Actually, I haven't noticed any speed problems compared to my N800 or N810. Dalvik (not Java) runs quite fast. One of the differences between Dalvik and Java is ... Dalvik removes a ton of things that slow Java down.

Sure, a virtual machine language will always be slower than a native machine language, but that doesn't mean it's going to be noticeably slower (noticeable to the user -- which is all that matters, since we're not doing number crunching or protein folding, nor anything along those lines).

The idea that Dalvik somehow makes Android inferior is just silly. It's actually a strong point for Android, making for one app store no matter which underlying device platform you're running it on, yet with runtime speeds that are more than capable of keeping up with the user.