Ok, what confused me was the "best internet browsing experience" - because no device that fits in your pocket is going to deliver that. If you meant best in class, then the n900 is probably in the pack. There are tradeoffs - you considered an iPod touch (another device I own & use), I'd say it's better then the touch but even there, you might find *some cases* where the touch gives a better *user experience* browsing some sites that are iPhone tuned...

Whatever the next device is, it may have things like no physical keyboard, capacitive screen, bigger screen, AMOLED, faster cpu, more ram (vs storage), etc. Some of those things may actually be a negative vs the current n900. Who knows.

See the sticky at the top of this forum: "N900 Issues: For Potential Buyers" http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=52587 for some of the things to consider.

it depends , you wont get a stright forward answer here . many ppl like and many hate the n900 . it depends on ur needs , u prioreties etc .
i had my n82 for 2.5 years when i decided it was time to move on . i picked the n900 and never looked back since thene . for me even out of the box if u get the updates from nokia u r ready to go .
the device works like a charm .
software evalabelity is not the best .. and propuply will never be ( not like the symbian or iphone apps ) , but thats something i can leave with , who needs crappy apps anyway ?
the n900 is like a mini-netbook that can make CALLS if u can leave with that then YES go ahead and buy it , if u r looking for more of a phone than a tablet then u should consider other devices ..

You do know that you can access most of these sites directly with your N900 as well. I.e. type i.engadget.com to read your daily apple is teh GoD news, and others like www.google.com/reader/i for Google Reader, etc. And there are plenty of mobile web sites that are faster to browse/load on 3G and you can still jump to the article for full experience once you find one you're interested on.

The problem with these sites usually is that they are lazy programmers and only detect iPhone (and in some odd-cases they detect Androids as well). And if you go to their mobile web site, they offer the feature phone site, so you need to find the direct URI for these cases. This is especially true for U.S. -based web sites...

So is there a general idea of a release date for the first Harmattan phone ?

get it when PR 1.2 get released, maybe 2018 (+- 3 months)

Qole said this Xmas looked likely.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=47126
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=47134
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=47130
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=46479

everything i think is wrong with the n900 can be found in the posts above. Had i known some of what I listed there i wound not have bought the phone.

the browser is good, and the cursor in the browser is UI genius, there isn't anything i cant do with the browser.

its an amassing platform with what seem like miner shortcomings that make it so frustrating i find it bordering on impractical.

good, at least i'll still be in my 30's.lol....maybe ill just get the n8

I can only tell you wait till flash 10.1 will happen here or not.
many ppl saying Flash 10.1 it's only about video, B*****t!

Content is not ready yet but will be and during the device life-time will improve a lot of things more and more useful things will be available with Flash 10.1. And GPU acceleration is not only about video, It's a triangulation of vector drawings processed by GPU as well. Flash 10.1 also means AIR, desktop apps based on AIR run-time with access to the system resources. Future version of flash also will get access to GPS accelerometer mufti-touch gestures etc functionality. Imagine wide range of flash web based apps on it within next 2 years.

If someone is telling me that future version of flash is only youtube, it's just ignorant or get use to his own opinion based on Flash 5 10years ago. Flash with full GPU will be the fastest runtime on the web, faster in many ways. Virtual Machine 2.0 in terms of execution code will be faster than Java when all of graphic task will no longer needs to be done by processor (how many cellphones was based on Java apps for so many years? Is WebOS on Palm Pre based on java? But will get Flash 10.1.. heh) But also in terms of speed of production. Because of graphical nature of Flash it's quite easy and quick to create some useful apps and 3mln army of Flash community just waiting to express themselves.

Keep announcing that we cannot expect Flash 10.1 on powerful black beast INTERNET tablet is like f*****g joke and for this reason I will never recommend this device if you looking for some device for good internet experience. Within next 2 years you going too see more and more blank screens because of lack of Flash 10 support if all that they saying is true. We will end up like IPhone guys, but they have some cool blue lego instead.

So... just wait, I still have a hope myself.

Edit: And see my signature how ironic it is...

EDIT 2:

To prove you how powerfull AS3 is this is a table of speed comparison from 4 years ago. From that time Adobe improved a lot in terms of performance for example added vectors instead of arrays

Here you go http://oddhammer.com/actionscriptperformance/set4/

Bear in mind 4 years ago that was beta AS3 in Flash player 8.5!

Because 70% task in flash are graphic object related and consuming CPU for now this is potential room to speed up this platform and leave more space to do a business logic.

Just get an Android 2.2 phone.

See what's coming in the videos doing the rounds (the public announcements of upcoming functionality is something Nokia would be wise to copy). Looks nice.

Not only will it work just fine but you'll be supported for several more updates (not something I can hand-on-heart say is true on either count where the N900 is concerned).

The Nokia approach to Maemo/MeeGo and mobile devices is now such a mess that I can't genuinely recommend it to anyone unless you enjoy a world of pain and are prepared to wait for fixes to your bugs in the next device, only to be disappointed when it finally arrives.