I was reading an article last night that was saying so. Which is why I said 'supposedly', since I don't know exactly how reliable that source is.

Is that time frame a shock to you?

No, this is too bad to be true! Awful design. The whole point was to make a device, which does not need a keyboard, and use on-screen keyboard in cases, where you need it. You can use different languages and alphabets. I would never buy a slider. I would rather consider something from iPhone line.

Not saying either way. Can you point me to the article?

No problem:

http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/8262.html?rfp=dta

#10, availability, is the item in question.

John, you overlooked the most important part: the disclaimer.

Also, the writer makes it very clear he's alluding to the PHONE mockup that was recently demoed.

I assumed the disclaimer was standard a "this is a gossip collumn, like 90% of every other 'this is what new products are coming out' gossip/rumors collumns, and we're predicting product X" type statement.

Actually, in items 1 and 2, he's very clearly talking about the next generation Internet Tablet, talking about the successor to the N800, comparing it to the N800, and calling it the N900. And, in #7 specifically says it'll be a maemo device. What other Nokia products are maemo based? :-} (honest and serious question: if there are others, I'd love to know ... if there's an actual phone based on maemo, I'd _LOVE_ to know that)


Though, which phone mockup are you talking about? The one that everyone said looked like a complete iphone clone? (don't recall the url for it)


There's a lot about the article to doubt though:

* in #6 he says "GSM, HSDPA" and "WiMAX" in the same offering ... which means it'd be the first device I know of that can be used with AT&T, T-Mobile, AND Sprint (as Sprint phones aren't usually compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile, due to the whole GSM vs CDMA2000 families). Seems to me that the coming Sprint-WiMAX device, if it had a phone radio in it, would be CDMA2000 and EVDO. Though, mixing GSM/EDGE/HSDPA and WiMAX in one device would make for tremendous vendor flexibility. I'll be pleasantly, but tremendously, surprised if that one comes true.

* in #5 he completely misses that you guys are working on a SIP client.

* in #3 he says Opera, but it sounds like Maemo is moving toward a firefox/mozilla ... I would hope that transition is done by this time next year.

* in #2 he talks about shrinking the screen size. That seems to me to be as big a blunder as moving the dpad and button cluster to a slide-out keyboard.


But, the availability date didn't seem to be terribly unreasonable (the WiMAX version is supposed to be out sometime next year, right?). Nor does a price jump if you add a cell radio and/or WiMAX. (I wont like paying $750 for the next gen tablet, but I probably would actually pay it; this device is essentially replacing a laptop for me, so $750 is still a great deal ... though, I think that'd be a mistake on Nokia's part ... you need to compete with the iPhone and iPod-Touch, even if they have less of the functionality I'm looking for than the Nokia Internet Tablets do.)

He's speculating based on the recent iPhone "clone" demo. Trust me. And speculating is the key word: this is what he WANTS to see, not necessarily what's going to happen. There is not a bit of anything official from Nokia in that wish list.

The article had nothing to do with any successor or adjunct to the N800. His choice of a name was rather inane and shows little or no knowledge of Nokia platforms.

Funny how they didn't even bother to mention what the battery life of this monster of a Nokia device would be like.

I estimate... er, speculate 10 minutes.

Hm. Is that assuming that you'd have all 4 radios (bt, wifi, wimax, gsm) going at once? Couldn't you be more selective? Only having the bt radio on when you're using bt (just like now), only using wimax and/or gsm when not not near a wifi hotspot, and only gsm if you're not getting wimax coverage? (and, obviously, if you were going to make a cellular call, you'd have to turn on the gsm radio)

I agree that having all 4 radios in 1 box would be a bit extreme, but there are already phones (nokia phones, even, for t-mobile) that have 3 radios in them (bt, wifi, gsm), and acceptable battery life.

Or is one of the other features that he's "speculating" about a bigger battery drain, that I'm overlooking? I see the camera/camcorder bit, but N800 can almost do that now (I haven't looked at whether or not the camera app can take video instead of stills). A real camcorder WOULD be a huge power drain (spinning tape), but I doubt that's what he meant. I bet he meant cell-phone level of video production, which is only a slight evolution past the N800's camera.

The 16GB of storage is doable if you assume that he's saying the internal SD slot comes populated with a 16GB SD card. So that doesn't seem like a big stretch over the N800.

If the big power drain isn't the radios, then I'm not sure which of his claims makes it a big power hog.

(and, I'm not defending the overall article, it really was just that the release date and price point for a next iteration of the internet tablet didn't seem that shocking to me ... there were features he listed, like the camcorder or installing apps via ovid, that were such non-issues to me that I pretty much skimmed that item without re-reading it; I'm just curious, now, what you're saying would be a huge power drain)

(*tongue-in-cheek* besides, if you make the n800 one universal thickness, instead of having the bulge for the stylus and camera, then you could fit a larger battery in it ... and it wouldn't be too much of a wrist-workout to carry that! ;-) )