A Maemo Phone vs an Android Phone would depend a lot on the specifics.

5 row keyboard vs 3 row keyboard? 5 row wins. a 4 row like the HTC Fortress would be acceptable. Other 4 rows would beat a 3 row, but not a 5 row. The N810 keyboard also loses for bad ergonomics. Not sure if "no keyboard at all" beats a 3 row keyboard or not... In fact, I might just consider the 3 row keyboard to be about as useful as no physical keyboard at all.

Full Linux machine vs Android Apps? Not sure. There are one or two Android apps that I am STRONGLY attached to, and having everything sync seemlessly with my outside contacts/calendar matters a lot too (a constant annoyance I had with the NIT; if it had just had SyncML for contacts and calendar, it would have been a HUGE improvement).

2007/8007 OS GUI vs Android GUI? Android. Dunno about the Maemo 5 GUI.

3.5" screen vs 4.1" screen? While I would prefer 4.1", it turns out the apps, keyboard, and UI matter more to me than the screen size.

Battery life? like the screen, it matters, but not as much as the apps and ergonomics (keyboard and GUI).

Dpad vs trackball vs none: Dpad > trackball > nothing.

WWAN: I'm not willing to carry two pocketables. So, a NIT would have to AT LEAST have data and work well with Google Voice. But I'm not sure if that'd be good enough or not, I'd have to experiment for a bit, first.


A 4.1" Maemo device (shaped like the N97 or Mako) with 5 row keyboard, Dalvik (for running android apps), decent photo camera (usable with Android apps that scan bar codes), USB Host+OTG for peripherals, micro-DVI-I out, USB Client for charging/data-sync, 3.5mm headset jack, micro-SDHC, full GSM/WCDMA phone capability, and 8+ hours of usable battery life? I'd _have_ to buy that. That would just about be my dream pocketable.

The leaked design here? ... I don't know. It's possible. Depends on what I'd do about those one or two Android apps that I truly love. It would be a tough choice. I might buy it just because I don't want a Maemo phone to fail, and just to try it out (swap my SIM card back and forth). But, just adding Dalvik to it would probably push me off of the fence and into the "must buy" category.

If I didn't buy it, or end up using it regularly, I expect the biggest reason would be it's design, not its specs. Like I said before, it's just too plain, and I would be annoyed by the lack of dpad, and I HATE the idea of a 3 row keyboard.

There's a slim chance that it could be due to just _one_ app on my G1 if I can't find a similar way to replicate its functionality on Maemo. (it's a diet related app, that has made my life a LOT easier, and while I can do 99% of it via any web browser, the one thing the G1 lets me do, which makes things amazingly convenient ... is scan a food item's bar code, and just tell it how many servings of that I ate, and at which meal ... and that's it, it's recorded for me; but, I find I'm needing to scan things less and less, as the library grows, so maybe I could switch to only using the web interface via _any_ device, not just a Maemo phone). Faced with a Maemo phone, in the wild (not just leaked), I'd have to figure out just how much that barcode scanning really mattered to me, and how much that need was changing over time.

So, as with any real, non-trivial, question ... the answer to "N900 vs G1" is "it depends". Unless that dream pocketable comes along, it would be a complex choice that I'd need to really weigh carefully.