I mean I would almost certainly buy it because I'm a sucker, but this feels like it would be a downgrade from the real N9. I suppose you'd have a supported/modern setup with all the right TLS and certs etc. to not be a 2nd class www citizen. But you'll still have the "app gap" (but even worse!) that was part of the problem preventing mainstream adoption of the real N9. And you'd no longer have a super-slick UI like the real N9 if the bananaphone KaiOS is anything to go by.


The bananaphone has the developer menu disabled by default, though you can do a magic key combo or a filesystem fiddle to bring it back, although I think Nokia didn't actually want this, so they may lock it down if they're releasing new devices. With the dev menu unlocked you get the ability to sideload PWA apps onto the device, and also get usb debug to the underlying Android bits. But I don't believe the bootloader is (or can be) unlocked, so I guess you're stuck with KaiOS.

I know it would be blasphemy round these parts, but if Nokia did re-release an N9 with a modern OS, I'd much prefer Android over KaiOS. Well, Sailfish ideally, but that ain't gonna happen.