Nokia has a longer development cycle for Maemo because they need to do all of the work, where for Android oftentimes the hardware adaptation is in part already done by chipset vendors. Nokia had no intention of under speccing the N9. In this case the software was not ready, which is why the device got delayed. Would it have launched 6 months earlier, the CPU spec would be on par. don't start that BS about Harmattan being Maemo in essence so they should be quicker. Obviously the failed marriage with Intel also delayed the development.

Symbian is a different story, because there the very long development cycles Nokia used to have are compounded with the intent of capitalizing on the fact Symbian is an efficient OS by using slower CPU.s etc.

The real question here is, are we really happy with a spec pissing contest? The entire Android game is a spec pissing contest in part because without a monster cpu, android has a very laggy UI. OEM have no way of differentiating outside hyping Ghz numbers. Should this not really be about quality? Usability? Image quality? Audio quality, reception, battery life, quality of the UI, how well something multitasks, is it able to be used with one hand, etc etc.

Rant: Are Samsung LG and HTC not really the Asus of the smartphone world. Where is the innovation or added value there? The UI skins they make blow. Is it not a sad state of affairs to see Android become the windows of smartphones and destroy diversity?