Yeah, I definitely hope so too.

Seriously....user interface related??? Why would anyone want to pay for that? That sounds very not appealing unless they send the source code along with the phone! sounds like they give you a background or a branded phone? Not cool. Not cool at all.

I will stay with N900. No user interfaces are near as god or useful as the one on N900. Besides, its nice to have a few buttons and hardware keyboard.

Due to the buttons on N900 it feels like a camera when you use the camera. Not like some telephone with an awkward fingermovement camera function. Why did Canon not put the picture taking button on the back of the camera instead of on the top? Because its ******ed for a camera to have the button on the back.

Only people who prefer a touch\soft keyboard are people who never tried a qwerty telephone keyboard. Touch keyboards are not for writing fast or well, not for productive use. Who the heck wants to clog up half the screen with the keyboard anyways, everytime they have to type something.

Who wants a desktop full of icons as the main screen? I sure don't. Windows 8 seems to move the same way. But this type of main screen is not for productive use, and its ugly. Iphone and Android are way back in Symbian copyland with that idea. Nokia always had icons on main screen.
N900 has a desktop as main screen.

Iphone and Android ofcours also got it all wrong when they copied and improved on Symbian to make smartphone use mainly a vertical thing. Who the heck wants to have a narrow screen product? Widescreen is the way to go. But Iphone and Android just has not realised this possibility before, because they are making Smart phones based on Nokia Symbian design, rather than Mobile computers based on computer design. In fact, vertical based smartphones are so bad that all internet pages had to adapt to them and their extremely poor web browsers and poor browsing experience. In fact, that was not even enough, the poor design of the Smartphone was so bad at browsing the web that Apps was invented to do things on the web that was otherwise was not possible due to the poor browser and the vertical based screen.
Nokia N900 is not a Smartphone, its a Mobile computer, the first one, and the only one.

Mobile products are now so powerful that Smartphones could be obsolete in favour of Mobile computers.

Jolla is making the same mistake as everyone else, they are designing a Smartphone with Smartphone OS. I would rather set my hopes on Ubuntu or Firefox as the first ones to reinvent the Mobile computer and create a device as powerful as the N900 user interface. In my book, that will probably be Ubuntu Phone with Plasma Active.

and that is why I will never have Jolla. its just another boring smartphone with lousy smartphone design. N9 was the most annoying product I ever bought. Only thing better about N9 than N900 is the pretty screen. The rest sucks and annoys me every time I try to use it.

User interface was mentioned as example, not as only possibility. Lets not get riled up just yet. It's just some weeks to go and all will be revealed.

If the phone looks to be any good, I would personally throw the phone price and extra just to get early prototype.

Pre-order for "Special Edition"? Like N950 is a special edition of our N9? If pre-order means hardware keyboard jolla phone, then count with me.

PD: heck, i'll be totally satisfied even if the hardware is an exact N950 copy with OLED screen and updated internals.

We're getting way ahead of ourselves, we'll just have to wait until more info's revealed before getting too excited/disappointed.

I disagree. The Android/IOS type smart phone is actually what consumers want, not N900-style mobile computers. When you look at most smartphone users, they are much more likely to consume content than produce it. This is also borne out by looking at the PC market which is collapsing at the expense of tablet devices.

Having said all that, I don't see any reason why Jolla can't just release 2 devices. One with a hardware keyboard, no locked bootloaders, no crappy AEGIS, etc. for the techies. They can then release another device that is pure touch for consumers. The only problem is that how many manufacturers would be able to ship a device with a decent HWKB? Not many I'd say.

The smartphone market has grown to 1 billion sales. Even if the market for a Linux-type N900 phone is 5% - that's still 50 million devices that no one is paying any attention to right now.

Too bad about the design if that is true. Scandinavian design is boring.
But this phone is not about design, it is about the software. My daily driver, the venerable N900, is getting long in the tooth. The MicroUSB is doing it's thing, mic is not clear, lost the stylus. Bring on the Sailfish Jolla!

Nokia fanatic:

which came first, the hen or the egg? are you sure unproductive Mobile device users are not unproductive just because they are using a device which is more a toy than a productive tool?

I can ask the same exact question for the popularity that you claim. could it not be that the popularity of vertical based mobile devices is because there never really was an alternative, thus consumer lack of knowledge? The N900 is basically the only mobile comuter. How do you know that this would not have become the major trend if more of these devices were attempted?

I always think its a huge mistake to offer only one type of product like everyone does now, instead of many types of products like Nokia used to do. Giving people alternatives, you will see that not everyone wants a huge but flat smartphone with no keyboard and toy functions instead of productive functions.

Samsung Galaxy note brought back the stylus pen and has proved hugely popular.

Isnt it a shame that we who call us so advanced have no serious hardware manufacturers who can make anything but a similar looking device? I dont think its true that devices with great design like N900 can not be made anymore.

Ofcourse its less likely now that Elop sold Nokias headquarters and based the future designs on the copy and paste principle, rather than the principle of quality and design which is how the N900 and many other Nokia devices came about.

Besides, even if you were right about consuming rather than producing content, the N900 principle of mobile computing instead of smartphone is far better a method to consume. Imagine a N900 with modern hardware and updated OS! (ex.full GNU).

How much fun would consumers have being able to select their type of desktop out of the box on the same device instead of using some boring "same design for all" old fashion symbian looking user interface?

I think you underestimate consumers. The only reason they go with badly designed Apple or Android products is because they do not know better and becaus they are easily sold by marketing gimmics.

Aren't those two sentences almost contradictory - they're smarter than that, because they're easily taken in by marketing?