Cause N900 is a phone and Android is just an os

And the reason why Droid is cheaper is..

Verizon subsidy (granted there is no benefit in having an unlocked smartphone in their network so this is a moot point) + rebate. While the n900 has no subsidy nor rebate. Just pointing that out.

Yes. Please see the Platform Security presentation for implementation details.

There are two important features of openness that Maemo beats Android on: First, actually being somewhat compatible with desktop Linux distributions (shipping X, recognizable UI toolkits, etc.) and, second, open governance.

This is actually my biggest complaint about Android. It doesn't really multi-task in the conventional sense.

The general idea of the UI framework is activity based, with a single stack of activities. Think of a browser window (no tabs). Launching apps or even switching from screen to screen inside an app is like visiting a new web page. You can move back through your history, but you can't easily switch between two apps.

Smart apps store their state so if they are re-launched you can pick up where you left off, essentially making them appear to have been happily running in the background while you switched away to some other task. Very few apps use background processes to do their work. This has the benefit of preserving battery, but can be annoying for example if you want to switch away from the browser to do something else while that webpage is downloading at EDGE speeds. The browser will stop downloading once you switch to the new activity.

Android does have some nice benefits. Their SDK and eclipse tools are pretty nice. Basing their framework on Java has opened up development to a lot of developers that a traditional Gtk or other X based development might be overwhelming for.

I'm currently running running Cyanogen's modified roms on my HTC G1 (on AT&T w/ Edge speeds). I've been pretty happy with it, but am planning on switching to the N900 (hopefully a NAM version...hint to any Nokia). My main reasons for switching are:

1) Real multi-tasking. It's annoyed me enough on Android that the n900 is really appealing.

2) Openvpn. It's possible to get it running on my particular phone, but who knows if it'll be possible to build custom kernels for any future Android phone I might upgrade to (the stock Android kernel does not include the kernel modules needed for openvpn).

3) Files. This is another really odd thing with Android. The stock browser only lets you download filetypes that an Android application has registered that it supports. So if I want to download some file with the browser and transfer it to my computer, I can't do it without using some hack-ish approaches. Similar problems with attachments in the stock e-mail app. Just stupid.

4) PDF viewer. There is no decent free offline PDF reader for Android. There may be a paid version, but I haven't bothered checking. Most of the PDF viewing apps send the PDF to some web service to convert to something viewable by the app. I want to be able to view the PDF's stored on my SD card, even if I don't have a data connection.

5) Apps. While there are some great Android apps out there, most are silly toys or highly specialized apps that you could just use the browser for (especially for how frequently I'd use them). The n810 (and I imagine the n900) has a lot of useful ports of Linux desktop apps. Xournal would be one example.

Enough rambling.... I am an Android fan and I look forward to seeing how it progresses. However, I want a mobile computer/phone, not a phone/mobile computer.

I believe Google will be offering their turn-by-turn directions to other phones as well. Such as symbian and possibly the iPhone.

Unless something very ugly is done around the Maemo6 kernel, there really won't be any way of preventing a virtual 'video/audio out' device being installed to siphon the digital stream in its unencrypted state.

DRM is a dumb business model, as well as a technological failure.

It would be a smart decision by Google since their profit model is not based off on selling Android. It's based off of getting as many people as possible, no matter what platform they are on (Windows, Linux, OSX, iPhone, Palm Pre, BlackBerry, Symbian, etc...) to use their services as opposed to a competitor (Microsoft for example).

In many countries, the N900 can be had free on contract.

Haha, there's my USA bias there. =P

Maybe the iPhone since Apple has nothing in the way of a similar service, and the iPhone is basically Google's playground. But I seriously doubt it for Symbian or Maemo. This will become Ovi vs. Google on mapping.

Ovi needs to probably address the iPhone and put some of its services there to compete.