Where's the option "Another N900"? After all the reports of service centers not being able to repair the N900 any longer and sending other models as replacements, I bought a second new N900 this summer that I tucked away safely in case my current N900 should ever cease to function properly (I hope that doesn't happen for a LONG time yet). But when it does, I'm pulling that other, brand new one out of the box! I plan on staying with the N900 as long as is humanly possible, because I don't see anything coming down the line for a long time yet that can take its place. Unless I've somehow badly started to need 4G at that time, I can see myself still using the N900 five years from now.

Have my new sgs2 (still with the original kernel at the moment, but it won't last )for a week now and I must say that the op (much younger than myself I guess) will enjoy it, no doubt, it's a very good piece of work, a real smartphone, excellent screen, -very good for games and media, impecable telephony function, even the HW kb is not missing too much.......I'm not compare it with our beloved N900 because there are 2 different things, completely different ( due to the N900 of course , which is still unique in this world...)..but I'm saying that after using the sgs2 and starting to do some tweaks on it I'm not having the same sensation as I was having doing the same thing with my N900, in fact I feel dumber not smarter ! (which just may be the case in the real life but that's a different kind of story...)

Anyway I just wanna say that I picked a sgs2 and not an N9 because it was about 8 time cheaper for me here in France ( yeah we'll have plenty of Lumia coming around here...)...but had the occasion to play with an N9 which (for me ) is just another sgs2, iphone or Razr ....no more waaaw reaction as it was the case with my N900...

i agree with you, its the same story for me, here in Lebanon the sgs2 costs 525 $ unlocked while the n9 costs 690 $ and i love the sgs2, et les filles aiment le galaxy beaucoup plus que le n900

I'm getting another N900...

Les filles aimeront deux fois plus le N9.

marxian: It does seem like hardware keyboard is unnecessary, but have you experimented mscim/qimsys on N900 or even one of those portrait mode VKB? If its not installed right or one of those programs has a corrupted setup for VKB it completely renders VKB useless until you remove and/or re-set the offending package(s) up.

Not to mention that without a hardware keyboard there's no easy way to have numerous amounts of shortcuts such as screen dumping, starting xterminal, quitting xterminal, etc, etc, etc. Also things like game gripper will have to share the space with pure touchscreen instead of what most of the qwerty phones including N900 (handheld tablet with phone functionality) which just takes over your hardware keyboard portion. Needless to say here is also that with the game gripper for iPhones I have seen are more or less buttons stuck on the screen which is rather inconvenient if lets say you do not want you all touchscreen device to have these things stuck permanently on the screen or you having to remove them and replace them whenever you want to play a game (I'm sure over time the sticky bits on the little buttons will not stick over excessive amounts of repetitive applying/reapplying).

This is not to say that I'm a gamer myself but there's plenty more other useful features hardware keyboard offers. In times when for instance your all touchscreen based phone is extremely laggy and the little CPU widget says the CPU is maxed out. You cannot easily do other things let alone killing the offending application (which hopefully you have a hardware button bound to killing the offending process). This mere process of having to do so makes development work on N9 quite cumbersome especially when you have to run the program through gdb and when the phone freezes you cannot quickly check the logs where its breaking up. A hardware keyboard for instance will talk to the device more quickly should the touchscreen area fails to respond. Do note that in a very simple scenario, it takes the OS a lot more work to respond to touchscreen based on co-ordinates than for instance the OS responding to precise keyboard commands.

Last but not least, with N900 you get the feature of R&D which enables LED flashing based on various hardware interacting. I'm actually a fan of that and with the N9 for instance you won't be able to get something like that. This again hinders development to some extent.

