i really don't understand all the negative comments about symbian. people sometimes even say things like "it's a bad OS because the icons look dated" - what are we talking about? seriously?

symbian is easy to use, has a logical, consistent UI that i understood within a few minutes and is heavily optimized for cell phone use cases. i can't say the same for other operating systems, not even for my beloved maemo.

as for the look and feel: don't forget this is something nokia tries to keep as consistent as possible across its whole range of products from S40, S60, Symbian^3 and Maemo. knowing that nokia owns almost half of the cell phone market and that 50% of the consumers who buy the N8 will be people who upgrade from another nokia phone, it makes a lot of sense not to change the look and feel too much. this ensures that 50% of the new N8 owners will feel at home as soon as they turn on the device, no matter if they come from S40, S60 or Maemo.