I picked up a Nokia Astound (aka C7 as a free upgrade from T-mobile) and have been playing with it for a couple of days.

It is a nice phone for someone looking for smartphone functions, but doesn't have the money or inclination to pay for and use something like the N900. After using the N900/Maemo for a number of years I can't believe how cumbersome Symbian is as an operating system. Even with that though there are a few things which were very nice to be able to have with the Astound, that hopefully get integrated with Maemo6/Meego.

Specifically things that I really missed from Symbian or were frustrated with on my N900 that the Astound did well were:

1. Portrait predictive text capabitlity with an alphanumeric keyboard, enabling quick one handed text messaging (seriously, who has 2 free hands all the time to text?) .

2. Bluetooth actually connects to car audio, I still don't understand how this bug in the bluetooth stack for the N900 was never fixed.

3. Ability to make and receive phone calls without wondering if the phone will wake up or switch tasks. We all know making and receving calls with the N900 was hit or miss.

4. No memory corrupt errors or indexing issues (specifically with the media player) for files located on the microsd card.

5. Battery life is more than a few hours. it felt weird using the Astound without it plugged in.

Anyone else think features like this from other operating systems should or will be integrated into Maemo6/Meego?