so, it finally happened... as i stated several posts ago, i had to take my n900 to the care centre due to calls dropping and, as i feared, i am now the owner of an e7-00 replacement phone...

...i still have mixed feelings about the exchange, but i'm not as displeased as i thought i'd be, maybe because i came into the bargain with realistic expectations and, overall, i have to say i agree with most of what ndi has posted...

so, farewell n900, hello e7-00... for now...

Yup, same here, mine broke twice, got it fixed first time back in March but 2nd time was not the broke USB socket, just keyboard lights staying on constantly (even when powered off weirdly enough) so i am now in possession of an E7 ... just wished they'd have warned me about it instead of just saying that my N900 had been repaired and then chucking this one at me .. that said i do like the feel of the E7, it's got a really nice clear screen, if a little lower in resolution and a bit pixely here and there. 2 huge drawbacks though. The web browser is just plain awful, it's forever hanging and at the moment i cannot get BBC iplayer to work on it and i have become used to having the PC style websites on a mobile instead of being autodirected to the mobile version, of course the other drawback for me is having half my storage space taken away and then being denied an SD card slot to make up for it .. bit miffed really since i paid quite a bit of money for my 32GB card. Still i do not want to dwell too much on the bad points. A big plus for me is the USB on the go with supplied adapter and clever stuff like plugging in a USB mouse and being able to control the entire device with it - it even gives you a 2nd mouse pointer on the web browser! (i know, not really much use). The N900 had a way of doing this too but it was not particularly stable and with battery life such an issue practically pointless. I might try something a bit cheeky and ask for my N900 back in it's unrepaired state if they haven't already binned it ... what do you reckon my chances are?

...4 days have passed since the exchange and i wholeheartedly concur with Glue's and others' view on the awfulness of the browser and the constrains of a memory with mere 16GB and no room for a microSD... plus i would like to add here the horror of and fixed focus camera and the lack of one of my most used programmes or a decent equivalent: gPodder... you win some, you lose some...

Sent my beloved N900 to have it's detached USB repaired a week ago, barely a week before the warranty expired.
Guess what I find when I arrive home this evening? You guessed it, "upgraded" to E7!

I considered selling this to finance a new N900 but I wouldn't be able to break even. "Good-will" upgrade huh?! Plus I wouldn't have got top price as box was not even sealed.

Damn cheeky of Nokia to not even contact us first!
I intend contacting Nokia, thanking them for their speedy service and "good-will" but politely remind them of the UK Sales of Goods act, notably that my N900 was not of "merchantable quality." The E7 can NOT be considered an acceptable replacement as it is not "fit for purpose" and hence cannot be considered as equivalent to the N900, on so many levels.

And it's not even as if the Nokia N900 is so difficult to source, it's still readily available via numerous retailers!
In the event I reach deadlock and they keep throwing the warranty terms at me I will ask them nicely to confirm in writing, on Nokia headed paper, that the intended lifetime of their N900 (purchased direct from Nokia UK and then priced, before any discounts at £500) to be no more than 2 years, and that they won't mind me forwarding this to various media outlets...

Manufacturer warranties are one of my pet hates as it does a fine job in misleading the average consumer into believing that they have no other recourse, whilst at the same time openly stating that "your statutory rights are not effected." In the UK at least, our contract is with the retailer, not the manufacturer. The period each item is "reasonably" expected to last is largely dependent on the item's value (not the price paid, after discounts etc).

Podcatcher is a good Gpodder alternative.

in what universe?... i mean it downloads podcast feeds, but that is as far as the comparison goes; podcatcher is nowhere near gpodder in terms of functionality and user experience... and please don't get me wrong, podcatcher is in fact what i currently use, but only for want of a better alternative...

I left my n900 into Nokia Repair a few weeks back because my sim wasnt being picked up and so lost any connection to the mobile network. Went to collect the handset and was given an E7 as a replacement.

After a few emails back and forth to Nokia Care UK I got a phone call to say they managed to source a replacement N900 and its due to arrive tomorrow

I think if you get an E7 as a replacement then it's worth a try contacting Nokai again to see if they can get an N900 rather than just accepting the E7

In the Symbian universe. Hence the reason why I use the word "alternative" and not "substitue." The E7 is no N900 replacement either. I would not accept anything less than an N9 as a replacement from Nokia if my N900 died within the warranty period. And even the N9 would not be able to replace the N900.

Absolutely!
They're currently sourcing an N900 for me too.
I hope you didn't get mine!

I don't know, but at least here (Brazil) you can buy about 3 n900's (used, not sold new anymore) for the price of one (used) E7...

So I don't really get the complaints...