The headline says it all. Quim Gill from Nokia just made the following post to the Maemo Developers list. The short of it is that there will be no future OS 2006 firmware releases. I view this in an extremely poor light given the number and severity of existing bugs on the platform and the obvious effort by Nokia to push sales of the 770 hard in stores (on a product they considered dead) in recent months to clear existing stock on hand. The software environment on the 770 never felt like much more than "beta" in status. Quim Gill's answer is that this was a version 1 product and that support for the N800 will be much better. Needless to say, I am skeptical. This, taken together with numerous reports of extremely poor experiences with Nokia's repair services makes me very reluctant to recommend the N800 to anyone (and I am in a position to push hundreds of them).

On Sun, 2007-04-01 at 13:38 -0400, ext Gopi Flaherty wrote:
> Is it possible to get an official or semi-offical word on this?

Yes, this is what has happened:

- As commented before in this list, we are working on making the public
bugzilla as useful as it should. Some of us started cleaning the
database, bug by bug. There were lots of really obsolete bugs, and also
lots of dupes. In some cases though (like the one pointed in this
thread) we closed a bug as WONTFIX too fast. Our apologies, and read the
next points if you know of other examples.

- As Carlos Guerreiro has pointed out previously, there are no plans to
make any new official release for the 770. There is the IT OS hacker
edition, but it's not official and the official development in Nokia is
currently focused in the maemo 3.x, IT OS 2007 and what is coming next.
This means that from our side there is no official 770 bug activity.

But wait a minute.

- The step from IT OS 2006 to 2007 is incremental, and many bugs (like
the one starting this thread) in fact are not exclusively found in the
770, they still happen in the N800. We are working solving those bugs,
and they are as relevant as the new bugs found specifically on the IT OS
2007.

- In fact a good % of the bugs open in the public bugzilla and tagged as
770 are probably fixed in the current stable releases, but due to our
definitely improvable workflow we haven't been able to update the bug
tags and resolution.

- The amount work required to fix all this in the currently submitted
bugs is not small. We will face this somehow but, frankly, I'm more
confident of the results we get improving our workflow, which is
ultimately the cause of this misscommunication.

- None of this solves per se the fact that 770 customers are not getting
these fixes into their devices. As said, according to the current status
they won't get it through a new official release. A chance could be the
IT OS hacker edition, but then they will skip into officially
unsupported land.

- It seems unrealistic to expect a guarantee of having all these bugs
fixed in a potential new version of the hacker edition, but perhaps we
can work out something focusing on the most annoying bugs that are
already solved in the N800? I'm just thinking out loud, we haven't got
any conversation about this as far as I'm aware.

If you have a better solution please share it.


> Now I warn them, it
> gets better until Nokia decides it's time for you to spend another $400.

This perception is understandable considering what has happened to the
770. Let me just state that the current status of this first product is
the result of a lack of better support planning specific for the
Internet Tablets. Not an effect of a kind of business model thinking
that customers will go for a new device every year.

We are learning, and we are applying the new lessons to the current
strategy. N800 customers (and developers targeting this device) will
received and improved support. We will provide details as soon as we
approve the new plans, currently under discussion.

I didn't see such effort from Nokia. They even did not lower the price of n770 to make it more attractive. Current price of 350 EUR vs 400 EUR for n800 makes it clear which device is good to buy. If you listen to interview with Ari Jaaksi mentioned in this thread http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ead.php?t=5534 it is intentional and they hope people will not buy n770 anymore. But still there may be people who prefer n770 for whatever reason so they still sell it. Maybe it also means that manufacturing costs of such first device is so high they cannot even reduce price because they profit is so thin.

I think it is fair. You may have another opinion but I think anyone could see N770 was first of its kind and this could be expected. All companies do it. If you don't like it, don't buy such devices and wait for second or third revision of the product.

I do not believe it. I have found a company that I respect less than Microsoft. At least MS tries to fix the errors in its' products.

Do you know the really scary part? They will likely do the same to n800 users in about 18 months.

Aside from the Nokia bashing - what does this mean exactly ? I hoped for another iteration of the OS 2006 but this doesn't really come as a surprise - however how about opening the OS a little more (even to full open source) ? We could fix some of the bugs ourselves ...

This is exactly the one point that proves Nokia 770/Maemo is not a true Open Source Platform...

It would be so great if there'd finally be an alternative to Maemo on the 770 hardware.

which is why it makes me hesitant to drop another 400 bucks for a product that will be End-Of-Life'd in 10 months. I understand that technology and Moores law dictates that most of the stuff we have now will eventually become obsolete, but really, most of the computers I buy still have a shelf life of 3 to 4 years.

That's what all of us were expecting, or be scared of. I am an owner of a 770, and now I finally know that I will be stucked with this OS where all of the main components have to be replaced by others applications because they suck (I'm talking of RSS reader that I replaced with Bloglines770, Mail/sylpheed - claws mail, Opera / minimo).

This despite all of the words that were spent in the beginning (you will not be left alone, OS2006 will continue to be developed etc.). One release about no one knows the bugfixes.

Oh, my god. I am still phoning each day my colleague in USA to ask him to go round Huston to get a closing CompUSA and get the N800 deal, but how much should I expect it to be supported?

I think you need to re-read the commentary.

I stand by my prediction. There is no logical reason to completely abandon a device when it is only 18 months old and you continue to sell it. I can see it being done for cell phones, but a computer?


This was such a stupid decision on their part. What would have been the expense of advancing the OS for the 770 from OS2006 to later editions, when compared to the customer base they alienated?

Texrat, having read the original post, I agree that the N800 may have a better life than the 770 - and I realize that the open source card has been played quite a few times here, but I would really like to hear an answer - if the 770 has been dropped from active development (and I suppose active fabrication also) is opening the OS a possibility ?

Even if it will not be the party line I would like to know where others stand ...