It was a phone that gave you Linux. While I don't gauge that as success as future Linux phones, I do gauge it as the response one gets from selling a Linux pocket tablet with bad other functionality.

I believe that if right now I build a Windows box that runs Hildon over it and make the platform run all N900 app base via recompiling with target=NdiOS, 90% of the users wouldn't even notice, let alone be bothered by it, let alone sway them into purchasing an HTC.

My point being, in a phone/tablet/whatever, it's more important to have a nice feature list, apps and whatnot than the OS in itself. While a few want a phone that has a true-debian CLI to it, that is NOT the bulk of the users, that stuff Nokia's pockets.

As for the x86 phone, they all fail because it's not yet possible. Battery to power such a device needs to be large, and that means more miniaturization in the components, which isn't available right now. That doesn't stop it from becoming the Holy Grail of mobile computing.

This far, phones have going forward, and have done so by embedding more and more of the functionality a user needs. First calls, the text, then chat, internet, alarm. Then organizer, and so on. Now they embedded the PDA functionality and the PNA functionality. The more they do, the more valuable they become to the user because we no longer need to carry an internet tablet, a video camera, a picture camera and so on.

Right now what we miss is being able to do basic tasks a laptop does. And by that I mean office functionality and running apps we run at work. Since those aren't going to be ported to ARM any time soon, we need to bring phones to netbooks.

Either that or netbooks will be so small you can carry in pocket and hold to ear, same deal.

Finally, XP might not be the ideal setup for a portable. However, by the time this all goes portable, W7 or W8 or whatever will be optimized or portable to the extent where this becomes realistic.

A small laptop in high energy efficiency mode (minimal screen, no gaming, SSD, scheduling), goes as long as 4 hours online. Yes the battery is as big as N900 if not bigger, but I don't think this is unachievable, especially since I don't see myself upgrading the N900 any time soon. Also, since it's going to be portable, limited motherboard and CPU features will be made available. Just as now you can't compare 10W peak consumption from a netbook to my 200W idle consumption on my desktop, things will be more efficient as we go along.

Tech is already going well. E.g. a memory chip dedicated to hibernation for 256M isn't huge and could restore an OS in 1-2 seconds. N900 takes that long to ring now.

Plus, N900 isn't exactly large. I could live with even bigger.

Also, if it gets enough fine tuning that it gets 4 hours of usage and 12 hours standby, that's enough to hit the market.

I guess I want a small laptop. Don't you?