The guy who lost this prototype will be FIRE!!! by Apple of cause! lol.

I am skeptical on the removable battery part too... Must be made by PEAR..

The "not being left behind" and "it's open source, so we could always continue working on it if Nokia stops" argument doesn't hold water. Look at all the threads about N770, N800, N810, and N900 being left behind as Nokia rolls out the next OS version. These releases, for the most part, cannot be backported into any kind of official release. There's been hacker editions (which is great, to Nokia's credit), but at this point, the N770, N800, and N810 are definitely left behind. Whether the N900 will be left behind in the Maemo to Meego transition has been in question since Meego's announcement. The OS is open, but not open enough for others to continue.

For developers, Nokia has been good with keeping them up-to-date with discounted hardware. For end users, I would venture to say that official support is for about 1.5 years after product release. If this is your typical upgrade cycle, then the N series is perfect for you; otherwise, buy N series products if it has all the features you want, not features you hope to one day have. It's about immediate utility versus possibilities.

The iPhone 4G, if the specs are true, finally has specs comparable to the N900, and maybe that's what the OP is having a quagmire about.

First off... Can we stop comparing and existing, launched phone to something so far down the pike that Apple hasn't even introduced it yet? Let's compare the N900 to something from a year before it was out, and, oh, look, it knocks it's socks off. Sure it does. It's new. New gadgets have all the latest stuff in them, so no kidding it's going to out-preform year-old competitors. Why not compare it to the N920, since that's due out about the same time? Suddenly it doesn't look as hot, huh?

As for this "left behind" crap, yes, eventually every phone gets left behind. I had an N6230 before this, talk about left behind... Did you notice that Gen1, 2, and 3G phones will get "OS4.0" but won't get most 4.0 features, including multi-tasking? I'd call that being left behind! Apple has always left behind it's older models after 3 or 4 years. The iPhone has been a bit of an exception, but not for much longer. It's how they operate, in fact it's how most computer and mobile makers operate, since tons of people buy new ones every couple years, if not sooner.

Nokia may eventually stop development on the N900, just as it has with the N700/800 series. But since most of it is open source, one can continue to use it after they stop supporting it. (And once things go fully to MeeGo, I'm betting the last closed non-hardware/NDA bits get opened too.) Try continuing to use iPhone apps when Apples has pulled them from the store, you can't. Next time it phones home or syncs, it wipes them. You'll never see that with the N900, since you have complete access.

As for the N900 being left behind and PR1.2 being delayed "indefinitely", that's just bull. There's still work being done (tagged PR1.3 now) in the bug database, and there's clear signs of activity. Nokia never announces launch dates for updates, and PR 1.2 is no exception. I'm betting it's going to be in late April or early May though, since most of the ducks have been setup. They're probably pre-testing it now, and are preparing for a release.

Consider for a minute it took over a year for iPhone 1 to get it's first software update (we've had how many in 6 months?). The speed of development that Nokia is doing, I think they're doing a great job of supporting the N900.

Sure, we may see less support in 3 or 4 years, but for now things are going fine. Most people here go through phones like they do socks anyway, so what do you care if it's still supported in 3 years? You'll buy the new one in two and whine about that not having full 5G and a 2048p 3D projector.... :P

Haha, maybe he just doesn't like people messing with the aesthetics of the iPhone. Didn't he recently make a comment againist skin cases or something like that?

Yes, new tech comes out and the newer tech is better. Yes, older tech gets left behind. The thing that keeps getting brought up is how the N series is open source and we can always continue OS development on our own. The reality is, there hasn't seen an update since 1.5 years after the N770's release that's stable. OS2007HE is as far as I dare go. There's the bug where if there's too many hot spots, or perhaps an N router around, the N770 will not give you a list of hot spots. The way to get around this is to "hug" the N770 and block the extra signals until you get a list. It's a known, well reported bug and it's yet to be fixed. Do developers like hugging their N770? Wouldn't this be something to fix? All the N770 developers have moved on... The support isn't any better than if you just bought an iPhone or any other phone. The possibility of continued OS development doesn't exist in the practical sense. There aren't enough developers to support the N770, N800, and N810 in the long run.

Lesson: If a particular N series meets your needs today, buy it. Don't expect support for more than 1.5 years. Open source will not help you, whether that's due to too many components being closed or developers moving on. There's no advantage to open source /in this case/ (not talking about desktops/laptops/netbooks).

Yup... and this is very likely a hardware/firmware based issue. This would happen with any device using this chipset, and reality is that Nokia is probably not the one making firmware for the chip. I have an old 11b 16-bit PCMCIA card that has the same issue from Netgear. No support from them either. If the chip supplier won't provide firmware updates, you can hardly blame Nokia for not fixing it. It would be like blaming the local gas station owner for not stocking lead based gas for you 1940 car, despite the fact that nobody makes it any more.

That's just not true. How many people are still using their N700s? I see active discussions about people installing mapper and back porting things for it. Reality is you at least have the option to update it (within reasonable expectations) after "normal" support has moved on to the next new device.

