Yes that project is very cool, something like that but a MB that fits in our N900 would be awesome, then all that is needed is a higher res screen, and it could be 1 year+ before they get to the point of having HD res in <3.5" (1280x720)

But would be nice to upgrade our N900 with dual core, and better GPU etc.

But all in all i you like my N900 bigger as stated in post #1

I also never thought I would find a N900 replacement until I got the Galaxy Note and it's the closest thing to a perfect phone right now on the market for uber geeks who want everything in a phone.

5.3" Super AMOLED HD (1280x800)
Capacitive touch + passive stylus digitizer (Wacom based)
1.4GHz Exynos SoC. (I'm running mine at 1.6Ghz rock stable)
Supports 64GB Micro SDXC card.
Can read/write NTFS. (>4GB files e.g MKV videos)
VNC, VPN, USB OTG, full native USB or BT mouse/keyboard support, HDMI out etc.
Also has user replaceable 2600mAH battery. (nearly 50% more talk time than iPhone4s or N9 according to gsmarena battery test)
ICS upgrade by Samsung in Q1 2012.
Plays practically every video container/codec combo on the internets.
Super loud/clear earpiece speaker for phone calls.
Better WiFi reception than my N900.

Oh, and the gazillion number of apps pretty much allows you to have every function/feature you ever wanted or was used to on the N900. (heck, it's even more customizable than the N900)

Anyways, I got used to the size after a day and now I don't think I can ever go back to a smaller sized phone.
Until something more radical comes out, I truly believe there is no better phone on the market than this little, errr, humongous beauty.

btw, N900's hardware keyboard is AWESOME. I've owned the E7 as well and it just doesn't compare to the N900 in terms of comfort even though E7 has bigger button layout. It's due to the hard gaps between the keys on the E7 it seems. N900 is so much more comfortable IMO to type. Also, the OS doesn't do the HW keyboard justice on the E7. It just doesn't compare to the amazing N900 + Maemo5. Galaxy Note doesn't have a hw keyboard but I prefer it to the E7. Swype is actually pretty cool if you get used to it and is less prone for errors and is faster to type. But yeah, it's no N900. But nothing is.

This video of it gives you a good rundown of what you can expect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JyfrD4VrHY

Go for The note. I love it. Galaxy note II with Tizen and hw Keyboard would be the dream...

Yes the note seems awesome, from the first time i saw it i was thinking of having something like it, putting a keyboard on it, can live with a BT keyboard like you can get with tablets/ipad, and i would actually prefer it as such, have it like a normal laptop in the sense that you unfold it like a normal laptop.

I would just love it if android could be TOTALLY deleted and have one of the *buntu ARM dist's on it instead.
There are so many things i love with the note, just 2 VERY critily points, no HW-KB and Android.

I would rather have a full linux instead of android with 200,000+ apps.
no matter what they do with android it will never really be ROOTED, it will never really meet what we maemo users crave, the N900 for me offers the most so far.

Also i have no problem with using it for years, will rather wait instead of just buying this and that.

Agreed ..I resited/never wanted smartphones for many years they all seemed like glorified ipods with a cell phone ...until the N900

It is the only phone that I ever "really" wanted and am willing to wait years for these manufactures to get their heads out of their asses and make something atleast equal to the N900.

We're probably not seeing a phone manufactured by a big-name officially running a GNU/Linux distro ever again, because right now, everybody's buying Android.

A lot of normal folks find Android fantastic compared to iOS - just a few examples: desktop widgets, extendable notification bar and best of all, adding media is just like adding to a USB drive, no iTunes needed, sideloading apps is incredibly idiot-proof (4shared being the #1 example)

It's either Maemo.org makes a Maemophone N900.1 pocket rocket 5" octo-core phone (I don't think we can name it that, though) or we wait for somebody to make a device hackable enough and hack it to fit our needs (Sharp IS01? Toshiba AC100? Meizu MX? Xiaomi MI-One?)

Either way, it's going to be a long time before we can have something usable as a daily usage device.

Uhm, the N900 is not usable as a daily usage device?

I got my first "smartphone" something like five years ago when I picked up an iPhone. I thought I would be using it intensely, every day, to perform all sorts of tasks. However, I quickly found that I left it sitting on my desk all day long almost every day. I really don't need to play games, or watch videos, or even listen to music all that much... The stuff I do spend my time doing, the iPhone was practically useless for. It ended up being just a terribly expensive phone.

All I see coming out of the phone companies today are bigger, brighter, more beautiful expensive paperweights. I'm sure there are lots of people out there happy to sit hunched over all day watching the little television set in their hands -- I'm just not one of them.

How about building a phone ourselves on the Raspberry PI board? Would that be viable? Would we be able to install Maemo 5 on it without the closed source bits?

or just plain ubuntu with homemade gui that looks like maemo, like a reverse easy debian

The "extreme" PI that plays 1080 would be nice, it has a connector to attach a LCD screen, and still has HDMI out
So with that we can pretty much use any LCD, this could mean something like the 5" HD screen.

good idea there, this will actually give a real alternative, give a choice to make your own mini laptop like i see the N900, and the PI even has LAN and such.

I used to be (still am) a Maemo user and the N900 was a love and hate relationship from when I bought it back in 2009. By end of 2010, I felt that N900 couldn't do majority of the stuff that I needed/wanted my mobile phone to do which high-end Android phones could provide. (both software and hardware wise) Come end of 2011 and the supposedly-successor N9 wasn't that much better. The limitations started to outweigh a lot more than its capabilities. So I ended up getting Galaxy Note which could fulfil all the things which N900/N9 couldn't provide or was really lacking in. If Nokia makes something which can compete with it, I will consider it for sure. But for now, there is nothing that comes close.

For me, yes. N900 is non-provisioning so it can't be used for my work Exchange server emails. (this started to matter this year when I changed jobs which made me look for another mobile) It also doesn't provide the level of Korean input support (e.g. no VKB for it) so it's quite frustrating to use sometimes for me. (Nokia had the worst Korean-input support of all phone companies until they took onbboard WP7...)

Add to that, faster, more capable and more supported. N900/N9 has become a paperweight to me after I got the Note. I reckon this will happen to many here if they get one and try it themselves as it can browse web better, has longer battery life, take photos/videos better, play videos/music better, play games better, is more customizable in both UI/UX with less tinkering, has more apps/games for my kids, is a better VNC/RDP client etc etc. I've never liked Android OS that much and I'm with you on Maemo/Harmattan being awesome, but when paired with Note's amazing hardware, I realized N900 just wasn't enough anymore.

It's sad that Nokia didn't take advantage of people like us. They should have released a production version of N950 with the HW keyboard as well as N9 etc with better hardware and more investment put into it. Did you know that in Australia, N9 is already considered end of life by most telcos? Vodafone no longer sells it after 2 months and it's out of stock on most other telco's also. That just makes me upset as it seems Nokia doesn't really care much about N9/Meego/Harmattan anymore. (well, to the people that make the decisions at least)