From what i've read from people replacing their screens, things might not be so bad

It's not replacing your screen that's the issue - if you're replacing one screen with another, exactly the same model of, screen, you're set.

But in order to set up an electrotactile resistive screen where just a resistive screen was before, you'll have to do some hardware rewiring. If you're lucky, it'll just be some wire soldering. If you're unlucky, the hardware on the N900's motherboard will need an entire new BUS attached just to be able to communicate with the electrotactile layer of the new screen.

- Edit -

Let's also be clear on the differences here - one, if people are replacing touch screens on their N900s, they are presumably getting either the same exact screen that comes with the N900, or something extremely compatible, and physically similar. Either way, it is already mass produced. Which means cheap, widely available, it doesn't cost Nokia any extra money, nor do they offer screens themselves as far as I know.. you find the screen to use yourself.

Even with the above, I'm sure that it is humanly possible that some people would eventually make it work. With difficulty, perhaps breaking multiple N900s along the way, but they'd make it happen.

HOWEVER, I was talking about a very distinct idea: Nokia providing the hardware for N900 do-it-yourself-ers. For Nokia to provide do-it-yourself kits, they would have to ONE, design the requisite hardware, two, make it at least conceivably doable without having your motherboard manufacturing equipment, and then actually dedicate plant time, work hours, and so on, to put out these screens. Then they have to ship them to those who order them.

And by the time that's done, how many N900 owners will be around who actually want to risk their N900 by taking it apart, and soldering completely new hardware pieces into the screen (and possibly the motherboard and other parts), all for a feature for which support would still have to be written? I mean, Nokia might, or the universities they collaborate with might, release kernel-level support for these things. Either as a binary blob, or, (cue holy music) open sourced code (end holy music). But then Hildon, and every UI interface on every app, still has to be adapted to actually USE the new electrotactile feature.

By then Nokia and every other phone maker will be a few phone generations ahead, and you'll have at best a few hundred (probably not even in the three digits) N900 users who'll pay the money that it would cost them to even make those kits.

I'm not saying it's not the ideally right thing to do (though by the time all of those conditions are met, you'll be better off buying a phone that has such support already), but I AM saying that it is extremely unrealistic to expect Nokia to release do-it-yourself N900 hardware mods. The Large Hadron Collider is more likely to make a black hole that actually succeeds in growing large enough to suck in the Earth [disclaimer]I am exaggerating for emphasis and comedic effect - I do not actually think it's that inconceivably unlikely - but it is damn unlikely.[/disclaimer].

They probably already got the patent for it, perhaps not speecificly for the N900 prototype, but there should be enough info about how it works already in the hands of the patent office(s), and since anyone can browse the contents of granted patents it shouldn't be too hard to find out what is involved in the implementation of this functionality if you know what to look for, perhaps someone could try looking for the info to see how much a stock N900 would need to be changed to have that functionality

Since you posted while I was typing up an edit: See above for further reasons why it's unlikely.

Re the patent stuff: I'll admit that wasn't a very logical point per se, in an ideal sense but consider: even with all of the above issues, if Nokia releases do-it-yourself kits before they release phones with support for this stuff, they lose whatever competitive advantage they had by including it in a phone

Does that necessary make logical sense in a purely objective paradigm? No, because you can probably reverse engineer from patent as much as you can from a physical device up in the market. But it makes extra sense in the mind-set of those people who run companies and decide what will make more profit or not.

Keep in mind - you're also looking at a company that, somewhere up in the Maemo bug resolving system, decided that any user of the N900 that uses the command line is not a "typical" N900 "user". That might be true for other phones - it is sure as hell not true to the average N900 user, because that's not who the N900 actually attracts. So if the N900 is almost a year old, hasn't been given Flash 10.1, and is about to be superceded by MeeGo, do we really, honestly believe that the people who make decisions up there will decide, with all of the above, that it would be a good idea to release do-it-yourself kits for a revolutionary touch screen technology to those willing to buy one? Even if you ignore the patents issue, because for all we know them doing it in collaboration with a university will keep them from being allowed to patent it, the other matters combined make it both practically unreasonable, and especially undesirable from a corporate need-to-make-profits-as-part-of-our-job-description standpoint. (CAN they argue that offering such a thing will increase customer loyalty in the long run increasing profits? Yes. But how likely is it that a person who can see it like that is actually going to make it high enough in a corporate environment to make that kind of choice?)

The N900 seems to be the closest thing so far in terms of mobile phones and pocket computers, to desktop PCs that you can upgrade/fix by replacing individual components, that combined with the easyness of adapting the OS etc makes me hopeful that it isn't impossible to get a kit to improve it's functionality, even if it at first would only be recommended for professional repair shops to do it.

You can be hopeful, but unrealistic hope is only good for setting up dissapointment. Your hopes are not completely unrealistic, but the parts of them that are make the rest unrealistic.

IF you understand that the things I covered prevent what you're wishing for from happening, and understand why and how they are preventing it, then you can build realistic hopes on top of that. And more importantly, you can understand HOW to act, and how to get other people to act, to make what you want actually remotely feasible.

It's like saying we can have open source phone stacks and GSM and 3G connectivity drivers on the N900 becuase the rest of it is open source and the N900 is close to a true computer. Yes, in principle it is doable. That does not mean that Nokia decision makers are gonna go out of their way to give you their closed source code. Same with this. The people who call the shots at Nokia are not likely to agree that just because this thing is sorta like a computer, they should give you the ease of upgrading of one.

You know how the N8 didn't have a user-removable battery? And just now the HP Slate, a computer by all rights, running Windows 7 and all, came out without user-accessible RAM. Notice a pattern? There is a signifcant disconnect between what people like us want, and what the people selling us devices will do. Why? Because the few of us who realize that what we want won't happen without public pressure on the makers are outnumbered by those who like you, just sit there and hope.

Do you honestly think it'll happen JUST because you hope for it? Well it won't. Not if people who want it passively sit there and keep on thinking that because the N900 is close to a computer, companies and the people running them will be interested in giving you hardware upgradeability. So you want your hardware kit? Did you write someone at the head of Nokia yet? Realize that the people who get to decide if the N900 gets hardware upgradeability do NOT view the N900 as some mobile computer. The people who made it and, maybe, those that marketed it, legitimately felt that way. The people at the top who get to say "let's release upgrade kits", most likely just view it as one disposable device among a few hundred. They'll build you a device that has all the better hardware within a year or two, for a slightly greater profit for them, and they know that you'll still buy it, or if you don't, enough off the masses will.

So again, you want hardware upgradeability? Then instead of stating your hopes over and over here, go dig up the contact information of higher-up Nokia departments and individuals. Prod the community council members to contact Nokia on the community's behalf. I would love to see hardware upgradeability on the N900. But if we just sit around and hope, it won't happen. Even if we spam Nokia with emails/letters/phone-calls, it may not happen - but at least it will lead them to start seriously considering it for future devices.

Is there a brainstorm about this already or should i create one?

I don't think there is one, but I'll run a search. And we can go from there. (Though ideally we would need to do the same for all phone makers, not just Nokia, for best long-term results.)

Searched. Nothing. I say go for it. I'm going to be offline soon, but I'll try to dig up some contact information for at least general Nokia support to which we could send requests for hardware upgradeability.

What?? But Nokia maintains high sales numbers by providing few or no warranties/replacements! How else will Nokia re-sell you the same device over and over again??

Here... I'll summarize it in fewer words for you:
By the time this gets mass-marketed, humanity will have invented a zero-point energy source.