Preview of new Ovi Store client for the Nokia N8

Unregistered wrote:CPU vs GPU for web browser? Comments missing the point? The time it takes to transfer data from a web server to your phone matters more than a few MHz from one of these processors.

Precisely. If it were as simple as clocking up the CPU to increase rendering speed then we would all be on a miracle network. These tests that are run over WiFi with a web server on the local network are BS compared to how we have to use these things in real life, with contended cell time, contended last mile (for ADSL WiFi), contended originating server, general network conditions and signal strength variation.

A few Mhz and a few seconds here and there are all lodged in the minds of the anally retentive.

Speaking of which, the captcha symbols above took a full 10 seconds longer than the rest of the page to appear. Rendering? Nope, not on IE on a fast corporate connection. Captcha servers delayed it.

Looks nice but the main issue with Ovi Store was never the (clunky, slow, annoying) client but the fact that it will serve software that your phone just won't run. I've never had that issue with either the Android or the iPhone stores but on my E71, I bought several things from the store, on-device, that would never install. That undermines consumer confidence in it and has made me very wary. Let's hope this update helps.

The Ovi services as a suite are fine, in fact they are very good and a match for MobileMe and even the Google services for most users, but the store needas a lot of work.

Richard L wrote:Looks nice but the main issue with Ovi Store was never the (clunky, slow, annoying) client but the fact that it will serve software that your phone just won't run. I've never had that issue with either the Android or the iPhone stores but on my E71, I bought several things from the store, on-device, that would never install. That undermines consumer confidence in it and has made me very wary..

I definitely have that problem with Android market. In fact some things have warnings on their description "won't work with" etc, or "only works on". But I've had several apps that won't run and several where the screen size won't fit.

I don't find Android market to be very different from Ovi Store. Both are miles behind Apple's App store.

Will81 wrote:I'm disappointed that someone who has been following the smartphone arena for so long could make such a statement. Today's smartphones (even the fast ARMv7 devices) are CPU bound when loading/rending websites. Double the CPU power and you almost half the load/rendering time.

Sorry, but that's rubbish in the real world. As per my editorial earlier this week, when out of Wi-Fi range, i.e. most of the time when mobile, the speed of the data connection (EDGE/3G etc) is by far the biggest bottleneck.

Will81 wrote:I'm disappointed that someone who has been following the smartphone arena for so long could make such a statement. Today's smartphones (even the fast ARMv7 devices) are CPU bound when loading/rending websites. Double the CPU power and you almost half the load/rendering time.

The only significant impact that GPU acceleration will have is to make scrolling and zooming around the webpage smoother. This is after having to wait for the slow ARM11 CPU to load and render the webpage.

The N8 uses the CPU for HTML rendering and the GPU for screen rendering. Other manufacturers use the CPU for both.

As has been mentioned, the real factor in web browsing is data transmission speed. The N8's CPU is more than capable of rendering a web page on a 3.5" screen.

Mr Mark wrote:The N8 uses the CPU for HTML rendering and the GPU for screen rendering. Other manufacturers use the CPU for both.

As has been mentioned, the real factor in web browsing is data transmission speed. The N8's CPU is more than capable of rendering a web page on a 3.5" screen.

Not so much the physical size of the screen, but the resolution. Less pixels is less data to shift.

Jimmy1 wrote:A bit OT Rafe, but any news if the Internet Radio app from S60v3 will make it to Symbian 3 and the N8? It's one of the hidden built in gems of the E-series that unfortunately hadn't made its way to S60v5 for God knows whatever reason.

The internet radio app, along with the podcasting app bundled in with the N8 firmware would likely make it more appealing for an upgrade, even to older E and N series users.

Have you heard abouy TuneWiki?

Qt runs on most 3rd ed FP1/FP2 and 5th ed devices. N96 is the only device that can't run it due to the different CPU.

The only problem on the N97 is the disk space on C:. Qt must be installed on C, and the full library takes about 11MB of disk space. This includes the core libraries, networking, databases, SVG, OpenGL, multimedia and QtWebKit.

I don't know whether the Qt smart installer will only download the libs that you need, but sooner or later you will have the full Qt installed on the phone.

Unregistered wrote:CPU vs GPU for web browser? Comments missing the point? The time it takes to transfer data from a web server to your phone matters more than a few MHz from one of these processors.

Unless you're stuck on a 2G network, this is not the case.

