Here is were you are wrong. Just S60v3 can do much, much more than any of the other smartphone platforms out there. For users that don't care about the smoke and mirrors of a flashy UI, there is real value, right there.

I would encourage everyone (specially the loud ones) to take some time and read this blog:

Communities Dominate Brands

written by Tomi Ahonen, a top mobile european consultant.

Here is, for example, a key paragraph in his latest post:

"But the big gorilla is of course Nokia. How did the Espoo-based phone-making juggernaut do this past quarter?

Nokia results are in. Nokia's main handset sales (mostly 'dumbphones') are sequentially down just as the total handset market is down after Christmas. Nokia sold 108.7 million total phones. We don't look at that here in the smartphone bloodbath. How did Nokia do in smartphones? Well, Nokia smartphones... ...grew.... ...unit sales 3% from Q4 in 2009. Nokia sold 21.5 million smartphones - yes, Nokia alone sold smartphones just slightly less than RIM and Apple and HTC combined. Nokia grew unit sales this past quarter. Very strong performance (and obviously better than Apple which was only flat) but not as strong growth as RIM or HTC."

Among the topics he explains, all backed with data, are:

Smartphone Bloodbath and another key paragraph: "But its huge growth is that successful transition from business phone to residential phone. And while all the press, analysts, pundits and 'experts' obsess about touch screen smartphones, the truth is that far more QWERTY phones are sold worldwide than touch screen phones. The internet use is not addictive, but SMS text messaging is addictive as proven in university studies like the one at Queensland University of Australia"

Repeat After Me: The Rival to the Blackberry is NOT the iPhone

Faster than a locomotive, leap over giant buildings - yes, its... SMS! Text messaging has twice the users of email, twice the size of television: " SMS text messaging passed 100 Billion dollars in annual revenues two years ago and has now passed 113 Billion dollars in annual revenues for 2009. How big is that? For context, the global music industry is worth about 20 Billion dollars. Hollywood box office revenues are about 25 Billion dollars. Videogaming software income and console sales, combined, are worth about 40 Billion dollars." (this is the reason makers push the QWERTY phones, btw).

Don't Go for the Fool's Gold in Mobile. There is Real Gold for you

And for the app obsessed:

The Apps Stores are as irrelevant to mobile telecoms as Segway is to cars with more key paragraphs:

"Today apps stores are trivial - trivial - in total income to the industry. Trivial. No. I can't accept that. Trivial is far too positive a word. LESS THAN TRIVIAL. For those geeks and nerds who obsess about smartphones daily, and who can recite all versions of all operating systems and their launch dates, then yes, we may perhaps PERHAPS want to look into apps stores a couple of times per year."

"Yankee Group measured in 2009 that the total value of all apps sold in all Apps Stores, not just the Apple iPhone App Store was worth 343 million dollars. I do not mean to belittle some number that is hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide, and yes, its a very attractive opportuntiy for any application developer."

"That 343 million total value of all apps store sales globally in 2009, compares to 5 BILLION dollars of annual income for one category of downloaded content of paid mobile service worldwide - get this - the ringing tone (says Juniper Research). I do not mean full track downloads to phones, not 'real tones' type of better quality ringing tones and am not talking about 'ringback tones' - each of which is also worth over a billlion dollars for mobile content by the way. No, basic ringing tones are worth 5 Billion dollars all by themselves.

Just one '*****ic' type of ultra-simplistic cellphone content type, the basic 'ploink-ploink' style ringing tone, that is downloaded roughly speaking by about ten percent of global cellphone owners, earns 14 times more than ALL app stores worldwide, not just Apple's. (and yes, you read it right, basic dumb ringing tones sell more than 2.5X more than all iTunes music sales worldwide annually)." (Now you see why the Ovi Store is full of those?).

In short, please give it a read. Please go around and Google for true expert blogs. Distrust online newspapers, they will say anything for web hits.

The iphone app store is not in every country. There are many nations where the e5 and c3 will sell like no man's business. I'm no fanboy but Nokia has the entry level smartphone market on lock.

An e72 or e71 is not supposed to compete with the iphone or any android out. They compete with the blackberrys of this world and Nokia is dominating that market.

I say all of this from experience. My mother thinks the 5800 is magic. She has no clue what an iphone is. Nokia might be losing the iphone market and that's what this whole meego business is about. Apple created a new market and Nokia is trying to enter that market.

