Architengi - one pint regarding losing contacts and apps when you reflash to newer firmware for Symbian.
You do need to backup the data before and Nokia updater software does mention it (I recently flashed to new firmware for my N95).

The point you make about Apple not erasing user data while updating is beacuse of their over-the air updates that they provide.
Nokia recently shifted to OTA updates for Maemo and also for many phones.

But yes, the a modern firmware update process should keep user space untouched while updating the OS space. I will grant you this. But that does not mean Symbian as a whole is a bad OS. It is very stable for me - I hardly reboot my phone or it hardly crashes - unlike my previous Blackjack with WM.

Granted I also dont mess with 3rd party apps much.