Precisely. If it were as simple as clocking up the CPU to increase rendering speed then we would all be on a miracle network. These tests that are run over WiFi with a web server on the local network are BS compared to how we have to use these things in real life, with contended cell time, contended last mile (for ADSL WiFi), contended originating server, general network conditions and signal strength variation.

Nope. Have a read through this article:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2798/6

To summarise, Anand tested the iPhone 3G (with its approx 400MHz ARM11 SoC) to the iPhone 3GS (with its approx 600 MHz Cortex-A8 SoC). On AT&T's 2009 HSPA network, with both phones running iOS 3.0, loading website that are NOT on the local network, the iPhone 3GS was 114% faster than the iPhone 3G.

To quote Anand:
--------------------------------
It is important to realize what we're talking about here. These phones, particularly ones that are using old ARM11 based SoCs, are CPU bound while loading web pages. Even while browsing over a relatively slow < 1Mbps cellular network, the CPU still ends up being a significant bottleneck to web page rendering performance. Compare that to how things work on the desktop - when was the last time you felt your PC was too slow to browse the web? The Cortex A8 is a huge step forward here, and once again, there's no excuse for putting any ARM11 in a high end smartphone today.
--------------------------------

Just to further emphasise that point, I use a 3G connection at home as my primary internet connection (3G USB modem connected to an Asus router) and have no issues with performance.

Sorry, but that's rubbish in the real world. As per my editorial earlier this week, when out of Wi-Fi range, i.e. most of the time when mobile, the speed of the data connection (EDGE/3G etc) is by far the biggest bottleneck.

Unless your 3G connection is as slow as 56K dial-up, I don't know what real world you're living in.

I loaded the pcper.com homepage and it used approximately 1.0MB on my desktop with IE8 with Flash enabled. On a phone, I would expect the data consumption to be lower as the phone won't be loading the Flash ads.

At 1 Mbps (which lets face it is slow for a HSPA connection), it would take 8 seconds to download that data. The browser on my S60 phone takes a LOT longer then that to fully load and render the page.

Just as a reference, my home 3G connection usually clocks in between 3-5 Mbps for downloads and I'm using a relatively slow 7.2 Mbps modem on a pretty average network. If I was willing to pay more, I could go on a far less congested and faster 21 Mbps 3G HSPA network that is in the process of getting an upgrade to 42 Mbps nationwide within a year.

And to add more fuel to my arguement, have a look at this comparison by Crackberry of the new webkit browser on the BB Torch compared to the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Captivate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLvQpXapIrY

Even over 3G, the BB was slower to fully load and render a webpage DESPITE the fact that it was receiving compressed data from RIM's servers. The iPhone 4 and Samsung Captivate had to download more data over the 3G connection but were still able to beat the Torch because they weren't crippled by the Torch's slow ARM11 CPU.

BTW, I read your editorial and while I agree that Opera Mini is great on S60 phones, I disagree with your reasoning. The main reason I use it is because the webpage rendering is done on Opera' far more powerful server and not on my underpowered phone so I'm not left there waiting for up to a minute for a complex page to load (or more likely crash the browser).

wellisntTHATqt wrote:Qt runs on most 3rd ed FP1/FP2 and 5th ed devices. N96 is the only device that can't run it due to the different CPU.

The only problem on the N97 is the disk space on C:. Qt must be installed on C, and the full library takes about 11MB of disk space. This includes the core libraries, networking, databases, SVG, OpenGL, multimedia and QtWebKit.

I don't know whether the Qt smart installer will only download the libs that you need, but sooner or later you will have the full Qt installed on the phone.

Will81 wrote:Unless you're stuck on a 2G network, this is not the case.

You've tried this one before, you were wrong then and you are still wrong. According to real life it is the case. 3G theoretical speed is not reality, it's highly variable. Same for WiFi connections.

It will not do you any good repeatedly trying to tell people that their real world experience is wrong. They are going to believe reality, not your failed reasoning.

Unregistered wrote:You've tried this one before, you were wrong then and you are still wrong. According to real life it is the case. 3G theoretical speed is not reality, it's highly variable. Same for WiFi connections.

So Anand's and Smartphone Expert's real life case is wrong then?

Yes there are areas where the 3G network is heavily congested and if you happen to live and work in such an area, then yes, bad luck. Complain to your carrier or better yet, switch to another carrier.

