The Maemo 5 dashboard is capable of running all applications at once which means you can play an accelerometer game like Bounce, pause it to read an incoming SMS, reply, and then go straight back to the game. Users can also shrink or raise multiple windows/tabs just like on a regular PC and with such a high storage capacity, your browser history is available for reference too. Moving your finger across the screen in a circular motion will zoom in or out on a page (depending on your direction of rotation), or your finger acts as a mouse pointer to click on links.
Maemo 5 comes with a variety of pre-loaded applications such as a Mozilla-based web browser with Adobe Flash and RSS reader, accessibility to Skype, Twitter and Facebook feeds, Bluetooth 2.1, Ovi Maps for route planning, application manager for downloads and much more.
Doesn't the iPhone already do all this, I hear you cry? While Apple's baby does still outshine the N900 in some areas - it's 46 grams lighter and has a digital compass on top of the now-standard assisted-GPS - Nokia's N900 can boast a higher resolution touchscreen (800x480 pixel compared to the iPhone's 480x320), a full slide-out keypad, almost double the potential for storage capacity and bigger app memory plus, thanks to Mozilla, full Flash support.
The N900 shines because of its ability to multitask while the iPhone 3GS only does one or two things at once. It's also at least £100 cheaper than the iPhone, though won't be as widely available when it's released in Europe on October 19th in just 10 countries. From what we've seen, if you use your phone primarily for calls, then the iPhone wins. However if you use it more for web browsing and other home PC-style applications then Nokia's N900 wins. (Poor old Apple seem about to be overtaken mere months after the 3GS arrived in stores. Such is the short shelf-life of technology these days).
What about games for the N900? Here's where Nokia seem to stumble a bit, not because the possibilities aren't there (remember it has a 600MHz ARM processor, 1GB of application memory and OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration) but because they aren't actively promoting that side of the product. At least not yet.