Holy ****, was that brain rotting.

Symbian really blurs the line between smartphones and dumbphones.

The 2008-9 S40 devices are indistinguishable from S60 v3 FP1/2 devices.

I swear I used to run OpenSSH on my N95, watched MKVs using CorePlayer, ran Python scripts on-device, "jailbroke" it using HelloOX, browsed the Desktop internet with Flash (lite) on Opera Mobile, wrote documents on it using Quickoffice, ran Windows 95 in an emulator, played GBA games on it, had full-text contact searching, 3.5G connectivity, a built-in GPS AND multitasked between programs on the ridiculously cheap computing hardware Nokia squeezed in.

Try doing that on an iPhone 2G.
iOS 3.1.3, with no mobilesubstrates will leave you with about 48MB of RAM doing nothing at all after a fresh boot, and about 24MB after the OS caches some stuff, making the thing actually usable.

There is no multitasking out of the box. You have to install a substrate which eats up 6MB of RAM.
You have 18MB left, which is about enough to run the stock apps, or a 3 tabs in Mobile Safari, or Cydia (2 minutes to reload data).

At this point, with the meagre MBX (same one on the N95), you won't run any of the eye candy games.
18MB of RAM is also not anywhere near enough to smoothly run a GBA emulator, or any emulators for that matter.
No flash, because it's an ARMv6 chip, but who cares, it's a dead technology.

Fast forward 2 years later - iPhone 3GS vs N900.
Both are running Cortex-A8s, stock clocked at 600MHz.
The 3GS has a better GPU and a lower screen resolution - there is no excuse for lag here.
The N900 has a slower GPU and a higher screen resolution, not as smooth as the demo videos promised.
If you launch all the stock apps though, you'll find that the N900 barely breaks a sweat keeping all those open.
The 3GS? Multitasking not delivered until iOS4, and even then, it wasn't real multitasking.
If Zen Bound was anything to go by, the N900's hardware is perfectly capable to become a gaming platform on the same level, if not better than the 3GS, hardware keyboard and all that.
The N900 came with a browser that did desktop websites with ease, the iPhone using a mobile UA as always.
Oh, and we were also pretty integrated with the cool social networks. Upload directly from gallery, unified messaging for every network you can imagine, built-in Skype support, and it fetches your contacts' mugshots off Facebook.

Nokia's got what it takes to make something to beat the big names in the smartphone segment.
They just needed the leadership to go all the way.