Interesting thought.

You see, the thing is, which one is bolted onto the other - is the phone a bolt-on to a the mobile computing platform or is the mobile computing platform a bolt-on to the phone?

I suppose ultimately you have to consider what you wanted when you got hold of your (and I hate using this term, it's pompous, but) "device" and what the primary function you thought you would use it for. I got mine to act primarily as a phone, with secondary functions being portable music library, internet, Sat-Nav, films and camera functions. On this basis I would have to say that potentially, yes, the basic telephony aspect has been compromised as sometimes call quality is a little dodgy (though this is mainly in part to my laziness in not sending it back to Nokia to sort out the incessant buzzing).

However, if all I wanted out of it was the phone aspect as dchky above said, I would have simply gone for a trusty 6310i as it was amongst the best phones I have ever had.

Because I also want the additional benefits of internet connection, WiFi, camera, movie player, media centre, etc ad nauseum, I have to accept that the telephony aspect may be, not necessarily compromised, rather more of a secondary function.

There are plenty of people on this forum who probably have never taken a call on their N900 - developers and linux gurus who wanted the benefit of a portable linux platform in their pocket. Writing scripts and apps is their primary requirement and therefore the telephony aspect is somewhat a non-entity to them.

It depends what you want. And what you are prepared to compromise. I want a phone but I also want everything else that modern microprocessor technology has to offer and on that basis alone I am prepared to deal with the occassional system hang, freeze, lag, reboot or whatever other event I have to to have the convenience of all the above.....