On the topic of N950, yes it has gained (and still holds) very high respect due to the fact that its rare and it has the features needed for generally what a linux power user would require. Sure its not superior than N9 in some other retrospects but for developmental/scripting/advanced functionality purposes N950 literally blows N9 out of the water. I have recently spoke to joerg_rw on IRC in regards to bluetooth keyboard with N9 and I recall he said either N9 doesn't accept a wide variety of bluetooth keyboard or that it (N9) just doesn't have the necessary methods of handling external keyboard. The N9 also does not come with USB Hostmode but even if it was enabled just like in N900 later on by the community, unlike the N900, N9 will require more effort to get the hardware keyboard working because it lacks the necessary structures. Of course I'm sure unlike the N950 which tethering with external keyboard isn't something really hard.

Simply put, if N9 lacks bluetooth keyboard support it basically lacks bluetooth HID (Human Input Devices, which encompasses things like keyboards, mice, tablet) from my personal point of view. Without that is just a pure pain in the backside for when you try to get the phone to respond the way you want it without having to deal with it through the touchscreen. This to me is a huge fundamental drawback which makes me think again about whether or not should I purchase the N9.

At the end of the day I'm not a pure phone user. I bought my N900 purely because I could do things that normally a power user whom is familiar with the linux environment would do. Without hardware keyboard support let alone external hardware keyboard support is really hindering my desires to do scripting and what not whenever I want.

joerg_rw also mentioned that it maybe possible in the future to allow external keyboard support on the N9 but for now that is not possible. I can imagine it will be loads of work for one to have it fully working.

Before I forget, there's plenty of experimental/developmental toys for the power user. Most of which on the N900 are command line based these programs do not react to virtual keyboard and/or touchscreen. I can imagine that will be plenty of fun for example when one wants to run something like backupmenu by robbiethe1st with just a few hardware buttons on the side of N9 or maybe to have backupmenu loading all the necessary (and proprietary) backends needed for touchscreen support. Even worse is that it'll increase memory footprint and potentially may screw up system backups should the data involved in making it all work easily is being copied simultaneous to user interaction at the same time. Of course there are ways to circumvent it but again I'm only pointing this out as a mere example.

Wasmachinemann-NL: There's another way to look at it from another perspective. If you enabled tablet mode on N900 (thereby disabling phone functionality), can't you use that instead? I'm sure if N900 has cellular functionality disabled cannot make let alone receive calls/SMS/MMS/etc. It is similar to offline/aircraft mode (which I think is also available)

I am not trying to put you off buying N810 but N900 kills two birds in one in many ways really. For starters N900 comes with 32GB internal storage space (well actually 27GB) and that can easily be used for instance to store large amounts of media (equivalent to iPod and iPhones for instance). Then there's phone functionality for when you are not using it at school or anywhere else where it prohibits the use of cellular device (of course such instances includes being onboard a plane or in hospital).

The N900 in my opinion would be far more suited if you're demanding to play higher quality media that heavily relies on the CPU/GPU. Though at the end of the day if you still insist on purchasing N810 for whatever reasons that contradicts whatever I stated above I won't hold you back. I personally don't have N810.

As for symphonie support with N810, it might be a good idea to ask this in the N810 part of the forum as this area is mostly for N900.

N.B.: The school may prohibit the use of mobile phones but really when you think about it you can sort of get by with silent mode which will not make any noise whilst you're on school grounds (well apart from vibration based on you touching the screen and/or incoming notifications of course, which can be turned off as well). Though I'm not trying to teach you how to circumvent them but there are ways around it, even if your school is very strict on the use of such devices at the end of the day disabling cellular functionality I'm sure would make the teachers and what not happy.

Nokia Lumia 800

hahahahahah c'est vrai mon amie ......... mais il cout trop ....

You're missing the point that the hardware keyboard doesn't provide these functions in MeeGo-Harmattan, hence there is little advantage in having the N950 vs N9. A hardware keyboard is useless without the software to utilise it.

Ahh yes but when you think about it on the contrary even if there is no software to utilise it, it doesn't mean you can't bind a specific software to it. N950 would have at least 200 times more possible key combinations for various usages than what 3 measly buttons on the side of N9 can do.

Though you have to realise that there are programs such as for instance X Term which natively takes advantage of the hardware keyboard.