I'm a Maemo guy, not a devices guy. (I do care deeply about devices too, but that's another topic.) I like to talk in general terms, so I'll continue doing that.

I've said it over many years and I'll continue saying that Maemo is not about any single device but about a software platform, eventually running many different kinds of devices. Just like any other software platform wants to do. From my perspective as an UI designer I'm interested in the limits of scalability: how much can the devices vary while still running essentially the same software.

Scalability is hard to build into the UI and the software. But any one particular screen size is a really poor competitive advantage or a differentiating factor. Say 3" or 3.5" or 4.1" or 5" or 6" or whatever is your preference. It's a very poor differentiator because it doesn't take much for any competitor to buy the same display component and throw it into their device. I'm sure a company like Samsung or Archos already has one device for every of the previously mentioned screen sizes. There is only a finite amount of display component manufacturers in the world, we're all using the same components basically.

Now, naturally you can do a small device targeting certain use cases and a bigger device, better suiting other use cases. Then again, the more variation you have between devices, the harder it becomes to do the actual software for these devices.

Therefore I haven't, and I still don't really see Maemo being about "big" displays - or "small" displays. If the secret sauce would be 4.1" display, everybody would be doing it.

I've used a whole bunch of touch devices, from the Nokias 7710, 770, N800, N810, 5800, N97 etc., as well most of the known touch competitors - you know their names - and I don't see that whether a given device is using 3.1 or 3.5 or 4.1 or whatever is in the top 3 most important factors of overall usefulness or usability or desirability of that device.

Me, pretending to be a consumer, like rather small and slim pocketable devices, but that's just me. I'd cautiously say that I'm with most consumers on that one. I do believe in form factor evolution insofar that the general market and the general range of devices from Nokia and from the competitors try to match the general preference of what consumers actually want to carry and to use.