Take aways from the N9 is that it does look like a solid Nokia Hardware as usual. Also as someone already said the entire conference focused more so on the growing importance of Qt.
As for the phone I like it and hate it at the same time. No hardware keyboard without a new way of using an all touch screen seems like a step back, and in fact does not still justify the removal of one. For me, I just can't get used to an all touch paridigm something this phone pushes even more so although I can live without having a home button.
The biggest loss is the widgets. I can no longer give the weather a cursary glance, or check my calendar without opening it. Also does this tombstone applications? How does one close an app? Seems like the 1GB ram was because this phone makes you have a lot of running apps in the background. I'm not to sure about the 'events' view, I would rather have it as a 'widgets' view.
Battery life seems decent, I love the NFC capabilities, the swipe theme is clever, and every time Marko speaks he evangelizes the product something I think this release has done so well so far. Also having Maemo's legendary communications layer is awesome as well. I wonder if we can throw an official release of MeeGo without voiding the warranty. Also to what extend does the community get access to the drivers for the hardware components to aid in replacing the more constrained UI?
Overall the launch effort by Nokia is great, how well they can sell a phone with some highlights and some detraction remains to be seen.
Dream comes true if we can.