You're talking about 3G video calls?
The one that cost you some $2 per second?
Did that ever took off?

I think I've addressed the variables in my post above. (In this market) It doesn't matter if you're the first to productize something unless people can and will buy it.

And I still can't see how that can be parsed out of this discussion.

Because I've maintained a consumer approach... and we all know that consumers tend to never know the inner-workings thus the whole open-closed source bit really is immaterial with that mindset.

Want the developer part of me to hang out about that, that's a whole 'nother thread. I'd rather keep it simple. People tend to hang onto things such at that argument to bolster other arguments when honestly... from a consumer the biggest argument is that things are just plain simply lacking.

The heroes of the OSS would be fMMS, that #* dialing widget (I forgot the term for that kind of dialing) and DialCentral. But the fact that the whole phone experience has not been upgraded somehow yet via the OSS community (it still sucks, I used a N900 while on a recent trip) it starts to whittle away at the pluses... from a consumer level.

So in essence, I'm doing the N900 a favor by ignoring those parts (for now).

I've asked it before... if OSS is so great on your phone, why hasn't the experience blossomed into something that's greater than what's out there now? To this consumer, it hasn't.

My opinion. I'll talk open-closed in another, more pertinent thread if you so wish. PM me the link when that thread is created.

I see gerbick ppojnt and I frankly also am trying to stress that - while the Open and close issue is a big issue and is really at the core of how the market develops - but another issue that we need to look at is if and how much either of the approaches delivers.

The Freedom aspect of going open sourced is great, but unless that freedom really delivers on something productive in terms of phone usage, what other value does it bring to the phone ?

Yes to the person it brings the sense of free choice, but that is only to the person - no value add to the device and the device ecosystem.
As much as I believe in the freedoms in open source world, I also look at the practical aspects of what that technology provides me.

So ultimately one has to balance the ideological leaning with the practical benefits as well. THAT really I believe is the key issue in the case of using the N900.

A while back I made a mental note to myself not to get involved in these kind of negative threads but this one sidetracked so far and doesn't seem to be disappearing from the active topics list that I thought I should at least read it and state my opinion on it.

Personally I don't think Nokia mishandled anything in a way that was that catastrophic and certainly not those working on maemo. What you have to realise is that maemo is just one horse in nokias stable and a show horse that turned into a race horse is no easy feat, those working on maemo did a great job of entering the smartphone market and the recent push by Nokia to back this horse showcases that.

What I find rather odd is how this thread rather quickly turned into an Iphone/apple comparison as if to imply that they handled things much better and even worse how people were promoting the walled garden approach as a reason why they are where they are now and openness as why the N900 is where it is now. The parallels between the two are right there but it is as if people have forgotten what it was like, people complained about "basic phone features" of the iphone then too

read the comments a year later when the new model came out

http://www.gadgetadvisor.com/gadgets...ation-compared

do you not see how similar these simple complaints are?

The number of apps the iphone has-has very little to do with the walled garden approach and very much to do with the number one reason why most (especially corporate) developers approach a given platform, install base. So the question becomes how did they manage to get this install base. easy they built on their strength. I still to this day think the install base was built with ipod as its backbone; iphone was the new ipod with phone capabilities and at the beginning, as a phone, wasn't all that smart. obviously ipod users loved it because they got to consolidate their ipod with their phone into one rather stylish package, people didn't care that the phone wasn't all that smart but those expecting it to be did complain. The parallels with the N900 are here too as an NIT, but NITs are unfortunately rather niche in comparison.

Now comes the question how did Nokia mishandle this?
I don't think they did, all this scaremongering and FUD has led everybody to believe they have. Maemo 5 turned an NIT into a phone and Nokia acted rather quickly to insure that their new competing racehorse gets what their already established ones do, Apps. They pushed a new framework to insure that users get the apps across the two and in turn developers get their install base spanning a wide range of hardware. maybe people are complaining that they are progressing rather slowly I would think they are moving rather fast some may even say too fast that it has become a disadvantage for developers.

It just saddens me to see people, especially developers, promoting the walled garden as the reason rather than the install base in fact if things were closed we wouldn't have all the apps we have now, we would have had to wait for the ovistore to launch and then waited even more for apps to be approved if at all.

in conclusion I'm not falling for the FUD and scaremongering and I wish that negative threads did not exist because they only paint a false negative outcome which can become very real when consumers, developers or shareholders see this kind of reception. At the same time I understand the need and freedom to discuss these topics as necessary.

