So after first going in on the 21st Oct the little beastie is back and let's hope it's the start of a beautiful (like I might actually get to use it for more than couple days at a time) new relationship.
Funnily there was a Nokia representative in the store when I picked it up and I was just chatting to one of the sales staff about what a pain this handset had been when this Nokia Rep asked me about it. Wrong move 😃 , actually I just said to her that it had been never ending headache and she said that now it was on the mini's Firmware it should be better (that's how she described it so reflects status of N97). I then said that she should convey to her senior managers how disappointed I had been with it and that it was my worst ever phone experience and she replied that they knew and that it had been released too early at which point the CPW sales man jumps in about how he tries to stop anyone buying the N97 and the Nokia rep agreed with him. I piped up that the hardware was crippling the phone and she just nodded and said that things were changing, she now had the mini and that the N900 was going really well and had good hardware. Which I agreed with although mentioning that it is very much work in progress but that next one should be really interesting however that after my experience I was very unlikely to be buying another Nokia handset and she added that they're seeing a lot of that with N97 purchasers and they know (in UK sales office at least) the harm it's done.
They are listening or the sales/returns are sinking in, just not sure they know what to do about it yet, it's certainly too late for a lot of N97 purchasers and they definitely want to sweep the whole affair under the carpet and focus on the next handsets. I wouldn't be expecting too many updates/additions to it. It is only a UK Rep though so obviously things could be seen differently in Finland.