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.