This seems highly unlikely. As far as we know the device will use the OMAP3430 and I doubt that they'd change it even if they manufactured several models. I have the impression that Nokia's smartphone lineup also uses pretty much the same CPUs.

So I call BS on that message

And that's the problem. Nothing concrete from Nokia allows room for this "he say/she say" type of stuff.

Ok, it's time for a discussion about What Business Is Like, even if it is somewhat of a thread hijack, sorry.

People are always talking about the "intention" or "secret plan" of this company or that. The fact is that all companies (and governments, for that matter) are built out of a combination of groups with clashing perspectives. Who wins whatever contest depends on how the wind is blowing, or the business equivalent.

In the case of Nokia, this eerie decision to basically drop the N810 without an immediate replacement seems weird.

Have you noticed the economic environment has been changing?

I bet anything that SOMEONE at Nokia is wondering if the whole tablet thing is the right way to go. It would be a shame to waste a lot of money on a project destined to fail.

I'm not saying that this perspective is going to win at Nokia, but the weird gap reminds me of the silence after the release of the video chat beta for the N800. Remember it was a beta, it was a beta, and then ... silence. And then people started saying that it was never guaranteed anyway, it had just been a beta, never a serious plan?

(That's the first time in my experience, btw, that a beta resulted in an absolutely abandoned project. I'm sure that there have been other instances, but they are damned scarce. Imagine Ubuntu releasing a beta, and then announcing a few weeks later -- "uh, we've decided to drop the whole idea.")

I remember my Timex Sinclair 2068, a pretty cool computer, which Timex threw down an elevator shaft just weeks after some made their way to my local Toys 'R Us, and I eagerly bought one.

So, I don't think we completely know that Nokia is going to continue this project at all.

Obviously nobody can ever be certain of anything, but I think your conclusion is based on incomplete information. You do realize that Maemo SW has been hiring like mad over the past year, right? You do also realize that they've been working very hard on the next software release (and, so far, we've had 2 pre-alpha releases to prove it) and that there's quite a lot of information about the potential hardware for the next release, right?

I mean, all the strong assurances from Nokia employees that Maemo isn't going anywhere anytime soon could just be a marketing and that little tidbit about Linux ending up on high-end Nokia phones could just be nothing, or, again, you might just not have the full picture. Companies don't generally pour money into things they're planning to kill.

What silence are you getting from Maemo? The fact that you are not hearing what you want to hear doesn't mean that there is silence.

Let's link again to http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roadmap/Fremantle . Last edit, two days ago.

The list of enhancement requests and bugs fixed also grows there every week. Search for "FiF" at http://www.octofish.net/bugjar/ and you will see reports FIXED in Fremantle just last week.

And finally, let's list again to http://www.nokia.com/imaginemaemo . 28 positions open for you to apply right now, 3 of them posted 2 days ago.

These URLs + the Fremantle SDK releases are relatively simple to track and they tell a lot for those willing to hear: Maemo developers and the Maemo community, our main target for all this communication.

If then the blogosphere feels more excited about vague rumors and even cheap home made cut & paste mockups...

That's fine and even somewhat understandable. But I don't think anybody can blame us for being silent. And I wonder about the substance of any Maemo discontinuity panic based on all the tangible information coming from reliable sources.

Aha! So it IS June 21st!



EDIT: Quim, you're going to have to do something about that "a mature alpha SDK with new Hildon application framework and API freeze" being expected "Around February" ... at least you'll have to do something in the next day... Either move it above "Expected" or change it to "Around March"... And that suggests you should change the Beta to "April-May" ...

Why? "Around" generally implies "in the vicinity of". January and March are both "in the vicinity of" February. It doesn't say "in February".

There was a snarky post here. But it's gone. And I'm off to bed. Maybe there'll be a "Mature Alpha" waiting for me tomorrow!

... around tomorrow.

...wouldn't "march" be "around february"? (whereas "february" is "february" and not "around february")