No, I tried to be quite careful in not making that statement.

My primary device is my E71, I like non-touch. I also like touch. They're quite different paradigms. As I've said before, doing one or the other makes sense, but trying to do both in one device doesn't work out.

good boy.

You don't have to have prior knowledge in order to enjoy Symbian. I had zero prior knowledge to Android... enjoyed the daylights out of it on first touch. I had zero prior knowledge to the iPhone, didn't quite think it was the best when I first touched it... still don't.

Seriously, it's up to the OS provider to make the experience clear, clean and above all usable without requiring prior experience. To add that layer of required prior knowledge means simply that they're not doing it right.

And honestly, S60 just ain't doing it right. Anytime I have to change my way of thinking - I alternate between four and five desktop OS's per day, I don't really have to change much in terms of thinking - then to switch phones or mobile OS's... and I have to actually go against my 25+ years of OS experience because of some conventions that made more sense to just one person/committee/community/company as opposed to using conventions that actually made sense and it's relegated to "inexperience"... that's utter BS.

Make the OS friendly or don't. Symbian is not all that friendly. Multi-tasking or not... it does not make me overlook the fact it's lacking a lot of polish. Going from it's prior iterations of crap to polished crap doesn't make me want to use it nor justify it.

I won't justify any OS with bugs... be it iPhone, Linux, AIX (don't get me started there, I will go for days), Windows, Android, Symbian, or Maemo. I won't make excuses for the things I like if they can be made better. Maemo and Symbian can be better.

I'm just finding it funny that the defenses used for justifying the very much lacking present condition of the S60 platform is just as bad as that review.

Both are flawed. Both should be better.

I have used Symbian OS since the Psion days when it was EPOC. I think it's a superior OS for handheld devices. And I'm an American!

My problem with the N97 is quality and interface. Symbian provides the underpinnings and Nokia provides the user interface (well...these days I guess Nokia provides both. but they are separate beasties). I think the Symbian OS part is just fine. My problem is that S60 v5 looks like all the others for the past 3-4 years and it's old. And the new parts -- the widget interface, for example -- are buggy and don't work the way they should.

They've got people at Nokia who designed the Canola interface! They can do better. They just don't.

If it were easy to make the Symbian S60 UI more friendly for both the touchscreen and non-touchscreen folks, then it would have been done.

About the only company that I can think of off hand that took different UI paradigms and made them work was Handspring/Palm (stylus driven UI on early models that went directional-pad & one-handed very effectively). And that was hard. They had to do a lot to not break the old UI to initiate folks to the new one.

Personally speaking, UI issues aside, I do like the N97. Considering budget though, its not in the immediate cards. It is at the top of my list. The next tablet will play second fiddle to that wantan-need for stuff until I hear a release and on-sale date.

I thought I might sweeten this thread with a quite different point of view.

Focus, a German magazine, runs smartphone tests. The following link will take you to a German page, but it's only a table with a ranking of their top 20 phones:

http://www.focus.de/digital/handy/handy-charts/

See the N97 on #2.
And try to find the iPhone 3GS. (And while you're at it: count the number of Nokia devices listed.)

So basically:

• Hardware: mostly solid
  • slow CPU
  • unimpressive screen
• Software: not so good
  • S60v5 is bad, mainly for UI reasons.
  • Apps are ok; some good, some bad
  • OVI is bad

And the RX-51/N900 is basically (from what we've seen):

• Hardware: N97 except
  • Faster & stronger CPU
  • 800x480 screen, 267 PPI!
• Software: Maemo 5, completely different
  • Maemo's been touch-screen from the start, not a recent bolt-on. Should be a significant leg up in the UI department, and I'd expect it to be reviewed as better than S60v5. Never having much used any S60 machine, much less S60v65, I can't really say, but OS2007 and up have all been better UI-wise than S60v5 is portrayed in most reviews I've seen. I think this should be a clear win vs. S60, even if it still comes out slightly behind WebOS/iPhone.
  • Apps are a completely different story, of course. Built-in apps have historically been a weak point on Maemo, third-party commercial apps are scarce, and the motley collection of ports, original apps, and a few stowaways from Debian repos has historically underwhelmed many reviewers. But there's a few outstanding apps, and all important roles are covered adequately. Nokia likely also has some commercial support lined up, so I expect it should come out about even with the N97.
  • I think Maemo 5 is to have Ovi, too, although with the bulk of apps available through Extras, Ovi's apparent problems should be less significant. Even to a little better.
• Oh, and he wished he could install Android on the N97. Android on the RX-51 should be a technically viable option, if Maemo's not good enough.

So on the whole, the N900 sounds like it answers most of the criticisms here, and is the next-gen device the N97 "should have been".

Maemo does not have a better touch-based UI than S60v5 in its current state. It offers a better touch-based user experience, but the UI isn't better.