In which I muse on the seemingly unstoppable handover in all parts of the phone world from traditional phone form factors to large touchscreens and wonder, in particular, just how far the Nokia N97 mini actually is a step forwards from the last (and best) of the mainstream S60 3rd Edition line, the Nokia N86 8MP...

"Just like the rest of the AAS readership, I've been having my own hardware dilemmas. I'm not blind and I can read the tea leaves, spot the signs in the sky, test the wind of change, and so on. There's an industry wide trend towards large, media-friendly touchscreens, driven by the excitement around the Apple iPhone. Yes, yes, Windows Mobile and Symbian (in the Nokia 7710) had large touchscreens first, by several years, but you can't argue with the fact that Apple popularised the concept and made it practical for the mainstream"

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