New tablet?! Oh, don't get me started! I loved my N810 in the day, but now? It's an absolute PAIN to use for normal web browsing (plus my torrents running all day long eating bandwidth). It's enough to make me BEG for a decent S60 phone again.
It's hard to compare the E71 to anything else. It is still arguably the fastest S60 to date. Having used almost everything that they've put out in the past couple years, I can tell you first hand that phones like the N85 and N96 are just not as fast as the N95 (and not nearly as fast as the E71). Even my girlfriend just went from a red N95 to an N85 and with her very little usage, she even commented on the slow down between the two.
Bringing my passions back to reality for a minute, I'm hopeful for the N97's processor, but I have experiences pulling it in different directions. Some of Nokia's fastest phones including the E71 and the E55 are powered by the same processor. BUT! The 5800XM is also powered by the same processor as well, and it was certainly sluggish in areas it shouldn't have been. I'm hoping the increase in clock speed is enough to fix that and keep the experience consistent.
But as for gaming? I'm not even going to say it. I've given up on S60 gaming already, and I don't think anyone else here is planning on buying an N97 for its gaming features anyway. I just hope nothing else is noticeably affected by the lack of gaming-esque hardware.