I am upgrading to the N900 from an E90. My biggest complaint about the E90 is that I have always received the same support for the phone that I paid $800 directly to NOKIA USA for as I would for the least expensive NOKIA phone available. I am not familiar with NOKIA support of the N770, N800 and N810 but I assume it is just as bad or worse.

Twice I had issues with my E90 that required multiple escalation requests and written letters to corporate offices to resolve. In the first year I lost more than a month of usage to NOKIA's repair policies. The E90s microphone initially failed after a few months of usage. It took more than a month to send it to repair and then receive a replacement phone which was an older phone than the one I had sent in. After receiving the replacement phone I had to spend several hours upgrading the firmware so that it would recognize the micro SD card I had used with the original phone. The second failure was the ear speaker. Again it took several weeks to get a replacement. Both times the part was less than a $10 item but the repair center was not authorized to work on the E90 model of phone so they replaced it.

I am not unhappy that NOKIA replaced my E90 twice. I am surprised that it needed replacement at all. I am very annoyed that it took so long to resolve each failure. I use my phone for work as an ultra portable computer. If I bought an $800 laptop from Dell for my business use and it had a failure after a few months Dell would remedy the situation within days if not overnight.

How do you guys feel about NOKIA's support and customer service?

Do you also feel that we deserve better support on a $650 phone than they provide on the $33 NOKIA 1661?

If NOKIAs repair centers are not authorized to repair N900s then NOKIA will replace them until the warranty expires but after that there will not be any official repair option. The repair center will not repair the phone even if you pay for it. If this is the case it may create a situation where dropped or accidentally damaged phones can not be repaired by NOKIA repair centers.

Sadly, this seems to be the state of the electronics industry in general. I just finished reading about a Lenovo service call where the on-site technician destroyed a motherboard before the owner's eyes and the machine had to be sent to a repair station - and when it came back it was completely scuffed and damaged on the outside after being sent in with like-new condition. This is still unresolved after weeks and weeks, even though the owner has the expensive extended on-site support & repair service.

You're lucky with your E90 - you didn't pay another $300 for extended warranty and then end up with some dumbass technician destroying your device in front of your very eyes.

That said... it's very sad that such an elementary part of the phone (microphone) should fail on a phone built buy a company that's been making phones since... well, pretty much the dawn of phones - on an $800 phone, no less.

And why are the repair centers not authorized to repair phones? What's the point of having a repair center then?

That's why I am buying from Amazon. True, in the event of a serious problem, I'll still be dealing with Nokia, but I have confidence in Amazon's sticking to a basic 'faulty-goods = returns' policy.

I've had only one run in with Nokia's tech support. It wasn't helpful.

That's one way of doing it...

The repair centers are authorized to repair some phones but not the E90. Hopefully they will be authorized to repair the N900.

The N97 has its own dedicated customer service number here in the UK.
I'm sure there'll be one for the N900 as well.

In terms of repair, I don't think Nokia is doing a great job.
Some people have to wait for a month for spare parts, meaning no phone for a month, even worse when paying for a contract.
Nokia did compensate with 5 free download from Nokia Music Store for several people who are in this situation but nowhere near enough.