My current plan with Sprint is about to expire. I'm torn between getting an Android phone with Sprint on contract (not sure which one), or getting an n900 on T-mobile prepaid in the Buffalo, NY area. I want to avoid a high monthly bill, and I'm not someone who really lives in the cloud, so I feel like I wouldn't get out of an Android phone what I'd pay into it. I mostly use my phone for sms, email, and Facebook, occasionally for GPS.

I'd just like to know how people feel about the device now that it's been around for awhile and, as I understand it, Nokia no longer supports Maemo. Are there any common hardware issues? Is the community still active?

Community is definitely still active and other than the faulty usb ports on some (I know mine doesn't have it, knock on wood) I don't know of any real hardware issues.

As for what might work out for you best...I don't really know. Either could be a higher monthly bill depending on data used, etc. To help sway your decision though, the N900 can have Android loaded onto it as well (though no phone calls supported yet, so it's a hobby OS at the moment.)
SMS, email, and facespace are likely the same for each but I'd give the nod to Android for GPS and Google Maps. It kills what is on the N900, no offense to the developers of GeePS and the like. If Nokia would get off their @$$es and develop a good port of Ovi Maps, I'd then say the N900 would hold the crown.

Either way, you can't go wrong. Good luck with whatever you choose.

well for support, absolutely nothing from nokia besides ovi which is just crap. the maemo.org community is the only support but IT IS AWESOME!! u can look around if u want to.
the n900 certainly isnt a phone for a normal user. if u just want a normal touch screen smartphone that does basically everything, get an iphone or android or whatever
if you want something a bit different, get a n900. sure its a big fat and doesnt have super duper good specs, but do u know a phone that can run android, windows 95, ubuntu, mer, heaps and heaps of emulators, etc?
of course it also does all ur phone stuff, except 3g video calls all of your instant messages and texts are grouped into a conversations app.
in my opinion, i am very happy with my n900, but its ur choice for what u wanna buy

just do some research and you wont be dissapointed with whatever phone u choose to buy

I'd say expand your options. Buying a year+ old phone with no official support for even half price (current price) is still a tad much to chew off if you have real problems - usb port, want to connect to a protocol that might get an update, say Skype for instance and since it's closed source, it'll never happen, all of that on a phone you've just bought?

Dunno man. I'd say there has to be better options out there.

@dagoss: what is your current phone?

If you:
- are familiar with *nix and love the env
- have to deal with servers on a daily basis
- sympathize with the FOSS movement
- like to spend hours and hours tinkering with your gadgets

then the n900 is a great fit for you

If not, then I'd recommend looking at other things out there.

You know the more i use N900, the more i enjoy it...it's like a fine wine that keeps getting better and better. In the beginning, i sort of want to replace it with an Android or iPhone. but now I really like my N900 because of what it can do and i don't see another phone that can do what N900 can.

Some of the things i like:

Having a keyboard (i hate typing with on screen it's too slow imo)

emulators (Can other phone do that? Maybe Android)

FM transmitter (playing music video, video, games through my car speaker). Hell i can even talk on the phone using my car speaker....that is something i miss if i don't have N900.

All other games though emu like CPS2, DrNokSnes, WEbos (it's amazing and i can play games with my PS3 controller).

MODS (can other phones do conversation mod and other mods?) Don't think so.

Browser with flash (YES i can watch very clear video in flash 360p with overclocking to 1.15Ghz) It's amazing and i don't think i can get it from other phone (maybe Android)

As far as GPS (well, first i thought it's suck that they don't support OVI voice nav, but now i found out a program called Modrana and it's an amazing voice navigation system and it's FREE....yes it has Google map and other maps...so i don't miss a thing actually).

Basically, this phone is so flexible and so much you can do and hack and add stuffs through terminal....i just don't see a replacement!! For now....but it's not getting old for now even with other new phones coming out i am not missing a thing. But i will say if i do plan to replace this phone...it's probably be an Android just because it's open source like N900 and it supports flash.

Community IS still active... New stuff comes out on like a weekly basis, if not faster. [Edit - that doesn't necessarily it's all exciting, actually finished, or will ever come out of extras-devel]

Device is okay. In a somewhat unpredictable manner, but commonly enough to be something to worry about, the USB port sometimes gets loose and/or rips out. You're kinda screwed if that happens, but I've never had it happen, and while naturally those to whom it happens are more vocal about it, there's plenty of people whose USB ports never got ripped out (and I suspect about half of those are living in fear thinking their port is on the verge of ripping out, without that necessarily being the case).

