I guess the reason why Nokia delayed the shipping date of N900 is that they want to earn more money from N97.
Because N97 would be the best cellphone of Nokia without N900.
so, they want to keep this longer!

I think that very unlikely. The two are attractiving very different markets: people jumping ship from the n900 are more likely to go to one of the competitors than an n97, so Nokia loses.

Can't we take them at their word? Following the handout of the 300, they are finalising the release firmware ready for sale.

My suspicion is that the numbers pre-orders made them realise it need to be more 'Joe Public ready' than they initially planned, and the 300 reflected that it's not. Yet.

From wikipedia's page on Occam's Razor:

Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor), entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Latin, roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity"), is the principle that can be popularly stated as "when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better."

In the light of that pearl of wisdom, consider Peter Schneider's post, from which I will make the following extract:

...we loaned 300 pre-production units to get more feedback from the community. This feedback is extremely important to us and as such we also want to provide the best user experience with the Nokia N900.

We expect it to start shipping during November 2009.

That looks like a simpler theory to me. HTH

i doubt the N97 is their best cell phone, but even if it is: the N900 wouldn't change this. as a cell phone, it isn't all that great.

besides not having speed dial, it seem like the N900 runs circles around the N97 in everything, from UI, fluidity of the phone, user experience, phone reception, and in terms of a smartphone too!

I wouldn't say they're attractiving very different markets. N97 was supposed to be the successor of the N95, but many people consider the N900 as the "true" successor - something that the N97 should have been, but wasn't - despite of the different OS.

Remember that the N95 (including 8GB and N82) outsold ALL Iphones combined, which means that's a pretty huge userbase, and the N95 owners will probably dominate the N900 userbase, even if the N900 will only sell one tenth of what the different N95:s sold. And a bunch of the N95/82 (basicly the same hardware) owners had a N8x0 as well, now others don't have to choose between either having a smartphone or having a tablet... since there were some demand for tablets as well, that won't boost the N97's demand.

Why? Because the N95 was huge, that's why. How much did the N8x0 series sell (combined)? No more than 1 mil, I think (can't tell for sure). According to all pre-order stats as well as the N900's popularity at classic Symbian sites it all do indicate at the footsteps of the N95. Remember that the N95 had a slow launch (slower than the N97), but it kept selling well for at least 18 months, because Nokia didn't have anything better (the N95's CPU is more powerful than the N97's CPU, and that's even without mentioning the lack of a GPU on the N97).

I'd say it's very likely that people that would originally get the N97 move to the N900 instead, and if Nokia won't release a "better" phone within 1 year, then the N900 might sell as much as the N82 (5 mil) easily, if not more (if the supply and marketing will be there, of course). Maemo has much potential, so did the N95. What exactly is innovative in the N97? There are a lot of confident Nokia owners who wants to upgrade to the best they got, and then they'll most likely get the N900, without any consideration about the OS or aimed market.


At least that's my thoughts. N900 might as well be "the next big thing" after the N95, even if Nokia hasn't begun any marketing campains yet. If I recall correctly, they started to market the N95 about 3 months after its initial release.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the vast majority of the new people to Maemo won't visit Maemo Talk at all, which means it won't be noticed here.

People are constantly forgetting that the N900 was never meant to be a cell phone, it was never its main feature. Its just one its many apps. Reviewers should really stop referring to it as a smartphone, its more than that...

All that is very fair: I was just going by the number of posts around here saying "They delayed my n900 so I'm going to get a moto droid/ HTC HD2/ blah/ blah... none of which say they'd going to get an n97, not even an n97 mini.

I am myself an n95 owner, who left nokia for SE and have come back with the n900. But I never even looked at the n97, and the advice given in my phone shop was "If it has an 'n' in front of it. that stands for 'no'." I had to work quite hard to convince them that n900 was in a different league.

But in the end my question stands: why can't we take nokia at their word? They say they are finalising firmware after feedback from the 300... which sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

The N97 isn't even better than the almost 3 year old N95 hardware wise. Let's put the N95's GPU advantage aside, and we'll still be able see how poor the N97 compares.

First off, the N95 8GB and the N97 both have the same amount of RAM, while the N97 has much more pixels to display on the screen. Of course S60v5 is better optimized for power use per pixel than S60v3, but that isn't enough.

Secondly, the N95 had a dual-CPU architecture, and despite the higher clock frequency, the N97 with its single-CPU can't compare with the N95's multi-tasking and overall performance. Now it's unfair to say that the N95's CPU was dual-core, as it wasn't, kind of. One of the cores was solely used for communication data, while the other was "free" to do all the other stuff. On the N97, the slightly more powerful single-CPU has to do all that alone, which often leads to slower performance.

Last but not least, the N95 had an impressive GPU, while the N97 completely lacked it.

besides not having speed dial, it seem like the N900 runs circles around the N97 in everything, from UI, fluidity of the phone, user experience, phone reception, and in terms of a smartphone too!


I think you are right because N97 AND N900 have the same taregt groups ( the young people) in the market , although N900 has some business advantages!