with Ovi maps). Who knows how close they are to release though? It could be months. But it won't solve the traffic report issue, at least initially. This is the e-mail I received back from them a month ago:

"Dear Sir,

Thank you for your e-mail. TMC (traffic reports) are not yet available for any platform. With upcoming Maemo OS, this feature won’t be included in first release.
However I’d like to inform you, that we are working on traffic reports, unfortunately we don’t know when it will be available for public.

In case of any questions and feedbacks, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Thank you for contacting support and for your interest in our products.

Best regards,

Matus Cipak
SYGIC Technical Support"

I don't feel the need to be strung along for some vague promises of software that may or may not come, while plenty of other phones already have this feature. The wait and botched release of the actual phone was hard enough.