The problem with the N900 isn't the hardware. It is Nokia. Let us look at the history of this product line.

In the beginning was the N770. And it had promise. It shipped with OS2005 and was updated to OS2006. Most apps needed modification for this upgrade before they would run.

Then development moved on to the new N800 and N810 leaving N770 owners behind. Plausible arguments were advanced that the N770's pitiful 64M ram would hold up progress. OS 2006(?), OS2007 and OS 2008 were all released for this series, all requiring at least a careful testing of existing apps and many requiring at least some work. Later OS2007 Hacker Edition was produced by the community to almost bring N770 owners back into the loop.

But here is where red flag #1 goes up. Nokia never allowed some of the closed bits to be made available for the N770 OS 2007 HE. Unimportant, minor things like Flash Player. Then flag #2 went up. Turns out the closed WiFi driver and/or closed firmware for the N770 has a fatal bug that renders the WiFi useless in the presence of an 802.11n AP in range. Reread that, not won't associate with an N AP, won't associate with ANY access point if an N unit is in range. Nokia closed that bug as WONTFIX and since the WiFi is all closed source it isn't likely to ever be fixed. In other words a forced retirement of the hardware.

So now we get to the N900. It runs a new OS version that isn't expected to officially be released for any previous hardware and isn't reported to be very binary compatible forward or backward. And it is already an orphan before it officially ships since it is still largely GTK based and a death march is already underway to have everything Qt based by the next release.

So if you have a Maemo app you need to support a lot of incompatible versions that require a minimum of three hardware platforms to test whether it actually works or abandon some or all users. In actual practice it means your choices as a user are to ride the hardware upgrade treadmill or find a different platform.

In the past that was expensive but possible, now the platform is also a phone and most carriers require long term contacts. An obvious problem presents itself.

interesting, yes, i am interested with tethering too

My biggest concern with the N900 is the build quality quite a lot of Noika phones are cheap plastic casing.... N96 etc...

The screen look good and so does the keyboard... but will it stand up to day to day life??

I think id prefer an all metal case (or near as).....

Its probably going to come down to Sony's X10 and Nokias N900 the Droid I am thinking maybe not..

The N770 that I had a couple of years ago only lasted a few weeks... screen died... (was gutted)....

I've owned an N800 and traveled extensively with just this device, no laptop. The lack of screen real estate really did matter to me. I didn't realize how limiting that was. Since it was just $220 and netbooks didn't exist when I bought it, I don't feel bad.

Skype worked great - wouldn't change a thing.
Audio playback could be improved with more intuitive forward and back controls. There was never an issue with codec support, since mplayer is available.
Video playback worked well, provided the screen size is acceptable and really high bitrate videos were resized down from HiDef resolutions. The faster CPU should help with that. Normal 640x480 TV shows with xvid encoding were never an issue.

Thumbing emails wasn't a big deal. It really was amazing how useful that is. I can't talk about the keyboard, only used the N800 or Blackberry keyboards.

Sadly, most people will find a 9" netbook really is a better answer for remote admin tasks. You aren't going to touch up photo or edit audio on this device. The multiple windows and copy/paste between xterms is just too productive over a stylist copy/paste effort an internet tablet requires. Mutt use is excellent with remoted in to a server. Clam Email/IMAPS is also extremely useful.

I love my N800. The price for it wasn't too high and alternatives were more costly at the time. That isn't the case anymore. The best part of these Nokias is all the Linux software that runs under Maemo, for free. At $650, the N900 has a fairly steep price of entry, then add the $40/month data plan. If you don't want the monthly data cost get an N810.

How does one backup data on the phone? Can it be restored to a factory install?
Calendar and contact syncing?
Can the contacts app access an LDAP phone book?
Howto install third party applications.
Connecting to a local network via wifi, bluetooth and other.
Can one attach peripherals such as a keyboard, screen or USB key?
SSH/X forwarding to and from the N900.
Using third party calendar apps like Kalendar and Remind.
Security (e.g Iptables, snort, file and disk encryption).
Customizing desktops.

That terminal is absolutely boner-inducing. If the phone wasn't $600 or didn't require a $30/month data plan on top of my normal service, even if I only wanted to use wifi, I'd get it in a second! I wish some company would realize that this is what the masses want and produce something that was cost-effective for your average joe.

By the way, Kyle, Ctrl-Shift-P takes a screenshot, Ctrl-Shift-X opens XTerm and Ctrl-Backspace opens the dashboard.

Sorry if it is a noob question but i have no linux experience. How did you use chat on terminal windows? is it irc? if it is how do you access it from terminal?

Nice review , now the main problem is the release date , 3 delays already :(

I'll do my best to cover any Linuxy questions you have about the N900 in my full review so please keep posting them here (or you can email me at lj@greenfly.net).

Maybe somebody knows: Is the core network layer of this mobile accessible to programmers ?