But I'm willing to bet that for the majority of people with 3G coverage, they will be able to get at least 1 Mbps which means that the phone's CPU will be the bottleneck when loading/rending websites. Otherwise carriers wouldn't be able to get away with selling "mobile broadband" to millions of customers if all you're getting is dial-up speeds.

It will not do you any good repeatedly trying to tell people that their real world experience is wrong. They are going to believe reality, not your failed reasoning.

If people find that browsing websites on their phone is slow, most will immediately blame the network, often incorrectly. Average Joe doesn't realise that there are other bottlenecks and is not going to do controlled tests to find out whether it is the network, software or hardware that is causing the slowdown. Average Joe will simply say... "bloody lousy [insert carrier here] network".

Controlled, real-life tests (such as the one I pointed out), shows that slow browsing can be caused by lack of processing power

Ok, then. Can you then explain why there are several examples of the ARM11 based N97 (non-accelerated) loading web-pages faster than the ARM11 based accelerated iPhone 3G?

Will81 wrote:

Will81 wrote:Yes there are areas where the 3G network is heavily congested and if you happen to live and work in such an area, then yes, bad luck. Complain to your carrier or better yet, switch to another carrier. But I'm willing to bet that for the majority of people with 3G coverage, they will be able to get at least 1 Mbps which means that the phone's CPU will be the bottleneck when loading/rending websites. Otherwise carriers wouldn't be able to get away with selling "mobile broadband" to millions of customers if all you're getting is dial-up speeds.

I live in and around a major UK city. And I get good 3G coverage, though not 3.5G. Downloads average around 100kb/s on a good day.At busy times, or when travelling more than 10 miles from the city centre, I'm often staring at EDGE if I'm lucky.

I'm not totally excusing Web or indeed the processor in these phones, I do take your point. But you have to meet me halfway. In the real world, network coverage and speeds is still a huge, huge factor for many.

Stuck in Somerset at my parents house (only 5 miles from a major town, no hills in the way), I get three bars of GSM and GPRS only for data. What use a 1GHz processor then???

krisq wrote:Have you heard abouy TuneWiki?

TuneWiki sucks.

Well, okay, it doesn't totally suck but in comparison to the S60v3 app, it does.

You can't add stations in TuneWicki. The v3 'manually add station' feature is great, particularly as here in NY I was able to add a couple of regional AM sports stations that were also available online. I'm a New York Yankees and NY Giants fan, so being able to follow these teams, even on the radio, is a must.

I was also able to add a couple of great, funky college-run rock radio stations that also weren't available in TuneWicki's Shoutcast directory. This one application is really extending the life of my old Nokia E66, even as I'm checking out newer Android phones to adopt for daily use (although I understand that Android has some pretty great internet radio apps with an 'add station' feature).

I guess I shouldn't have made such a throw away comment about CPU / GPU on web browsing, without explaining a bit further.

As has been said there multiple factors involved in determining speed. There's also some good comments of this article (on browser speed).

The above test were done on a WiFi connection and goes to show how a simple CPU / RAM interpretation will get you nowhere.

Browser speed can apply to more than one thing. At its simplest its about how long it takes a page to appear. However in real world usage that's not the only factor. Speed moving around the screen, speed of the UI, responsiveness, stability etc.

Compared to the N97 one the big differences in the N8 will come from the GPU. This is partly to do with the Symbian^3 NGA too of course. My understanding is that this will have benefits in both the general UI, as has been mentioned (the oft quoted 3x improvement in speed), and in screen rendering in general.

In practise I would still expect data speed to the limiting factor most of the time.

In terms of way the N8 will be better than previous Nokia devices (e.g. N97) for browsing.

- Symbian^3 - NGA and new networking architecture.

- GPU - important more because of its absence previously, but also has bigger -than-you-might-expect impact because of NGA.

- Capacitive screen - better for moving round the page (in my opinion on the relatively few areas where capacitive has a clear advantage).

- CPU and RAM - but in most cases this is not a limiting factor.

All of these factors will likely be over shadowed by the new browser (i.e. it will offer the biggest performance improvements).

I have to agree on Will81 what he said when Rafe made this statement "The CPU isn't that big an issue when browsing actually, but the graphics co-processor will make a difference."

Rafe. I don't know about you but that article doesn't tell us anything anymore. Then were all phones with ARM11s from the 300 to 500mhz range where the fast cpu isn't 100% faster than the slowest.

