There are a few things with my N900/Maemo 5 that bug me and I'm trying to figure out how to change:
1. The camera app starts when the slider is opened. This may be a feature, but it bugs me, especially when I want to use the Flashlight app.
Any way to disable this? Or, better yet, make it so that when the camera slide is open, a light-press on the Camera button turns on the flashlight, a full-press(second click) starts up the Camera app(currently, light-press starts the camera app)?
Partially answered, thanks to nicolai:
2. Auto-brightness adjustment with ambient light. This is supposedly a feature, but it bothers me, especially as I often cover the light sensor with my hand partially, resulting in the screen brightness changing as I'm trying to use it.


3. Is there any way to tie the proximity sensor into the activity detector? As it is now, after 2mins(or 30-seconds, depending), the screen dims and shuts off a few second later. This is fine for most things, but when reading ebooks or playing games, its kind of a pain occasionally.
If the proximity sensor was tied into it, then, so long as the screen was on, simply moving your hand in front of it would "reset" the clock, allowing you to continue working on it without pressing a key/clicking somewhere and potentially doing something you didn't intend.
Is there any way of doing this?


4. Application-based minimum- and maximum-CPUspeed. There are a cuple of tools out there for changing the CPU speed limits, but none that I can see are application-based - In that when X is running, it has a limit of say 250mhz. When Y is running, a minimum of 500mhz.
Why is this needed? Flash player, and a couple other apps seem to be "nice" loads, and don't keep the CPU speed high enough to render all frames.
So, often when playing a flash file, the CPU will downclock to 250mhz, resulting in 10fps or less operation. If its manually locked higher, the framerates are a lot better. On the other side of the equation, games and emulators often keep the CPU higher than it needs to be, resulting in more power being used than needed.
I know this can be done with a shell-script, but are there any user-made tools that can do this?


5. Has anyone built a camera application that allows the flash to be in "torch" mode during video filming(or picture-targeting)? It seems like a nice feature, the hardware is there, but I haven't seen anything that does this(but I'm new to Maemo, so...)
Answered, thanks to ossipena: http://maemo.org/packages/view/lfocus/

6. Is there any way to "force" the charging-chip to charge at a set rate, even when the USB port its connected to hasn't allowed it to?
I have a few out-of-spec USB ports that I know I can draw 1A+ from, but the N900 will only charge at 500mA because thats all it was allowed to.
Also, I have a laptop with powered USB ports even when shut down, but the N900 won't charge from them. I know a device -can- charge from them at at least 500mA, as I had another device that did, but as its presumably not responding to power-requests, the N900 won't charge.
So, is there a file somewhere in the system that can be echo'd to that allows forcing, or messing with the allowed charge rate?
Edit: -other- than a USB-cable hack, which A, would make it charge at full rate(not a user-defined rate), and B, precludes any USB-transfer activity while it's being used.
Not really possible: It seems that this is dealing with the BME module, which is closed source. The only solutions for this would deal with replacing BME with a script or trying a Mitm-style attack to force the charging chip into a specific mode with the BME still there.

Thanks,

-Rob

http://maemo.org/packages/view/lfocus/

in the file /etc/X11/Xsession.post/17camera-ui
comment out the line

/usr/bin/dsmetool -t /usr/bin/camera-ui


And reboot. This prevents starting the camera app in the
background. You can still start the camera application
with the camera icon.

regards
Nicolai

yep, purchase a short usb male to female extension cable, then solder carefully the center pins on one end. Shorting the data wires fools the n900 into thinking its connected to a wall charger. I use such a trick to fast charge from a laptop usb port.

See: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38230

Well, thanks but not quite what I was looking for.
Yes, it would work, to some extent, but I was really looking for a software-control(There -has- to be an interface to the battery chip after all) - a hack like this would charge at full charger-rate, which may be too much for some sources, and also precludes any USB-transfer.