How efficient is Symbian, more specifically Symbian^3/4?

It has been a known fact that the Symbian^3 based devices (ex: N8, E7, C6, C7) have always been manufactured with less-powered (in comparison) processor and RAM. This also make a point saying that Symbian^3 can run smooth even on older-generation processor.

NOTE: It is just only the processor and RAM that I am talking here. Otherwise, they have the latest crop of hardware in everything else like the Graphics chip, connectivity, etc.

But I am more curious to know how (significantly) would Symbian^3 fare when the same is "allowed" to run on the latest processors with those huge RAM-sizes?

Simply put, what kind of experience would an user get if Symbian^3 is allowed/made to run on a N900 or a Nexus One or a Droid or something latest? Will the new-gen processors/RAM-sizes makes any difference, if at all?

One thing I know which would become better with latest-generation processor is the web-browsing experience. What else? Any comments?

You don't think it's been a mistake of Nokia to run Symbian on such low end hardware (particularly since touch was introduced)? I haven't used a touchscreen Symbian phone and had an enjoyable experience; just look at the N97.

N97 was a joke! I think, it played one of the major roles in the downfall (???) of Nokia.

And exactly that's the reason why I specifically wanted info only based on Symbian^3/4. N97 is Symbian S60, 5th Ed I think?

But again, I really don't know the difference between S60, 5th Ed and Symbian^3/4.

I used the Symbian^3 on C6-01. Since I previously used S40 on E65, the user interface was ok for me to navigate. Actually, I always liked Nokia's earlier interface which was simple and user-friendly (compared with Sony Ericsson/Motorola). They really excelled that time.

Back to Symbian^3, the C6-01 was a bit sluggish with occassional hangs when browsing. Other than that, it was ok. Personally, I would not mind migrating to E7 (Symbian^3) if and when my N900 fails - could get 3G video call and voice navigation.

I'd say it's efficient the way BlackBerryOS is efficient - they're OSs optimized to run on mobile hardware, largely from the earlier days. They're so melded optimization-wise to their hardware, that for their functionality, they don't need that many resources. However, that doesn't mean that simply giving them more resources would scale their functionality, if their optimizations are such that cause performance to simply cap out before the hardware specs do. That said, I'd guess that something like web page rendering and the like would happen faster.