The problem is, what you see as moving backward, I see as good ideas. No two people are going to share the same idea for the ideal device (despite Texrat always trying to integrate us into his creepy hive-mind ). One man's must-have is another man's oh-dear-christ-NO! This is exactly the reason that Nokia needs to diversify the tablet lineup with more varied offerings (I've covered the topic a number of times already in this thread).

A little increase in size (compared to the N810) for halfway-decent storage, perhaps better battery life and more features is a good tradeoff for me. My pockets aren't tiny and I don't have any trouble carrying the N800.

I don't much care for the N810 keyboard (though my experience with it is rather limited) and the whole slider deal with the terrible button placement puts me off, especially with the rest of hardware compromises they had to make to fit that in there. I type just fine on the fullscreen keyboard, and actually prefer it a lot of the time.

I say again, software costs time and money! Personally, I'd rather see that time and money put into more useful things.

I wouldn't be against a small decrease in depth (could give us more room for internal compenents), but flush screens are definitely not my thing. Way too scratchable and breakable (especially considering that our screens are largely made of softer stuff than those Apple offerings).