I have to say I was so damn excited the day Nokia finally anounced this phone, something good was finally coming out from the viking warlords of mobile phone manufacturers, over the days as the hype and hoopla over this handset continue I continued to dream that Yes, finally a device which literally has it all and yay... finally something to show up to the Iphone snobs, but boy was I in for a rude awakening, well not so much for me personally but for the future of this particular handset as a whole. Nokia intends to, I believe get a firm grounding in the smartphone and the touch based devices segment with the launch of this handset. But I have a feeling the N900 wont be the one for them, future incarnations maybe but definitely not this one. The biggest and strongest competitor to this will be the Iphone and all bashing and hating aside the phone actually sells, peole who have it love it and the ones who dont, want it. Sure the Iphone hardware wise is crap and I cant justify the price they charge for it as well, 900£ for an unlocked 3GS, crickey thats 2 months rent for me, that aside however they know that their core demographic loves it and will spend the moneys they want to get it. Apple has over the years created a very strong brand for itself, how many movies or TV shows do you see where their laptops or phones are not Apple branded, its not like expensive windows based products dont exist, they for some reason are just not cool enough. Even though Nokia sells more handsets by the hour than Apple sells through the day, Nokia does not enjoy the favourable brand appeal, because honestly when you think of a Nokia you have an image of a numeric pad based phone which has Snake on it. Another aspect which is worth mentioning is the people who actually buy these phones, most Iphone users dont know that their phone is running an ARM cortex 600Mhz processor, or that it is factory locked to a provider, they simply dont care about all this, all they want is for people to look at their device and know that they are a part of the "it" crowd not the IT crowd.
Nokia made a smart move on their side to put a 3G radio on their Maemo based device and have a pwerful phone out, but marketing wise they just fell flat, the N97 mini was picked up the moment word came out about its release. Even Sony ericcsson did a bangup job with the satio they had operators in their baskets months before the release.
It does make you wonder with only days left before its launch there is still nothing on the news or no announcements from operators, no ads no marketing whatsoever, Is Nokia really serious about this phone, even LG when they released their phone with a stupid transparent key pad had more ads. As a consumer I really would like to know the answer as this really factors in stuff like future firmwares or upgrades, because if this is just a niche product meant for a select few they wont really bother wasting time after this hits the markets.
Please give your comments...

The n900 is still not intended to be main stream as to be allowed to be subsidized by the carriers.

so essentially this would be a niche product, How was the support for the N810 tablet, I have heard it did not have many problems to begin with but did Nokia release updates.
thanks

nokia has already said this device and maemo 5 are just a stepping stone on their path to world domination a la maemo 6, where I suspect they will have a wider range of phones on that platform and 'push' harder.

And, nokia is not like apple. Apple has ONE phone, nokia makes over 50 models every year to fit almost every market segment imaginable, from throwaway disposable phones to the super elite high end megabucks devices, to the uber-hackable inbetween devices that they explicitly just push out there and pretty much say, "Here, see what y'all can do with this"

For me at least the nokia model suits much better and Nokia is doing its part, however slowly, to tear down the HORRIBLE state of mobile affairs in the USA. They are coming at it from an entirely different angle than Apple, which has pretty much said, one device, one carrier, one wy to get apps, etc.

Sorry my bad. Atleast in the UK it is subsidized. I dont think it will happen in the US

http://www.mobilephonesdirect.co.uk/...62/p26078.aspx

I know cant contain my excitement, and as far as having a unique phone goes, as you guys have put it that this will not see a huge market launch that suits me just fine as long as they keep putting out updates.

there will probably only be one or at most two updates to maemo 5 if past history is any indicator. Perhaps if they go longer term with maemo 6 you can expect a longer update period. Just being honest.

The updates will be many but they will be incremental because the n900 can be updated via SSU. Diablo as of now is very usable. In fact most of the previous tablet users would take only the processor upgrade and ram upgrade as is. So not to worry about the stability or the use of maemo 5

I have never had a nokia device that had many incremental updates whether it could do it OTA/network or not. I am not sure where you are coming from with that statement. Even as this device is starting to be released we already know there will be no more updates to Diablo, and I am sure once the details of the Maemo 6 device next year are released you can kiss goodbye any hope of any more updates to the maemo 5 on your n900. This is not necessarily a negative to me, just a fact of how they have proceeded with maemo development thus far and I don't see any reason to think 5 will be any different than 4.

Well the n8x0 were supposed to have another update called elephanta but they scrapped it because they had to work on maemo 5. But what i meant to say is that diablo was good enough for many of us without any major concerns. Of course more updates are always nice but the lack of proper hardware is definitely a hinderance to further updates. Now a days 2 years is a lot in device's life cycle. I dont see many users who would use thier n900's for more than that.