Anyway, there's still no portrait mode support for most of the OS (though a lot of new apps have it). It's DOABLE, there's a recoded hildon-desktop (not yet publically released) that supposedly has it system wide, but there's a Qt bug where no Qt application can launch on the N900 in portrait mode - it just segfaults.

Stock email client is still buggy, the phone occasionally lags, people occasionally have random slowdowns/crashes, there's still some bugs in the closed parts of the applications.

I myself barely get affected by these. Most of my device screwups have been caused by installing and fiddling with Extras Devel stuff (once it was a devel app that caused a reboot loop after uninstall, once I reflashed for PR1.3 because I had too much rootfs space taken up to update live, and didn't feel like uninstalling everything, and once I flashed a bad kernel image onto my N900, and that worked out predictably badly - reflashing to stock kernel, then to a redo of the 'bad' kernel image without the same screw up fixed it though).

However, some people do get these bugs, some are probably linked to extras-devel software, some are probably linked to other possible problem, some bugs are just not reproducible.

I'd say at this stage, if you're willing to fiddle only a little, the N900 is a pretty amazing device. But you have to have that willingness, at least a little. If nothing else, you have to be okay with saying - okay, this stopped working... now let's look up how to fix this on maemo.org, or the internet at large. Basic command line experience really helps, but isn't too necessary nowadays.

And it ultimately depends on what you want. If you're willing to go directly to the web-version of your email accounts, and the web version of facebook, you'll probably be fine if the screen is okay for you. There are a couple of facebook apps available - I don't use them, some aren't being developed any more, and they're at different levels of usability. I just go to www.facebook.com (with https:// in front when I want security, which, well, is always), and it's usable enough for me, even in the full desktop version. There's ways to get the mobile version of the website though, if you'd like that. I hear Modest (the stock email client) can be a real PITA about some things. I barely use it, so it's not at all a problem for me. But there's like 3-4 different replacements available in the repositories that you can download and install. You can even uninstall the original Modest if you really want, using the command-line, if you're wiling to fiddle.

But it really, really depends on what exactly you like in a device. There's a bunch of little things you often don't think about, but will either find you hate/get-annoyed-at about the N900, or will hate/get-annoyed-at about every other phone after you've used the N900.

GPS is actually okay, so long as you remember it's A-GPS. By the time I post, I'm sure a bunch of people will ***** about how Ovi Maps suck, and if you want voice navigation you need to pay for Sygic. That's just irrelevant nowadays. There's like 3 completely open source, voice-navigation capable, map programs available. I'm not sure which one is still being developed the most. I personally have Navit on mine, but if Mappero and/or ModRana have both gotten internal (as opposed to internet-connectivity-needing) routing down, they're more actively developed. On the other hand, not enough stuff makes out of extras-devel so sometimes you have to take risks to upgrade to the good versions that actually have the features you want. As time has gone on that's become less of a problem though.

Ummm... I've heard people using pay-as-you-go contracts/plans for T-Mobile who know they aren't going to use that much data get some very nice prices. It just depends on how much you think you'll be accessing email/facebook and/or texting from the N900.

Pretty sure that hits most of your points. Just keep that stuff in mind: No portrait mode for a lot of things (though basic stuff like texting and browsing so long as you don't need flash [through Opera] has stuff you can install that lets you use it entirely in portrait mode for those tasks).

It CAN sometimes have bugs that are hard to diagnose, and if that happens, the community won't always be able to give you a solution beyond "uninstall, reinstall; reboot, turn off, pull battery out, sit for a while, put battery in and turn back on; reflash the firmware". It's not too often that something is this unfixable, but it can be frustrating for those who it does hit. Those of us who don't get hit by stuff like that, well, I don't know how much of it is luck and how much of it is something else. *Shrug*

Mentalist Traceur, 5 words: HOLY S*** THAT WAS LONG

@romanianusa: I think you need to check the market again, bro...

emulators are abound, even on iphone...

There are plenty of Android handsets with keyboards. Some with even better layout than the n900. Even the iphone has 'grown' a keyboard now (albeit bluetooth one).

I don't think Android & iPhone users miss not having FM transmitter... and they can buy small fm transmitter widgets if they want that functionality.

Mods and skins are plentiful in android, even iphone.

Browser with flash? The latest android handsets have more recent flash support than the n900. Probably with better performance too.

I'm not ragging on the n900... just saying the market is different than what you're depicting in your post...

if you are a power-user you should check my app n900-tune-up!