Its different now. Snapdragons, A4s, Hummingbirds all have A8s that several times faster than the N8's ARM11. If you're so about rendering limit, why don't you do an updated test comparing Nexus One android 2.2, Galaxy S android 2.1, Iphone 4 with N8s. But I think we all know the answer anyway.

New browser. Android, iOS4, Rim all use Webkit powered webbrowsers but Nokia is always behind the others in using the most update to date branches and same with javascript engine.

And that list of improvements the N8 has over the N97? Well thats all it is. Improvements over the N97. Something it didn't have while others already had.

looking forward to this on my N900. love this phone 😃

Nokia haven't even given N900 voice navigation.

We'll probably do an update on the browser etc once the N8's out. I pointed to that article as its a good a illustration as any that there's not the direct correlation between browser speed and resources that people seem to think there is. It much more about the software... relatively speaking basic browsing is not that intensive (obviously there are exceptions like Flash video playback in a browser).

Clearly there is some impact, but, in general, other factors are far more important, even when do lab tests. Even more so when doing real world tests (which after all are what really counts). I'd also point out that, as we said before on this site, even looking at pure processors speed / families is a misleading.

People are equating the N8 architecture with the older generation of the ARM 11 chips... clearly they are in the same family, but they do not have the same capabilities. There's a good reason the N8 can encode / decode HD video - something the earlier phones can't do. The N8's overall processor architecture is significantly more powerful than the previous generation of Nokia devices (N97, 5800, E72 etc etc). And I mean more powerful in terms of creating a better user experience, rather than just stats and benchmarks.

And yes I was just listing the improvements - trying to clarify what I said originally, which seems to have sparked some debate.

Ultimately though I'm not sure how much this matters. It an interesting technical debate, but what matters is what it like to use. How the average user gets on with it. That remains to be seen.

My god.

The ARM11 has almost nothing to do with video encoding/decoding nowadays. Its the specialize blocks that handle it and from that point yes the N8/N900 more capable HD blocks has that all other Nokias don't. (you'll have to ask Nokia why they choose not to utilize the HD ready block on N900)

But an ARM11 on the N8 is still basically the same as an ARM11 in N97/N95/...

Not looking pure processing speed is also misleading. Webpage decoding/basic rendering is probably the most CPU intensive task on phone nowadays and nothing will make an lower clocked ARM11 render near the speed of higher clocked A8s especially when Nokia continues to use the older Webkit versions.

As Will81 pointed out earlier http://www.anandtech.com/show/2798/6 Anandtech already did webpage speed tests on wifi and utms between the iphone 3G and 3GS. If you compare those results with the ones you did on AAS which also has a iphone 3G, you can clearly see how much difference extra resources make.

Your AAS article(after you filter out the phones with old webkit versions, different resolutions), the difference isn't that big because those CPUs are just too close in performance. But when you compare it to something that is several times faster then of course you can see. The iphone 3G and 3GS use the same software/resolution, it must be due to mostly CPU/RAM.

Ok, then. Can you then explain why there are several examples of the ARM11 based N97 (non-accelerated) loading web-pages faster than the ARM11 based accelerated iPhone 3G?

In what way is it "accelerated"? The GPU? The GPU does not impact the website loading/rendering speeds.

How variable are these load times? Are we talking a few percentage difference or the huge 100%+ difference between the iPhone 3G and 3GS.

Can you please show me the tests?

I live in and around a major UK city. And I get good 3G coverage, though not 3.5G. Downloads average around 100kb/s on a good day.At busy times, or when travelling more than 10 miles from the city centre, I'm often staring at EDGE if I'm lucky.

3GPP Rel 99? Really? Is your carrier still in the dark ages? It is called Release 99 for a reason... it was meant for the last century! 😊

If you don't mind me asking, which city? If you're not comfortable answering that, at least give us an indication of how big population wise. What network are you on? O2? Three?

I find it unusual that a large UK city does not have decent HSPA coverage. While I was travelling around the UK for work (and fun), I certainly did not run into any problems accessing the net using my prepaid Vodafone SIM in major centres (London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Edinburgh, etc).

The only times I remember having problems accessing the net (via 3G) is in regional towns or on the highways between towns. Actually I don't even remember running into any problems while I had a long stay in Harrogate which certainly isn't a big town.