The question I would like to ask is what are the users afraid of, all in all I know I'm an early adopter but I'm certainly not afraid of the future, because I know that future Qt apps will work and if Meego offered something I don't have in Maemo 5 I could get it.

You understood me as I was sure you would. It was just one opinion to another.

I couldn't agree more with the middle part. People are desperate for convergence and it's making them loony. I did my own rudimentary convergence proof-of-concept 11 years ago, so everything's just been a very slow, but continuous refinement since then from my perspective. I'll babble a little about Skype below.

Who knows, the 4G might be the answer for you. I very poorly continue a response to this at The Bottom.

I appreciate that, and I feel the same for others that are happy with what they've got. I chose to respond because as different as we are, I consider us as agnostic as it gets around here. I try to be loyal to ideas, not to names. If the names stay the same, good for them. Right now I'm more ideologically aligned with Nokia than any other big player. So I'm happiest building in their sandbox. I don't see anyone, Google included, fostering loosely coupled open source relationships like they do. This is important to me.

Nothing, I just found your comments a little myopic. These devices are becoming more and more general, so during stage 4 of 5 (yes, I just went there), or whatever, it isn't that difficult to find gaps. I find gaps in my sleep. I basically know what the n900 can't do for me, but I'm much more interested in what it can do for me and what I can make it do for me. Which is everything!

The Bottom of Meaningless

I have more computers than I know what to do with, but I work on a Mac Mini all day long, and last year my good friend and I decided to collaborate on some stuff. He has a Mac household (iMacs, MacBooks, iPhones, iPod touches, and probably an iPad eventually) and he personally uses a Verizon Droid. Anyway, we wanted to video chat, but all I had was this broken (the tape part) Canon 4mm video camera that could only use firewire for this purpose.

Works great, but only iChat recognizes the firewire microphone; so, with Skype and Google Talk I have video but no sound.

Well, my mom has been video Skyping with my sister and her kids for a few months now; Windows-to-Windows. I'm the computer weenie in the family, so of course I get the, "All I have to do is click on this thing and I'm seeing and chatting with your niece and nephew, but I want to see all of my grandchildren. Can't you make this happen?"

The other geeks know exactly what I'm talking about. So, I said f*ck it, and just two days ago I picked up a middle-of-the road Logitech USB video camera w/ mic. I took it out of the For-Windows-Only box, flung the Windows-Only disc across the room, and plugged it into my 10.6.3 Mac Mini. Everything works, and it works with everything.

Really Bad Point of this WTF? Story

Since PR 1.1.1 (?), I remembered some people had discovered that video chatting now seemed to be working on the n900. So on Wednesday I gave it a try. I logged in to an alternate gmail account and initiated a video chat to my n900. It worked. My son and I had a video chat from different parts of the house. Granted, it's not Skype, but it works.

Sure, I could have made my mom setup a Gmail account and install the Google Talk plugin so I could use the n900, but I just gave in. I'm very ashamed.

Mostly True Conclusion: The n900's ready, the code and the ball are in Skype's court.

I disagree with your post (about it being a computer) and I advise that you consider the difference between denotation and connotation. It's similar to the argument of whether Android is Linux. Denotation wise, yes it is because it runs the Linux kernel (any device running a Linux kernel = Linux). Connotation wise, its' not because it doesn't have the properties of openness that most people would attribute to Linux.

As to why the difference between connotation and denotation is important. If it wasn't for that, then you can say a Tivo box is a Linux computer. Heck you could say alot of things are Linux computers. Or computers in general.

I think most of the time, society doesn't use language based strictly on their denotation, rather connotation is extremely important. And it's because of that reason why an iPhone is not considered a computer to most people and an Android (or Tivo box for that matter) is not considered a Linux device (regardless of what Torvalds says).

Or for that matter why desktops and laptops are not considered phones.

But as I tell everyone who asks me about the N900 or my fiancee. The N900 makes for a terrible smartphone but a great mobile computer.

To which my fiancee said what do you need more? And I said a mobile computer.

I Agree most part of your message but to this i have to say: - They were first - That was 2 years ago (WTF Nokia) -> who ever comes after has no time to mature itself. You must hit hard and fast. Otherwise there is no reason to be first.