Last week, my N900 stopped functioning (would not boot past white Nokia screen and would not respond when trying to reflash) so I sent it in for warranty service which is what started this whole thing...

I moved to my backup phone, a Nokia Nuron (5230) running an early touch screen version of Symbian. This brought back memories of just how crappy a product Nokia is capable of making. It is slow and laggy doing just about everything, menu selections sometimes require double clicks (seemingly at random), and I was guaranteed out-of-memory messages if I even thought about using the web browser. Horrible product I bought a couple years ago because it supports Tmobile USA's 3g frequencies. After about two days of this, I was fed up and this was unaccpetable.

From the depths of a drawer came my 4ish year old N95 (original version). It ancient S60 OS also suffered from out-of-memory problems too but far less frequently and given its age and better fitting speedier user interface, was much more forgivable. I was reminded just how fast you can type with a 12 key phone pad with good predictive text, just how loud and clear the speakers are (yes, better than the N900), and how nice it is to have a tiny phone as opposed to a brick. After a few days though, I was ready to have my N900 back.

When it did return, I immediately got to work and about 8 hours later had it back in action with latest cssu, apps, tweaks, and bugs worked out (damn that flaky Conversations IM module!). It's ridiculously fast and does everything I could ask.

While it was gone, I looked at just getting a whole new phone but there is no equal. The new android phones are very fast and have nice screens but the OS (2.x) just feels like a modernized version of Symbian...multitask and when the OS feels like it, it'll close your background apps. iOS on the iPhone is no different, with the added bonus of your primary shell being a nice Windows 3.1-type program manager (just a huge collection of icons).

So like some others, I'm at a loss for a replacement.

Windows phone?
Android 4.x better?

HP's Veer looks great but it probably doesn't have a future, and much like Maemo it will have limited aftermarket support (accessories and apps).

The N900 has a future, its just that the market has not discovered the difference between a mobile tablet computer and a mobile detachable peripheral.
ALL: the iPhone and Windows mobile assumes a coexistence with a computer / laptop. Apple coined this a "ecosystem". The Android use Google advertising to fund the OS.
Now take Android first: It is the operators that own the network. The moment they discover a way of distributing adverts comparably as effective as Google, its the end of Google and Android revenues. Ericsson has acquired a large share in the companies that provides the location based advertising, and can offer their service as an Ericsson mobile application to the operator. Nokia is good at this and its not that difficult, they have most likely a similar platform ready.

The N900 and N9 use Linux and runs any application that you can compile on Linux. So, you can run Oracle and SAP, just modify the GUI. You can take the company payroll application, and leave it for Oracle to "replicate" and do "update in place" to synchronise: transmit the timesheet and expense reports, no need to use an FTP and a CSV intermediary file. No need to use a standard application, you can use the same company application. Balmer need not qualify nor does Apple have to approve of anything.

So the market will develop. Nokia has learned a lesson, they need not do a thing, just wait and every 3 years release new hardware.

My guess is that we will get an Ubuntu Notepad release, with Active Plasma as Window manager soon. KDE is the platform for developing Qt. If they then can make this using a plain vanilla Ubuntu / Kubuntu platform they will get that pool of applications.

I really doubt that

But would be glad (and surprised) to see your vision come true

totally agree, I like the new symbian a lot, but just as a smartphone OS, i cant imagine to change my gnu/linux device for it, and webOS is nice also, but is more comparable to symbian than to PC-like maemo even though it's allegedly also linux
android is not a linux distro no mater what some people say, its just a virtual environment(for running java code, lol) that boots on linux kernel, windows mobile was much better than android even if it was closed source(not that android is open no matter what google says...) but is dead for quite some time now, WP tries to be iOS, and using iOS is unthinkable

Get a replacement N900 as long as they're out there!
There will be no other phone that can replace the N900 within the next 5-10 years.
The only player on the market that would create a similar but updated phone like the N900 is Openmoko. But they don't have the resources to actually do that.

i hope some community will do something like cordia tab but in a pocket format(300-400g) and with a physical keyboard in a year or two...hopefully with amd fusion inside instead of arm

One problem is that as well as as well-tweaked N900 runs (compared to a stock one), it's slooooow compared to the new crop of Android phones. Also, apps/updates are slow to arrive; for example, the extra media decoders haven't been add-to in a long time and I'm starting to find video files it can't play. Not too big a deal now, but it'll just get worse, not better. As nice as the N900's screen was in its time, it looks HORRIBLE compared to some of the newer phones.

Want a new case? You're limited to cheap chinese sweatshop goods on ebay and whatever retailers have in stock from 2 years ago. I wanted to buy an Otterbox yesterday and found that I couldn't...out of stock everywhere, and it's probably not coming back.

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My N900 is still relevant in 2011, and will still be in 2012.
I pass all videos I watch on the N900 through Handbrake, just to make sure they're Baseline 3.0.

800x480 is certainly not high-end nowadays, but it's certainly on par with WP7 phones

BTW, the phone is ridiculously thick already, gave up on using the Mugen batteries.
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If we're all so worried about N900-style devices not appearing EVER again, why not make a phone running Maemo Mer+Cordia? Surely there's enough talent and free time on here to do a RX-52?