Why does Nokia give us such a low default 600MHz?
Our devices have the ability to be stable at 900+MHz.

for the battery life....
dude,theres a hack that makes the n900 1000 mhz, but the battery life becomes bad

how much more power do they consume at 900MHz? How much heat is produced?

Because the CPU used is only rated for use at a maximum of 600Mhz. That's basically it. It's the safest option because they are guaranteed that every single CPU will run at that clock speed for at least a certain amount of time. I, for example, can't run at 900Mhz; so having a default speed of that would be great fun for someone like me :P

Be thankful you have such an open device that lets you overclock so freely :P

Actually, battery consumption doesn't get affected as much as you make it sound like... And Nokia has to comply with the CPU manufacturer's instructions... they can't go ahead and sell yolu an overclocked CPU when the manufacturer says that by overclocking the CPU more than X amount of MHz the life span is going to be shorter + there's the risk of damaging the device...

why do u realy think they do !!
i guess they want there device to be slow and slagy
as for the statment " Our devices have the ability to be stable at 900+MHz. " .. yes you have flashed the 900mhz kernel and yes the cpu SOMETIMES hit that speed , and still works .
the question is FOR how much can it run at 900mhz without causing any real problems ? to the cpu or any of the other circuits in there ..
remember various components are in a very tight space and with no air vents of any kind , so overheating may be an issue here.

Well, not really. It's not specifically due to battery life IMO.
Faster cpu means it spends less time at high frequency.
Even konttori said it may actually not use more battery.
Also, during idle, it doesn't use a single bit of extra juice.

btw, Samsung uses the identical omap3430 at 800Mhz.
I think Nokia took the safe route by clocking it 600Mhz.
Maybe it costs them less buying them at such spec.

Either way. It's not Nokia's fault.

ALL hardware has an amount of extra tolerence that it can handle.

The main reason cpu's are run at a given safe speed is because the manufacturer does not want to risk return problems especially on a new device, also the pcb is only capable of so much heat before it twists and starts to malfunction.
Every manufacturer in the world today plays it safe and well within the specs of components and motherboards basically to make production costs as cheap as possible in order NOT to have a massive amount of returns on there hands which would be devastating to any company.
I might also like to add that by the overclocking of any cpu heat is automatically increased and as mobile phones do not have cooling fans and vents like a laptop for instance the heat generated in an overclocking situation could prove fatal in a given amount of time, days or weeks of bench testing does NOT prove stability as this can take even 6 month or years for pcb's to start malfunctioning with dry joints broken tracks intermittent joints etc etc. Stability in true form takes even years to prove not a few weeks and given the very fact that nowerdays pcb's are made to the minimum spec needed to pass protortype stage it hardly suprises me that things go very wrong because people dont take all the factors into consideration before increasing heat, HEAT is any electronics device's nightmare.

It's probably a bunch of reasons:

- Increased MTBF
- Stability (I'm running stable at 1ghz, but over 1 million units, freezes may be statistically significant)
- Slight battery gains (critical for a <48h phone)
- Upgrade path (next phone will undoubtedly be faster)
- Encouragement for developers to optimize their apps
- Lower manufacturing rejection

Can't complain at the end. The fact that it can be overclocked is a good thing. (umm, you know what I mean. lol)