There really wasn't a doubt in my mind that it would hit the US. The questions are when, to what carrier, and how much.

Excellent. i've been using a leaked 6.5.1 ROM and i can't go back to 6.5. i'm actually about to switch to TAEL's latest ROM tomorrow. It's not like in the current ROMs there a huge difference, but having the OK buttons larger and at the bottom of the screen make one-handed use so much easier. i doubt the HD2 will release with 6.5.1, but with a hopefully official upgrade, it'll be a darn near perfect WinMo device for me.

@Who?
i'm guessing HTC will release a ROM update for 6.5.1 which will include whatever drivers or whatever enable the capacitive screen to interact with Windows Mobile. The biggest problems i've encountered with 6.5.1 on my Fuze are the fact that the taskbar is a few pixels shorter, which requires a separate small utility (manilafix.exe) to move the TouchFlo 3D interface up to compensate. This also means that it's harder to tap the taskbar particularly on a small screen like the Fuze's.

Edit: "major rollout of LTE in 2013/2014" should read "having LTE in most markets by 2013/2014".

@Asia
Might wanna look up the word "conjecture".

i never specified a timetable for anything, nor did i say that Verizon would be the only carrier outside of AT&T to have the iPhone in the US. Also, last i heard, Verizon was looking at a major rollout of LTE in 2013/2014, not a year later as you specified. Perhaps i'm wrong on that as i don't keep up with Verizon, but i haven't seen anything that says otherwise after performing a quick search. Whether Apple releases a CDMA iPhone now to get more iPhones in hands or whether they wait for LTE is something only they know.

Definite conjecture here, but it'll be interesting to see how AT&T intends to keep iPhone subscribers once they lose exclusivity of the device and it appears on Verizon. Whether Verizon's network is actually faster than AT&T's or whether the latter is simply suffering from network congestion we don't know, but undoubtedly the lack of the latter will result in much faster network usage once on Verizon. Sure, Verizon's making a big deal out of Android now, but that'll change once the iPhone is about to hit.

i would've expected AT&T to have quietly started building up their stable of Android phones by now, which De la Vega mentions in a very recent interview (http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=7D04F480-1A64-6A71-CE92332AED968E41).

UIs are one of the last things finalized in Microsoft OSes, and like the article states, it's roughly the same UI we've seen for almost two years now. i know there's no way this represents the final product, but i'm hoping MSFT can pull a Windows 7/Zune HD with this one. At the very least, no more blue as the predominant color.

i like the option of a visual history, but hope there's an option, even if it's in about:config, for the standard history. Visual history is great for larger screens. On smaller screens, i prefer a favicon and an URL, possibly a title. You can fit a lot more of those on the screen, reducing the time needed for searching. It would take me forever to find a page i was looking for if i were to use the visual history shown.

What's interesting is that there's no more intuitive action for copy and pasting than Ctrl + C/Ctrl + V. Nothing wrong with that, and i usually prefer it, but in Windows Mobile a tap and hold on selected text will bring a context menu with the standard cut/copy/paste options. It's things like that that really bring home that this isn't a mass market device, though frankly, given the level of handholding that occurs with devices like that (see iPhone), i'm not upset about that at all.

The big downside for many of us in North America is the lack of T-Mobile 3G and/or the fact that we'll be using the N900 on AT&T. Using such a media-capable device on EDGE will be a serious downer. The browser looks great, but viewing streaming video over EDGE without a browser like Skyfire is an excercise in patience, particularly if you want to view them in HD. And yes, WiFi's out there, but there's many of us that don't have continuous access to numerous open APs.

Personally, it's really going to come down to how well Opera Mobile 9.7 with Flash will work on the HD2, assuming it comes to a GSM carrier. Both are top tier with regards to their OS, both have issues that keep them from being my current perfect smartphone.

The biggest issue i have so far with what i'm reading is the lack of portrait mode options, which includes the lack of an on-screen keyboard. It took me a while to notice that the only screens i saw of the device aside from the dialer were in landscape. It's a small or non-issue for some, but i like using my smartphones with a single hand. i guess these are the Nokia tablet roots of the N900 shining through. i can see the potential redundancy for an on-screen keyboard, particularly in landscape, but having to switch orientations is an annoyance, and via T9 i can quickly tap out an SMS or Google search. A 3.5" screen is large enough for a decent portrait QWERTY keyboard. The community will provide it, but it's just one of those things that seems odd to omit.

Other than that, it looks like a solid device. Software support is already pretty good as there's a good deal of ported Linux apps for previous Maemo OSes and some specifically for Maemo 5. i've checked various sites and it looks like there's a viable alternative to all the major apps i use in Windows Mobile, although a lot of these ported apps remind me of Windows Mobile apps -- suited for styli, not fingers. i just hope Nokia can get enough commercial software support to get the big name apps out with finger-friendly UIs that some of us prefer.

i'm a Windows Mobile guy, but it's nice to see more 1GHz smartphones being released regardless of the OS. Drive those prices down so that we can get them in more devices.

It's pretty obvious that multitouch is an HTC hack and not some recently-uncovered function in the WM API, so no one should expect it to work outside of HTC's apps. i hear it works for Opera Mobile, however. Not being a fan of multitouch so far, i'm looking more to the increased responsiveness that capacitive screens provide.