I've always thought this to be an interesting point.
Nokia always promoted the N800/810 as a "pocketable" device....("the internet all the time" it says, as the guy in the first N800 promotional video slips the device into the inside pocket of a sports jacket.) IMO, it was one of the main features that distinguished the Nokia Internet Tablet from almost all of the other UMPCs, the mids, the handheld tablets, etc.
OK, the NITs were obviously just a bit too large for many pockets, (as evidenced in this thread), but they're very close. And at the same time, they can fit comfortably into some pockets (jackets, cargo pants, etc.) They don't always need a separate case and/or bag.
Now I receive RSS feeds to about 100 tech related sites which I scan almost daily. I also listen and/or watch a dozen or so of the best tech podcasts weekly. My eyes and ears have always perked up whenever the NITs were mentioned. (For instance Chris DeBona, the open source manager at Google, once made an offhand comment on Cranky Geeks that he thought the NIT was "a very solid device.")
But I've never once saw or heard this pocket-ability factor emphasized or even mentioned by any reviewer, blogger, tech journalist, podcaster, analyst, etc. The NIT was always just lumped together in the category as a tablet device or an Ultra Mobile. This topic of the device size has been mentioned frequently recently as the supposed Apple Tablet has been generating a lot of talk surrounding the category......and the NIT is often mentioned as an example of a "tablet that failed."
So I find it interesting that that N900 has been shrunk to comfortably fit the hand and pocket. Now it definitely fits into the pocketable smartphone size category....albeit, a rather thick one.
And at the same time, new devices from HTC, LG and Samsung are inching up bigger and bigger.
I'm just saying, it's kind of interesting.....