At first I was like WHAAAAA...? I CAN'T HAZ N900 v2.0?

But when the initial shock subsided and saw the first few videos, I began to warm to it, or at least suspend my doubts. A lot of what I loved on the N900 is still there: open source OS under the hood, seemingly excellent multitasking and browser.

Of course, there's a lot that left a sour taste in my mouth: no hardware keyboard, no real desktop, and a lot of missing hardware tidbits (FM transmitter, HDMI etc). It also seems less focused on power-usery, hacky stuff.

What remains to be seen is how hackable the device is. A slick UI does not preclude raw linux love, and if I can root it, hack it, and change it to my liking, if I see great open source, geeky apps in repositories, then I think I can love that phone. I have to see that UI up close and personal before I make conclusions though.

Frankly, I think that if there were no Maemo, if all we had to live by was android, ios, bb and webOS, we'd be having multiple geeky orgasms by now. I expect it to be the most hackable current OS bar none (excluding maemo of course).

The N900 has been a class of its own. Unfortunately, its awesome nerdiness means that it scarred the average customer away. If done well, a compromise between nerdiness and ease of use can make both equally correct and complete: you have a nice layer of smooth UI goodness on top, and an infinitely hackable OS chugging underneath. WebOS proved it can be done.

Edit: forgot to say, the only thing I definitely, absolutely hate with the heat of a thousand suns is the non-removable battery. Why? WHY?!