Most of you probably expect this thread, and this specific post to be a hate or love n900 deal, it's actually both.

The purpose of this post is to open the eyes of many people who love or hate their N900 in order to make them hate less or love more their N900's.

I purchased mine from some dude, who bought it in NewYork city - He couldn't handle the beast, and so he sold it where I live @ Israel.
Stores here sell the N900 for about 972$... So obviously I jumped on the deal and bought it.
While I was sitting with him in my car, inspecting the beast, It rebooted 3 times, hanged once, and eventually shutdown cause battery was out. But! Fear not, I was not afraid of all those problems, and I made an agreement with the dude, that i'll try checking for firmware updates etc, and solve the problem, and if I manage to do it - the deal is on.

I went back home with my N900, happy as hell, then I started to discover all the problems, I am going to list them, so I can cross them out right after.

1. Battery lasted half a day of heavy usage.
2. No MMS.
3. No Night video mode.
4. No Video calls.
5. No version of the great "waze" program (free).
6. Camera photos look oddly blue
7. Phone is slow, stuttery and not smooth.
8. Application manager doesn't offer much.
9. Hard to figure out where to start to program for this beast.

And so, I became a daily visitor of the talk.maemo.org forum in seek of solutions, I really enjoy helping other people - and whenever I can, I do.
Slowly but surly I found solutions to most of my problems.
Some can say I did not dig enough information prior my purchase, I cannot deny this - As I was just starting to get to know this beast, and then the opportunity for that cheap N900 2nd hand came.

- Numbered like the 9 problems above :
1. Disconnect idle network connections with application from extras.devel
2. fMMS solved my rare needs for MMS (and I do use it).
3. This is coming in next firmware PR1.2
4. This is coming in next firmware PR1.2
5. This remains, and I hope i'll find a solution.
6. Blue colored stripe on the back of the phone marked with black pen, Solved.
7. Using transitions.ini + Overclocking to 800MHz solved all my speed problems - > the phone is very much Iphone like in speed now.*
8. Application manager grew nicely, and I expect this to increase when Qt4.6.2 in PR1.2 gets to mainstream.
9. Again, Qt and Python is my salvation, some very good guides have been written which solve for me all those problems.

So as far as I can say, I am happy with the phone, people need to remember that providing such an OPEN system, with so many ways to alter and modify it comes at some cost - that cost is polishing.
If you want a perfectly polished phone, you know what you can buy.
But then you won't be able to use firefox, microb with ajax and flash support, ssh and remote desktop all at once in a company meeting while everyone is carrying around their 14" or 15" laptops.

My current status with the N900 :
1. OC 800MHz
2. Transitions.ini
3. Zagg Invisibleshield makes me secure about the touchscreen.
4. All sort of cool software on it.
5. Dosbox
6. PSX4ALL
7. Openoffice
8. RDP
9. Great sound output from the headphones jack straight into my car aux, much better quality from my old N95 and N73.
10. Constant use of Skype over gprs.

My 2 cents about MeeGo:
I don't care about it as an OS for MY phone, I care about it as an OS running Qt4.6.2, I want it to be popular so I will get more apps.
But I am defently sticking with Maemo5 for now. I don't see a reason why not to, works fast, looks great, impressive, original.

Cheer up people,
Enjoy your phone.
Eitam.

I love how you refer to the n900 as "the beast".

On the whole your experience has sort of mirrored mine, except that I initially DID do my research and was initially VERY happy with my n900.

After that I became very disappointed, and I have finally come around to being mostly satisfied.

My disappointments mainly revolve around the fact that I would like to remove the need to carry around my Zune but the n900 media player interface sucks and it lacks the ability to play my Zune Pass music.

Also, development-wise, Nokia has ****ed up big time. Developing seriously for the n900 (ie using C++ and not python) is a piss poor frustration filled experience that only MADDE has helped alleviate.
It won't be fixed until the day that MADDE comes bundled and preconfigured in QtCreator so that all I have to do is click 'Install'.

On the whole, though, I enjoy owning my n900 and I hope that its flaws are corrected in time and LEARNED FROM in future products by Nokia.

Great review!

I got mine on a little less then 250$, actually I wasn’t planning to buy a new one at all, my e90 did it’s work relatively good (it’s very slow and lack the touch screen), but 250$ for the “the beast”, as you refer to the n900 (love it!).
at first I didn’t know what to do with it, not enough apps, and it lacked navigation for Israel (where I live) and a good sensible financial calculator (to be honest the last sensible financial calculator I had was when I had my palm, like 3 years ago). After a while I got used to it made a couple of background lopping images, downloaded a bunch of apps from maemo.org and discovered dosbox!!!
I love dosbox!!! I can play day of the tentacle!!!
And I am learning python for making my sensible financial calculator.
The only disappointment I have is the camera. Any picture I took so far has so much noise that I can’t even look at the pictures! But on the bright side it’s the best phone camera I encountered, maybe my standards are too high, well I do look at myself as kind of a photographer.
I do have a question: what exactly is the Transitions.ini?
And is OC is dangerous for my device?