The select action THEN select e-mail(s), IMO, is an incomplete or afterthought crappy solution. The actions (flow) between single and multi-select should be the almost the same, except during the item selection phase. i.e. During single select, you single select an item by long pressing an item and waiting for the popup menu to select the action to be carried out. The popup menu on e-mails have "mark as read" and "delete". From a UI experience point of view, multi-select should be very similar, providing those two actions after a set of selection has been made.

If I'm not mistaken, I can't mark multiple e-mails as read.

Ctrl+A doesn't seem to select multiple "e-mails".

Icons...again, I'm not looking for a solution, just using it as an example that there's a certain level of inconsistency even both programs are from Nokia. As simple as a matter of the direction of the arrows. Even on desktops, minimize and maximize icons have always been signified by a small low bar, and a square (respectively) throughout the majority of programs from a variety of vendors. The style of the small low bar and square, and the style of the icon may differ, but never far away from the small low bar and square.

I do have a question: Is there an official Maemo UI design guideline out there? Sometimes, I wonder if Maemo is just a transitional platform from one thing (no idea what) to another (no idea what)...which Nokia uses to squeeze money from us and then dump us. Sometimes, the lack of commercial software for a particular platform is an indication that others don't see it as a viable long term investment. Is there any true hard facts that Maemo is here to stay? This is a genuine question...I honestly don't know.