The other good thing about the delay is that more developers can push their stuff into Extras.

Unfortunately, delays usually mean a much more buggy system. Nobody likes delays, it impacts revenue, sales people lose commissions and partners get grumpy. Therefore, corner cutting is always preferred over delays if only to not alarm the upper management. Repeated delays can only mean that all corners have been cut and they still can't get the thing to pass a much reduced testing cycle.

Not looking good.

@archanfel - I have been using the N900 pre-preproduction device for almost 2 weeks now. It is not buggy. It has a few bugs in it, which I hope are fixed. As well, some features are not active due to further refinement (e.g. video calls). Sure it is taking longer than expected - but wait to you see Maemo 5 - you will understand why. It is a quantum leap over OS2008, and the wait will be worth it, IMHO.

Drink !

I wish we could get some feedback how many people ACTUALLY used their devices in portrait mode. We all heard the stories of people's theories why they want portrait mode. I, however, as an independent developer, would like to see the hard cold stats data, not the thought-up use-cases, anecdotal evidence and educated guesses

Sorry to quote only this part of your answer.
I am not fond of Portrait mode at all, but some very vocal community members requested it and it'll happen (hopefully one can disable it on per application basis).

But does your statement means only the Browser and Phone (that is already "portraited") will have portrait by Xmas 2009 ?

I hate this news, compared with iphone , I can't see any hope from NOKIA!

@anidel, right, only Browser and Phone. I dont think that overall portrait mode will be available before Maemo 6. I prefer using this device in landscape, as it was ment to be used as mobile computer...

I guess , maybe some NOKIA's employee in this forum will write some words to explain or do other things that benefit NOKIA. but I am really disappointed!!

Why, what is broken with it?

Makes sense!

300 alpha and beta units to weed out the "final" bugs. I hope one of those last minute issues is the ability to use the device to browse and text in portrait mode. I would expect more than normal drops of this device without this (for smartphone vets).

Nokia did a survey about portrait and was top concern at 12%. Considering that the survey allowed multiple entries when posting, this suggests the actual ranking would be over 80% if you could only pick one item instead.

Still seems odd how they missed this during R&D testing- unless the testers were non-smart phone using tablet users.

This device could gain the same legend as the Wii-mote and TV's getting busted. In this case, people trying to use the phone in landscape with one hand and dropping the N900. Better have big meaty paws! Or a rubber case! That might not be such a bad idea...... N900's bounce!