Just had 10 minutes to play with a N900 in the Nokia Store, Helsinki.

I wish I could have had more time but there were people waiting behind me and my wife's continuous "can we go now" was starting to bring me out of my trance

Overall very, very impressed and I will not be cancelling my pre-order Switching between desktops, applications and the dashboard is smooth as silk and very intuitive. The build quality is good and the screen is responsive and very sharp. The UI graphics are also pretty sweet and with the user customisation potential I think we can safely say that Nokia have taken it to the next level - chew on that Apple1

The only problems I noticed were:

1. YouTube videos did not stream well over wifi - JKK posted a very good video which also shows the same problem

http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/09/jk...o-and-podcast/

2. There is some v-sync tearing visible now and then - scrolling through the panoramic desktops and playing back a video I shot with the device

3. Whilst zooming in and out during browsing the phone had problems keeping up with the rendering.

4. Activating links in the browser was a little tricky - but I think that most of that was me not being used to the touchscreen - I also didn't have time to play with the "mouse cursor" thingy

All of the above should be fixable in firmware updates. I do not know if there will be a firmware upgrade before the production models ship (probably) but my feeling is that the N900 will need a couple of decent firmware upgrades before it really starts to fly.

Also, the device could have been better set up as a demo model. For example there were no video clips, photos or music library pre-installed - which is pretty poor given the its capabilities in those areas.

In my opinion, Nokia firmware/application development and support and community application development are the factors that will make the difference between this being a very good or a truly great device. Let there be no doubt (I know there's not much here ) the N900 and Maemo have enormous potential.

Roll on October