Stuck in Somerset at my parents house (only 5 miles from a major town, no hills in the way), I get three bars of GSM and GPRS only for data. What use a 1GHz processor then???

The 1 GHz processor will allow you to use far richer applications *cough* games *cough* to pass your time because you don't have decent access to the net.

Rafe wrote:I guess I shouldn't have made such a throw away comment about CPU / GPU on web browsing, without explaining a bit further.

As has been said there multiple factors involved in determining speed. There's also some good comments of this article (on browser speed).

The above test were done on a WiFi connection and goes to show how a simple CPU / RAM interpretation will get you nowhere.

The comparison made in that article has so many uncontrolled variables (and not to mention that they're all ARM11 SoCs) it doesn't tell you much. You have different OS builds, different browser, and even different screen resolutions.

The beauty about the iPhone 3G vs iPhone 3GS comparison is that the only difference is the SoC, a 400MHz ARM11 vs a 600 MHz Cortex-A8. They are both running the same build of iOS 3.0 and the same Mobile Safari 3.0 browser.

Browser speed can apply to more than one thing. At its simplest its about how long it takes a page to appear. However in real world usage that's not the only factor. Speed moving around the screen, speed of the UI, responsiveness, stability etc.

I don't dispute that and yes I think UI responsiveness (zooming, scrolling) is important but I think loading/rendering speeds is just as important, especially if you're constantly browsing complex sites like Engadget.

In practise I would still expect data speed to the limiting factor most of the time.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree here then. We'll just have to wait for Nokia to release a Symbian^3 device with a Cortex-A8 SoC. The comparison won't be as good as the iPhone 3G vs 3GS comparison (as they'll probably be running different OS and browser builds) but I bet that browsing speeds will get a significant boost nonetheless.

In terms of way the N8 will be better than previous Nokia devices (e.g. N97) for browsing.
- Symbian^3 - NGA and new networking architecture.
- GPU - important more because of its absence previously.
- Capacitive screen - better for moving round the page (in my opinion on the relatively few areas where capacitive has a clear advantage).

These 3 points will improve the useability of the browser after the page has loaded. Unless the network stack on Symbian^1 is horrendously broken, I wouldn't expect this to make a difference to browsing speeds.

- CPU and RAM - but in most cases this is not a limiting factor.

Going from a 400 MHz ARM11 to a 600 MHz ARM11 is definitely going to make a difference.

All of these factors will likely be over shadowed by the new browser (i.e. it will offer the biggest performance improvements).

The new HTML and Javascript rendering engine should improve speeds but isolating how much each factor makes to the browsing speed will be impossible.

People are equating the N8 architecture with the older generation of the ARM 11 chips... clearly they are in the same family, but they do not have the same capabilities. There's a good reason the N8 can encode / decode HD video - something the earlier phones can't do. The N8's processor is significantly more powerful than the previous generation of Nokia devices (N97, 5800, E72 etc etc).

The N8 may have upgraded co-processors to do video HD encoding/decoding but the general purpose CPU, the unit responsible for doing webpage rendering is still the same ARM11 CPU in the N97. The clock speed is faster but architecturally, the general purpose CPUs are identical.

If browsing websites on a PC is slow, you don't upgrade to GPU to speed things up. You upgrade the CPU.

"Ok, then. Can you then explain why there are several examples of the ARM11 based N97 (non-accelerated) loading web-pages faster than the ARM11 based accelerated iPhone 3G? "

Sandbox.

I for one welcome a head-to-head with N8 vs. Nexus One in various performance categories.

Judging from the OpenGL tests, the Nexus One gets quite a severe beating from the N8!

Look here:

http://www.glbenchmark.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=glpro11&showhide=true&D1=Nokia%20N8&D2=Google%20Nexus%20One

Unregistered wrote:

Its different now. Snapdragons, A4s, Hummingbirds all have A8s that several times faster than the N8's ARM11. If you're so about rendering limit, why don't you do an updated test comparing Nexus One android 2.2, Galaxy S android 2.1, Iphone 4 with N8s. But I think we all know the answer anyway.

New browser. Android, iOS4, Rim all use Webkit powered webbrowsers but Nokia is always behind the others in using the most update to date branches and same with javascript engine.

And that list of improvements the N8 has over the N97? Well thats all it is. Improvements over the N97. Something it didn't have while others already had.

Some great comments coming in here.

