Nokia's latest N97 takes away need for Internet Tablet

First the awesome news unrelated to the Nokia Barcelona event: My favorite Internet Tablet site, InternetTabletTalk.com, will become part of the official maemo ecosysem and be talk.maemo.org. Read Reggie's announcement.

Now on to the Nokia event:

I am still watching the live webcast of the Nokia event. They've announced the N97 mobile computer (which is also a phone.) The feature set is far and away beyond anything on any current phones:

• Large 16:9 tactile response touchscreen
• QWERTY keyboard
• 32GB on board plus up to 16GB microSDHC
• 5 megapixel high def camera
• Widget home screen
• GPS, GSM, WiFi, Bluetooth, HSPA
  
• Symbian OS

This takes everything that was promised to the tablet in Berlin and wraps it up in the phone. The 550 Euro estimated retail price (around US $700 depending on when you do the conversion - putting it on par with mid-range laptops these days) will be a hard sell.

With this out - the Internet Tablet line will need to come in at a very low price point to give users a reason to buy them instead of buying a maemo tablet. If Symbian was still closed-source, the maemo architecture would make the tablet line a stand-out product. When produced next to this monster of a phone, what is the future of the N8xx line?

I am sure of something: They just recently hired more maemo staff. SOMETHING is up their sleeve.

After saying all of that - I totally want one. If I had $700 for a device right now, I'd plunk it down on an N97 before any netbook, MID, UMPC, or computer upgrade. I don't have it, though. Not many will in the very near future. It's a tragic case of timing too: If the software is properly implemented - this does for the Internet what the 770, N800, and N810 tablets set out to do back in 2005.