Well, would you be having this argument if it were comparing a laptop running Ubuntu and a Blackberry? Or is the difference between the two more obvious in that case? I don't think you or anyone else would disagree that an Ubuntu laptop is more of a computer than a Blackberry. That's good, and will help me solidify my point.

Now isn't this laptop more of a computer than an iPhone or Nexus One? I'd say so. Adding Gizmo5 or TruPhone with a wireless data connection to that laptop gives it phone capabilities, but makes it no more a smartphone than a toaster oven. So there's obviously something that separates the two aside from features and form factor.

Now compare that laptop to the N900. How do they differ? The OSes are nearly identical, save he UIs. 90-95% of the app frameworks and infrastructure components are the same. Both have GTK+, Qt, Python, C++, Ruby, Flash, Pulse Audio, Gstreamer, APT, XTerminal, etc. Only their UI layers differentiate the two for the most part.

So this isn't a matter of making a go-kart and calling it a Porsche. Its a smaller package, but the engine and internals are the same, allowing the same power and freedom of its desktop counterpart. It'd be akin to the iPhone running a full finger controlled version of Mac OSX, the Touch Pro2 running Windows 7 with a custom Sense UI layer for touch control, or having a MacBook Pro or Lenovo laptop in you pocket. The developer is limited by nothing but the hardware and level of skill. With a smartphone, there are compromises. With the N900, there are none. You can always add and optimize the features of the N900 to match the iPhone, but to get the iPhone to the N900's level, you'd need years of maturing the OS, and add lots of infrastructure.