On the N900, the only major items that aren't open are the Wifi, GPS and bluetooth stacks, which have a well defined API in a functional subsystem. That's true on every phone made today, iPhone included. Outside of that you can replace every piece of "closed" stuff with an open source alternative, from the browser to the media player to the desktop and the OS.

Yes, if you want to keep the same look and feel, and stick with 100% supported "stable" Nokia stuff, you'll hit a wall. Open source gives you the flexibility to move well beyond what you could do with an iPhone though. Can you over-clock an iPhone? No. Can you multi-task on an iPhone? No, not even with 4.0. Could you do MMS the first year the iPhone was out? No. You can do all that with the N900 mere months after it was made available. If there's something you don't like, you can look at the source, and the very open and available API set, and fix 99% on your own. Something you can't do with an iPhone, not even an jail-broken one.

And let's be honest. The N700/800 were toys for people that had the money to spend on such things. They were really hot PDAs, which frankly have even less of a shelf life or support cycle than phones (just ask a Palm user...) The N900 has out-sold all of the NX00 series combined in under 6 months. It's playing by a slightly different set of rules based on sheer numbers alone.

I for one am quite happy N900 is opensource. It does everything I need it to and some things I didn't know I needed it to do. If I need some key thing done, I have been able to hack something together to make it work on my own. I don't need to pay annually for a developer kit, or publish my app in Nokia's store front, or update the apps key every 3 months. I don't need to worry about what happens if Nokia doesn't like my app, or pulls it from the store, or stops supporting my phone on their store, or stops providing their development kit. I have it all archived, and there are no time-outs or phone-home mechanisms to disable anything, no broken DRM systems to go bad.

Btw, ALL of the above applies to iStuff. You need to pay annually for a devel kit, apps timeout after 3 months if not from the store (even devel code), and if Apple dislikes your app, it doesn't get into the app store, or can get pulled at any time. The devel system also phones home and times out, so when Apple decides to stop supporting Gen1s, you're hosed. No more changes. You can't even code a new app for your old phone and push it a little more, because your devel setup will have timed out, no store push will exist, and the DRM will stop you from installing (short of jailbreaking, which may or may not work at that point.)

So, there are clear advantages to the N900 being as open source as it is. If you disagree that's great, but frankly it's just ignorance on your own part, as the above examples show. For you, these things may not be important... for most iPhone users it's not, because they like being sheep. They like being told they need to close one app to open another, and that they can't replace their own battery. And when they disable Gen1 iPhones and turn off the app store for it, they'll all go "baaahh!" and line up to get the iPhone 4 to replace it, assuming they haven't already.

I think you're right. We, mortals, just can't tell what these demigods have in their crazy minds ;p

ps: I don't know if he made any personal comments about iphone skins or not, but I heard the Apple Store (world wide) have stopped carrying screen protectors of any kinds. I guess they want to showcase the oleophobic layers put on all their gadgets... and maybe they feel the hard-glass screen is scratch-resistant enough on its own.

First of all, I'm not advocating that iPhones are better. I wouldn't have bought an N770 in the first place, nor continue running GNU/Linux on my desktop as my sole OS (10+ years running). No need to lecture the concept of open source to me and there's no need to belittle the people who prefer more closed systems.

I hope for your sake that the N900 has reached the critical mass level for it to sustain its developers. If one day Nokia releases new hardware and offers its developers discounted hardware to move on, then hopefully you'll have enough people left, people with enough knowledge to keep the OS/apps going. And if you find yourself buying new hardware to keep current, then maybe you'll understand what I was getting at.

(By the way, you should read up on jail-broken iPhones and their developer community. They have a closed system, but they're pretty resourceful. They've been actively patching up shortfalls in the iPhone, like adding multi-tasking on their own to iPhones that Apple doesn't support multi-tasking on.)

well for me i like phone that have a high speed gud quality music camera net browsing that is has all...

for now i have n97 mini dat i getting dispointed bout the speed grrrr...

so for me make some review ask people bout their experince...

Well to start with I am neither an Apple nor Nokia fan boy, I use what I like.

That being said just like anything in the world there is always an up and down side. Lets face it the iPhone 4G looks pretty "smexy" however the overall OS lacks where Maemo has been doing for years ( even in Symbian S60 ).

The way I see it is;
Apple iPhone 4G -
Easy to use, tons of applications ready to install via store and a overall out of the box your good to go. 3rd party community such as Jailbreaking has a strong going but still limited somewhat by the OS. (Yes I realize recently Android was accomplished on it). Limited on Space, no hot swapping SD cards.

Nokia N900 (Maemo)
Somewhat easy to use if you used a Nokia before, could be a little hard for a Nokia first timer. Applications are few when compared to iPhone but generally better quality due to the close niche of the community. No 3rd party really needed as the phone is for most terms "open" (take that as you will). Not limited really on storage due to SD micro and hot swap.

Just my 2 cents. . . back to my N900 and figuring out why my python app keeps bombing