I have an iPhone and a N800. I prefer the N800 when browsing in bed, because most sites display full screen. The hardware buttons make it easy to zoom in and out, and the cursor pad is nice for paging down. I always browse at the lowest brightness setting, and find that it is easy on the eyes (and doesn't wake the gf).

The iPhone requires a lot of zooming in and out, and I find that 2 hands is required to manipulate the screen. Brightness isn't an issue, since it has an auto dim function. It is my device of choice when I leave the house, because of pocket ability and the integrated google maps.

Doesn't it zoom into when you double click in an area? Also, the pinch thing seems to only require one hand, right?

Only if you have the antigrav module as well...

I need one hand to hold the device and the other hand to pinch. When you double-tap an area, it will either zoom out or zoom in depending on what the last action was.

bbc.co.uk took 8 seconds to load with the (slower) microb beta browser. American news from there was another 8 seconds. Both times I had 4 windows open.

I can't speak for the Touch, but the N800 makes a Palm Tungsten C look like a toy for browsing. No comparison.

It's not.. look at it. I set it at the lowest setting and I can read it just fine in office light conditions. Try reading an ebook in the bed, with all lights off.. and, in addition to having to watch a too-bright screen you risk get elbowed by your SO.. "turn that light off! Someone's trying to sleep!". In fact if you search the forum you'll see that one coming up fairly often.

On the N800, you shouldn't need to zoom on every site. I set the minimum font size to 18 and I rarely use the zoom controls at all. On the touch, you probably will need to zoom on every site as everything is much too small to read otherwise. On the other hand, zooming is much less painful on the touch. Even sideways scrolling is bearable. Multitouch is very well thought out and the screen on the touch is a lot more responsive. Also, the N800's browser zooms in increments of 20%, so often can't get the precise degree of magnification that you want as you can on the touch.

The N800's screen is better, fonts are clearer and so on, but I'd have to say that, largely because of multitouch, the browsing experience on the iPod is better.