And i have never purchased anything from outside india and friends have told me that after paying the import tax and stuff it would cost almost as much the price here....

P.S. Many people take this for granted..but you'll miss it once you don't have it. The way that Skype (IM, VOIP and Video), GTalk, Yahoo and other IM accounts integrate perfectly with the OS. It's amazing, and one of the most things I missed (and one of the most things I actually took for granted).

With variance in the number of gigabytes and the name of the device, this is a FAQ for all Maemo devices. The answer is that it is not Maemo devices themselves that set the "maximum capacity" figures listed in their specs. It's the timing of their release dates in relation to the advancement of the flash card market.

What I mean is that prior to launch of each device, Nokia has tested and confirmed that, that device works properly with the largest appropriate-format flash card available on the market at that time. That tested capacity is then included in the device's official specs as the maximum supported.

However, Maemo is Linux, and Linux has supported 32 GB cards since 4 GB cards were top of the line. The N900 is no more limited to cards 16 GB and under than the N800 was limited to cards 8 GB and under. Regardless of what the official specs say, the N800, the N810, and the N900 will all happily work with 32 GB cards.

In fact, being Linux-based, Maemo devices will work with cards larger than 32 GB as well, at least, after a fashion. Maemo devices will not support the Microsoft-patented filesystem that ships on, and is built into the official standard for, those cards. There's a for-pay, closed source, binary blob needed for the filesystem, and we don't have it. But should you reformat such a card with a Maemo-friendly filesystem, you'll be able to use it just fine.

And if you're still looking for stories of personal experience, then I can assure you that my N900 happily accepted a 32 GB, Class 2 SanDisk card a few months ago and has worked flawlessly with it ever since.

Thanks for clarifying.. Though i am not sure what for-pay, closed source, binary blob is.... I think i understood the rest of it. If the memory card is formatted in a file system that maemo recognises, it will read it.. right? Just like a pc does? no size limitation...

But then i have another doubt.. Does that mean the memory card has to be formatted for usage? I mean... if i am to use a memory card used in another phone with a different file system, it wud read without formatting right? (i am talking abt smaller size cards... below 8gb?)

Pardon me if the question sounds stupid..

Hi SkyKnight and everyone else on this thread,
I am a N900 owner/lover, however I would urge you to wait for N9 if you can do so. I love my N900 but it's due to Maemo and the community, not so much the hardwre. It's a bit old and not always as fast as I'd like it to be (OC @900). N9 (or whatever is gonna be called) in the other hand should come with a much better hardware spec as far as processing power goes (Intel's Moorestone 1.5-1.8GHz). Maybe if you got some friend or relative living in UK or US who can buy and send it to you...
If you really want a 'smartphone' right now though:
N900 is a tinkerer's phone. If you like playing around with gadgets and feel good after solving problems/challenges or if you like linux or if you are a comuter enthusiast then you will probably love N900. However if you just need a phone that can play videos (xvid,divix,m4v,mkv...) then I would suggest getting a dell streak with it's huge screen I think it's the best phone to watch movies on. Multi-tasking is a minus though compared to maemo where it's epic. About HD video, I never tried on N900 since I don't belive it would work, but correct me if I'm wrong. Dell Streak(2.1) 'played' 720p mkv (1.45GB/30-40min vid) with rockplayer, but it was unwatchable I mean really. But there is really no point to do that anyway, unless you are just lazy to convert, since neither of them got HDMI and it won't look any better on it's screen. N900 is being picky about codecs? Yes, to my experience, but it will play the (nonHD) videos anyway and it's going to be still watchable. And when a video file is not loud enough you can still give it a little boost with ALSA mixer. That's prvided you weren't the one who converted it
Native games for N900 maybe don't have the best garphics out there compared to other brands, but in exchange you get endless tinkering and the possibility to costumize everything that you could think of. If this is what you seek you won't need games anyway:P
You said there is no 3G or mobile internet in your area( It's something I could hardly be without now.
I think Maemo(and OSS) is way ahead of it's time, but it's also late, because todays avarage computer/phone users think youtube is the internet (no offence). If you pick N900 and you like it, you can give a shot to Linux on your desktop as well. If you are a windows user the
easiest and safest way is:
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ub...dows-installer
Podcasts are great way to learn more if you are interested, you can try to search for Going Linux or Linux Reality in any podcatcher or search engine.
Note that everithing written here is solely my opinion, anyone is welcome to express theirs or to correct me if they feel like.

I am sorry to disagree on this. But I would not get an iPhone just because it's got tons of apps. So does Android. I hate the fact that I need iTunes to copy anythinig on my phone, which restricts me from copying anything I want. I hate that I need iTunes store for updating my firmware with an active internet connection. I hate that I can't roll back to previous version, since Apple dosen't sign it. I don't always want to sync my phone. Quite frankly iPhone for me means iPrison.

I guess the OP already got its answer, but nevertheless.

I'm right now sharing my 3G connection in my N900 over wlan (using mobilehotspot) to my laptop, to jump my ubuntu installation over two versions to Meerkat. The only reason I'm doing it this way is to piss the living hell out of my operator Sonera (whom I fervently hate).

Recently, Ive found I don't really have enough time to tinker with my N900, and that makes me really sad. It would be nice to test properly new apps, write bug reports & suggestions for improvement. Alas, I'm sliding more and more towards just discarding an app that doesn't work perfectly for me.

As for maemo being obsolete, I'd disagree. After one year, it's starting to feel mature now. It's almost like having had the phone for a year without being able to fully use it. The N9, or whatever the meego flagship will be named, will no doubt have its own issues, and it might well take yet another year before this community has made it into a usable platform. So in that respect, I'd recommend you ignore the people telling you to wait, and just buy the N900.

I just checked the official specs, and for some weird reason, it really seems to read mc limit is 16GB. Which is really funny, because nokia makes it's own brand of memory cards, and I'm pretty sure the MU-45 32GB was out before the N900. Also, the official Nokia accessory lists had listed a lot of phones as 32GB-compatible already a year before (sorry, no source, I just know). In any case, as some have already said, you should be able to use any mc of any capacity made available later.

I also applaud for your efforts to do research in advance. It seems a lot of people here (the whiners) didn't do that. In any case, be prepared, that a of of things won't work out-of-the-box. Finding a satisfactory solution might take hours of googling, tweaking and swearing. In the end, it might still not work, at least not the way you'd want. On the other hand, with other platforms, you'd never have the chance to try - either it's there or it's not.

To conclude, if you are the patient sort of guy (which I am not, but my apparent masochism seems to work out, too), this is a phone for you. Otherwise, don't bother.

+4 on that
It's a wholly new idea of communicating. I want to communicate with a person say chris. I find him and I see if he's available and on what network. I dont have to open a dosen IM apps to find out. It also cuts the costs of SMS when you see the other guy is online on say MSN. And a skype call is just like a regular one. It's in the logs, no app required to be running, and video call is one click away.
As memory is concerned.
N-gage reported max 128mb --> successfully tried 1gb
N95 2gb --> me 8gb, others 16gb
so the nokia max is just on the safe side it doesn't mean bigger wont work