The N900 is a funny device. It's the 4th ineration of some lon term research that Nokia ha been going since 2001 or so. The first 3 iterations where the Internet Tablets. A size up from the PDA's of 10 years ago. Large screens, decent computing capacity and storage. Each new version of the hardware and of Maemo OS/UI showed great improvements. Nokia was surprised by how well the N770, N800 and N810 sold. And I'm guessing that Nokia was also impressed by how well using open source software and working with the open source community worked as well.

The N900 is the latest iteration of the Internet Tablet series. Nokia liked what was happening so much they actually skipped a step in their 5 stop long term goals. We can see this from these Maemo generation build code names: Diablo -> (Elephantra) -> Fremantle.

So what as have now is a very polished Internet Tablet with a very smooth and elegant touchscreen user interface (aka desktop). (Side note: I hardly every use the stylus). And yet the first version of phone functionality. The phone aspects of the N900 function fairly well, but they are very immature in terms of features. The cause of this is because it's a totally new operating system for a Nokia phone.

Nokia has a LOT of code they've developed for Symbian. Even if a new version of Symbian comes out and they create a new phone to use it. They have a lot of legacy Symbian code to use as a starting point. They don't have that legacy code to use for the N900. So the N900 really isn't the smart phone for the masses. The N900 is a milestone and devleopment platform for the Maemo 6 phone which will be designed for the masses. And at the same time the N900 is THE device I've (and a lot of other people) been waiting for over a decade,