It also did very little, and when not transmitting sat asleep 90% of the time. It's amazing the battery life you can get out of a device when you reduce its capabilities and carefully design its operational envelope.

Smartphones are expected to have a much wider range of capabilities, the N900 in particular is expected to be PC-level. If I cut off data services and let it sit unused 90% of the time, I'd get tons of battery life out of my N900. Isn't that defeating the purpose of getting one?