I have used Symbian devices with the A8 cores (e.g. Samsung i8910, recent Sony Ericssons) and the browsing speed is a bit faster (maybe 10% - would have to test more formally) on these, but not dramatically so. To be fair I think some of this may be down to the older browser version (though that itself rather illustrates the point about software being a factor)...

I do think the iPhone test is a good bit of data, but it can only tell you about the iPhone. You can't read a general pattern into that really - not on a statistically rigorous basis anyway. There may be other reasons - for example it might be that the iPhone is less efficient in terms of OS and software and therefore the increase in processor speed has a bigger impact (I doubt that is the reason personally, but it may be a factor).

I think some of the difference in opinion here is coming from a theoretical debate on performance. Perhaps what matters most is real world usage - this includes things like performance, ease of use, in addition to performance - and here I think we can all agree there's no single over riding factor.

Indeed that applies in general the interaction between the various element (software, hardware, connection, context) make it quite difficult to identify bottlenecks and the importance of each factor. Context in particular is interesting because its not just connection speeds, but also what you're browsing.

Anyway roll on the N8 - we'll do some performance stuff as an when.

Thats an easy one. The snapdragon's gpu isn't that fast.

You do not say.

For a 1 GHz CPU/GPU chipset, it is abysmal!

Unregistered wrote:Thats an easy one. The snapdragon's gpu isn't that fast.

I think you clearly don't understand the Snapdragon is a System on a Chip with lots of blocks in there. The Snapdragon pairs a very fast 1ghz A8 based CPU with the GPU is not so fast.

On the net you can find videos of the Samsung Galaxy S (also with a 1ghz A8 basec CPU) vs a Snapdragon Nexus One/HTC Desire and the Galaxy S runs circles around it 3D frame rate wise because Samsung uses their own custom SOC and put the fastest shipping GPU core in there along with a fast CPU. The N8's CPU and GPU is nothing special compared Samsung's own SOC though matches the Snapdragon's slow 3D core performance.

And really Ralf isn't helping either.

A GPU really isn't going to help webpages render faster. Can it draw accelerate 2D text rendering, some lines or cache bitmaps? Yep. But the GPU draws what its asked to do and right now the CPU is the bottleneck decoding webpages and running javascript.

I just thought of a perfect example for those that still don't get it.

The N93/N93i/N95/N82/E90 had a GPU compared N96/N85/N86/N97/etc which don't.

So did the former render webpages faster because of it? Nope. It didn't even have ScreenPlay for basic 2D acceleration.

And please people, we don't even have full hardware rendering webpages on desktop computers though it is coming on ie9 and future browsers.

Some comments here are astonishing.
I agree that getting fired up on megahertzs and judging device based on that is unreasonable.
But Nokia seems to have a sort of tradtion in making underpowered smartphones. I prefer to stay on the cautious side and not make any excuses for Nokias potentially problem-generating design decisions.
And making an excuse that 1GHz CPU is useless because you don't use it's power when out of 3G range is just shocking. Why make a device that, compared to the competition, is limited by design? Remember that N8's hardware won't be loaded only by rendering a single webpage. What about tabbed browsing? Widget's? And task switching? Mind you - Symbian is a multitasking OS. So you'll possibly have something running in the background (that is if N8 will be powerful enough to actually make multitaskig viable) And as Will noticed, what about gaming?
I'd like to be proven wrong but Nokia seems to play it (too?) safe again.

One more thing. It seems a lot of people here have "a few seconds" here and there to spare. That's fine but wasteful by my standards. I don't want to waste time, waiting for a device that is supposed to make my life easier and actually save my time. Miliseconds add up to seconds, seconds to minutes and so on.
I ride a bike a lot. And there are a lot of situations few seconds is all I have to check an e-mail or a messege that just came in and react to it, change a playlist or post some "brilliant" thought that popped to my head on facebook when waiting for the traffic lights to change from red to green. This is how I want to use my device. I don't want to plan in advance: "Okay, so if tap this e-mail now and put my phone to my pocket it will be ready for me to read on the next crossing" - that is if I'll not forget to confirm a connection to the Internet...
If you are willing to take more time to complete every task - fine. But from my point of view you are just making another excuse for Nokia. Besting N97's performance is not a great feat. Nokia is racing against iPhones and Androids.
Having faster CPU is not a universal solution to Symbian's problems but having a lot of power is better than having just enough.