I've gone 5110 (borrowed the work 9000 a lot) -> 9110 -> 9210(pile of sh1t) -> 9500 -> 9300i -> e90 -> n97 -> n900

The 9110, 9500 and 9300i were great for their time, I mean seriously great. The e90 is powerful and useful, then 97 has all the sexyness of any new consumer phone with tiny size to boot (IE my first non communicator, _normal_ phone in a decade). The n900 despite actually being small, somehow "feels" MASSIVE, my fingers ache and I find it much more useful to ssh in and do my UNIX geekyness remotely.

The fact that I can do the latter is why I've left my SIM in the n900, but the N97 was marginally better than the e90 which was marginally better than the 9300i. I was rather hoping for a larger WOW factor jump like I got with the transition from 9000 -> 9110 or 9210 -> 9500. The n97 to n900 felt almost like the step back the 9300i -> e90 or 9110 -> 9210 was.

Nokia often release a newer smaller version of the phones they've released with little or no other change (9000 -> 9110, 9500 -> 9300), so I half expect an n910 or n900i model to be an N97 mini with the OS of maemo. That might rock

The lack of symbian/phone style software is a right pisser, but N thousand linux based tools is very useful.

PS My G1 and N1 Androids (given to me) went straight to my wife, she's not looked back since her 9300.