I've been a Nokia fan for years, and have had my fair share of Nokia flops (the N95 was a brick-shaped disappointment and the N97 mini was bug-ridden, with a difficult to use resistive touch screen and also too big).
This phone, finally, brings Nokia back up in my opinions. The three pages worth of front-screen shortcuts is ample for putting apps at the front. It has a responsive capacitive touchscreen which outstrips its predecessors. The complaints I've heard about the menu systems being clunky and dated seem a little pointless when you think that anything you use regularly you can put on the sliding front-screen pages to give you the same feel as the iPhone. Which brings me on to my next point - if you love iPhones then go out and buy one. If you love real phones then this is one for you. Unlike the N8 and the N97s this Nokia has excellent signal strength and (despite the comments of a previous writer) I've found the battery life to be pretty outstanding for a smartphone (maybe they had a dodgy battery?!). I have run the Nokia for about 28 hours non-stop (it's still going) and at least 2 of those hours involved having google maps use the GPS and downloading data. I also regularly browsed the internet (although I have switched off the e-mail service as I find the browser-based e-mail services easier to use through my phone than Nokia's interface).
As a music player it has everything you could ever want. Loads of space (8GB) with the ability to add a 40GB card, an FM radio and (the cherry on the cake) an FM transmitter so you can listen in the car. The transmitter is OK but, like all small transmitters you have to keep finding new frequencies as the signal is interrupted by local stations.
The 8MB camera is excellent (and the auto-focus is very effective - with face recognition too). Unlike the N8 it doesn't have a zenon flash (it has two bright white LEDs that can also be switched on like a torch) - but again if you want a really really good camera with a proper flash then go and buy a camera!!
It looks and feels like a really nice phone. Very solid, with sleek lines (I've gone for silver and it looks very business-like). My HTC and iPhone owning colleagues have also said that they are impressed and surprised at how easy it was to use.
I would recommend going and having a play with this phone in one of the phone stores to see what you think - if you are used to all the other Nokia offerings I suspect you will be very pleasantly surprised.