Just a counterpoint. I'm a business traveler with 5 email accounts who does some remote IT stuff from time to time. I've taken the N9 around the US and Asia and been able to accomplish whatever I needed to accomplish - mainly email, SMS and phone calls. I don't like that the email client is a bit slow but I have no issues sending from any of my accounts as noted by th OP. I don't need VPN for email so I haven't used it. When I do use VPN it's from my laptop connected to my N9 hotspot and this works just fine.

I regularly connect to 3 different WPA2 WLANs with no problems. Maybe it helps that we do Mac address filtering?

Then there's the media sharing wanting samba or cifs...not really getting how this is a business traveler issue...? Anyway, it's Linux, I'm sure it can't be that hard to set up samba, just haven't bothered becaus, well, I'm a business traveler.

Finally the GPS and navigation have been great. Yes, there is a slow initial sync, but I've downloaded most of the world and was navigating all over china without paying data so that works great for me. I certainly never noticed or suffered from a resolution issue.

Perhaps the OP could cite some specific instances of his issues instead of e tech spec crib sheet?