Nokia Delays Flagship N900 Linux Phone

A Nokia executive has confirmed that the launch of its Linux-based N900 phone has been delayed, and will now arrive next month

Nokia has confirmed that its flagship N900 phone, originally scheduled to arrive in October, will now start selling in November, as it is still awaiting developer feedback.

The N900 is Nokia’s first phone that runs on Linux software. It comes with a touch screen and a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and is expected to retail around the 500 euros (£452) mark, excluding subsidies and taxes.

The news came in a message posting from Peter Schneider, the head of Maemo Marketing at Nokia. Maemo is Nokia’s version of Linux.

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“The Nokia N900 is a great example of what we and the open source community have been able to achieve with Maemo software,” he said. “We are working closely with open source developers and for example, at the Maemo Summit in October, we loaned 300 pre-production units to get more feedback from the community.”

“This feedback is extremely important to us and as such we also want to provide the best user experience with the Nokia N900,” Schneider said.

“We expect it to start shipping during November 2009,” he added.