Some thoughts about thread "drift."

Our gracious Mods have been tolerant of brief O/T meanderings, and this is actually productive. A major benefit of "color" is that the thread stays lively and contributes to community spirit.

Orthodoxy that restricts discussion to specs, release info and PR from the empire of VZW will be pretty much devoid of insight, debate, personality, charm and wit--the dynamic values that bring forums to life.

Value-added content will, of course, spawn and populate untold numbers of threads once the device launches. Until then, 350,000 views suggest this is pretty much...the "Drop Zone."

As to "thread clutter," it's probably fair to say that O/T noise is inversely proportional to the existence of hard info. When concrete, material release details land, this thread will quickly morph into the Times Square "news zipper." As of that moment, casual banter will simply vanish.

What's this movie about? crmealey says it very well:

I've enjoyed a lot of the discussion that has been OT, and I'd hate to lose it. I've noticed that I've gotten used to just coming to this thread when I'm looking for general conversations, just because so much is happening here.

Props to our Mods for directing a living documentary over the past eight months--news, views, and blues!

--BAM

P.S.
mattag29,

You asked:
... is there any chance that in the last 9 months or so since the first leaked info came out that maybe the reason for the hold up is that they re-worked the specs...?

No, as any spec changes would require a supplementary/new FCC filing that would not go unnoticed.

Still, we cannot rule out the slight possibility of Rev A support (with a firmware upgrade). This requires a capable QCOM modem chipset (say, MSM6800 or better) that would have to have been embedded in the original design.

Unfortunately, we can't know what chip was spec'd without observing still-embargoed motherboard pics.