Nokia smartphone loyalists that feel S60 is a bit long in the tooth and are looking for something new should be all smiles today, as earlier Nokia announced that the Maemo 5-powered N900 smartphone has begun shipping out after a series of delays. To officially retail for around 500€ ($749 USD), the N900 has been spotted on various US-based websites for well under $600. And that’s a darn good deal, too, because you’re not going to find many phones at that price that offer up the following:

• Maemo 5 OS
• 3.5-inch WVGA (800 x 480) resistive touchscreen display
• 110.9 × 59.8 × 18mm, 181g
• Portrait-orientation sliding QWERTY
• Mozilla-based browser, full Adobe Flash support
• ARM cortex A8 processor
• 32GB internal memory
• 5.0 MP Carl Zeiss camera with dual-LED flash, auto-focus and sliding cover
• MicroSDHC support up to 16GB
• FM transmitter
• Quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE, WCDMA 900/1700/2100, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP
• GPS
• 1320 mAh battery

One word of caution: as it currently stands, the N900 will not play nice with the new SIMs from 3 in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and Austria, although a software update to resolve this comparability issue is due out before the end of the year