John, no offense taken. I do hope that Nokia seriously considered what frequencies to support and that they considered a lot more than T-Mobile vs AT&T as the phone is sold in many countries. I believe that many more Communicators sold in Europe than in the US and it will likely be the same for the N900. I would never suggest Nokia not support T-Mobiles frequencies which are more common in Europe but I do not understand why they chose not to have quad band WCDMA in the N900 when it is possible.

I wish I did not to have to choose between a true linux phone without 3G or an Android phone with 3G. Ten times the bandwidth is a big draw.

It would be nice if someone at Nokia would explain their decision. I would not expect any explanation for a normal phone however this is a phone that runs open source software. I hope that Nokia will be more open in the future.

In the near future I would really like to get my hands on the phone to be able to contribute to the development and bug fixing efforts.

My theory (and it's just a theory) is that the T-mobile bands decision was based on 2 factors. 1) T-mobile is a big-time player in Europe, and thus getting cozy with them makes good business sense for nokia's plan to push this platform as the high-end offering to providers and 2) Supporting T-mobile's U.S. 3G bands required the addition of only a single frequency above and beyond what is necessary for Europe...allowing a single tri-band 3G radio SKU to be used for both markets thus accelerating time-to-market and reducing development/manufacturing/distribution costs versus making a "world version" and a "NAM" version per usual. Assuming there are no contracts/agreements to the contrary, I would imagine that a proper "NAM" version (850/1900) of the N900 or its follow-on is in the works pending this "testing of the waters on the cheap".

just my 2 cents...I might be completely off base on this.

I have to say I'm amused by people complaining that Nokia is ingoring AT&T and South America and Canada, by not including 850/1900 3G frequencies in the N900. Up until now, every single N series and E series and other high end Nokia phone has come with a NAM version that has 850/1900 and just ignores T-Mobile U.S. Now people are up in arms, here and on other forums, because just this one time Nokia has ignored the 850/1900 people. Well, that's how it's been for people on T-Mobile U.S. for years. Lean to live with it.

That said, I think if you want to understand T-Mobile's decision, you have to take account of why they would make this completely unprecedented decision. So I think many of the plausible sounding reasons people offer in this thread don't hold up in this light. People suggest Nokia is cozying up to T-Mobile in Europe or it's easier to make one version that is both a World and NAM phone (rather than two separate versions, one including 850/1900 as in the past) or Nokia is avoiding AT&T's iPhone overloaded network. If any of these reason were true, they could apply equally as well to the N97, N97 mini, N86, E72 and a whole long line of phones before them. But Nokia not once made this decision before. So I don't think those reasons can be right. If any of those reasons were right, then it's just not plausible that Nokia never once before would have done the same thing for the same reason.

You have to ask what's different about the N900 from all phones before? The obvious answer is the introduction of the Maemo platform. So I think what quipper8 said in the fourth post in this thread is right. Nokia is testing out their new platform on a smaller market segment. By Nokia's own admission Maemo isn't really ready yet. Maemo 5 on the N900 is really the last step, before Meamo 6 which is supposed to be the true full fledged thing. Once they iron out the bugs, I'll be really surprised if the next Maemo 6 based device doesn't have the 850/1900 frequencies. (Sadly of course, leaving the T-Mobile U.S. people in the lurch again.)

The good news for T-Mobile users is that the N97 Mini supports T-Mobile and AT&T frequencies with quad band WCDMA hopefully the next Maemo device will support quad or more bans of WCDMA.

Let me re-interpret your post for everybody else:

Nana na na nana!

Nana na na nana!

Nana na na nana!

No it doesn't. N97mini is a tri-band phone just like the N97 and with no support for 1700AWS so that means no T-mobile USA.

There's no quad-band UMTS because there are few quad-band chipsets, the pricing hasn't come down enough to warrant using and the challenges of multiband antenna design need to be overcome.

T-mobile does not offer service in Canada, nor anywhere Central or South America, so even if switching carriers was an option for me this would not resolve the problem.

Oh, and my E90 would like to have a word with you about it's apparent 850MHz 3G support. It's "E" icon says otherwise!

So is there a specific technical reason why it is not feasible to support all 3g bands? Antenna technology, baseband processors not existing, IP & patent concerns?

And if the issue is one of a chipset, would there be a specific chipset for various band groupings...like the AWS/Euro bands versus the Americas/Australia bands? Is it one chipset programmed via firmware? Why isn't this hackable dammit!?!? I want an N900 and I want coverage. So a switch to Tmobile USA is a non-starter here....

http://www.nokia.co.uk/find-products...specifications

# Quad band EGSM 850/900/1800/1900
# WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100

There is no 1700 but I thought T-Mobile used 2100 as well?

Yes, the E90, which is a bit of an old phone by todays standards, doesn't have 850 support, so I could have been a little more precise. Every singe E series or N series or other high end Nokia phone, before the N900, that has had a NAM version, has gone with 850/1900. And this has been pretty much every E series and N series phone for a while now. The N900 is the single exception. There has never been a N series or E series or other high end Nokia phone with 1700 3G. It seems to me that is the important point.

I wasn't suggesting you could switch carriers. I was just saying Nokia has been pretty good to the 850/1900 people, so it's amusing to see people be up in arms about the N900, when this is just one instance and for T-Mobile U.S. people they've gone through this with dozens of high end Nokia phones.

I've seen this debate about the N97-mini play out in other forums, in which I even linked to the very same specifications from the Nokia UK site. It appears to actually be a mistake that once it got posted in one place on a Nokia site, it got propagated everywhere. Here are the specifications from the Nokia developer forum, that indicated as with all recent N series devices (except the N900), the N97 mini will have two versions, European and NAM, 900/1900/2100 and 850/1900/2100, neither quadband.

http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/N97_mini