so where is quality control of this company, surely?

So far, the only difference that I can somewhat confirm between the two - I have one of each - is that the Chinese N9 supposedly has a painted USB cover whereas the majority of the folks here say that the Finnish one does not.

Both of mine are painted though. Finnish one had loose volume buttons, Chinese one was tighter. To be honest, it's not enough to complain about in either situation imho.

what colour is your finnish on?

Both of my N9's are black. Hope that helps.

whats ur hardware revision? Both finnish and china?

For what it's worth, the N9 I purchased last October had very good exterior build quality (other than a dead pixel issue). I have tried buying a couple of N9s in the past month, and returned both since both suffered from the loose button issues and the use of ill-produced USB door parts. I have no idea if it is a decline in quality over time, a bad batch, or general randomness (you get what you get and you don't get upset).

That's what I experienced, too!

My black 64 GB which I bought from a Danish retailer in October is perfectly crafted. No loose buttons, USB door fine, display sitting flush with the chassis. Just perfect. Made in Finland

Then I ordered a Cyan N9, had loose volume buttons, and the screen was not flush with the chassis and also when you looked at the camera you saw that the lens was not in the middle of the glass but rather offset slightly to the upper right. Made in Finland, sent back 2 days later.

A week later I ordered again a Cyan N9 from a different online shop. Loose volume buttons, screen not flush with the chassis and even worse, the chrome frame around the camera stood out from the chassis by 1mm on the one end and actually went into the body 1mm on the other end, so not being flush with the chassis, either. Made in Finland, sent back the next day.

My girlfriend's Magenta N9 has only a bit loose volume buttons, nothing to worry about but has none of the other issues. Made in Finland.

So you can't say that Made in Finland is a guarantee for good craft. It's more like the steak you get in the steakhouse.

Thanks for the comments guys, I feel much better now for choosing my new toy. And I never knew they had other factories too.

I think I may become a dual phone user. When comparing it to the n900, I start to feel as if I will miss some of the n900s features. IR, FM Transmitter and microB are just too useful to give up.

Loose buttons is newer and cheaper model, so every white phone has loosed buttons. Old phones buttons are better... So there is no differet between finnish or china models, but we have best quality from finland... If you do not believe me, then don't.. I don't know if it even anymore, but used to be... *Ex Nokia employee*

That's a very interesting observation. The implication is that it is probably futile to keep ordering and returning recently manufactured N9s in hopes of finding one without the loose button problem.

Since it is clear that the loose buttons are considered a "feature, not a bug". Is there anything that can be done to stiffen them up similar to the N9s manufactured during the earlier runs? As someone in the US, I don't care about voiding my warranty and am willing to open the phone up if there is an easy fix...