I still have my N9 and N900, but I understand getting something new, too. I have had the HTC One for over a month and it is an absolute dream. Smart, beautiful, fast, fantastic community over at XDA Developers, high quality apps (no more amateur hour unless you want), great sound, display, and camera. This is my top recommendation.

I also had a BlackBerry Z10, which is very good, but not the superphone that the HTC One is. Not at all.

I would go for one of the newer/most popular devices like the Nexus and Galaxy line since the new OSes like Firefox OS and Ubuntu Phone can be installed on them.

I just wanna pop up from silence to slap ya for mentioning MIUI (joking here ). We're talking customization and open-ness here and MIUI keeps too much things to itself (theme takes real money, services too localized for Chinese...)
I'm a Chinese and lives in China myself, but despite MIUI's saying it's "the best OS for Chinese", I still find myself sticking to CM on most occasions because they are totally open and updates FAST!
==========Off-Topic above===========
Having looked through all the suggestions that had been made, I'd say that somebody will regret picking up a sizable phone like a Galaxy Mega... I recently awarded myself a Nexus 4, but just 4.7 inches of screen is enough to make the phone wobbly in hands when I browse the web and text with two hands, let alone single hand operations. And Samsung turns people off with its endless variations of one model (each gets minimum support, you are warned) and plastic shells. So from what's available now, picking up an HTC New One (Google Edition optional) or Xperia Z/ZU could be the flagship choice.
And mind sharing what's actually available for ya? I reckon not all flagships we're talking about are feasible for your plans...

I would have gone for the Nexus 4 or the Xperia Z

Ayyy that S4 seems cool from what I here

I went to a Nexus 4 a few months ago. Lovely phone. It doesn't have any extras on top of Android so is nice and clean and Google seem to provide updates regularly. I'm also on a SIM only contract and the overall cost is significantly less than going with the so-called "free" phones on contracts...

However, I killed it (dropped it corner first on a hard floor and the screen shattered). I went back to my N900. I thought I would be frustrated but I actually feel liberated. I feel so much more in control of the N900 than I ever did with the Nexus. Having 'tor' and not relying on Google for anything is reassuring (from a privacy point of view). With thumb, the system is much more responsive. I will be sticking with my N900 for the forseeable future. I only wish it had a bigger screen...

My "Dream Phone" is a actual Sony Samsung or HTC top device but with MeeGo as OS. The Android Phones have Top Hardware but Android sucks its Stonetime of Mobile Os......

or a Nokia Lumia 925 with MeeGo. I test a Lumia 925 one Day resume phantastic Hardware but WP is sh.t

Things I'm so sick of about the N9 and Elop the scumbag blocking the fixes on this by killing it.

1)Portrait only apps that play the stupid phone tricks game, "nanny nanny boo boo you can't close me!"

2) As soon as I double tap and open the phone and start to browse It always decides this is the most perfect time to do a feed update totally blocking all of my browsing by my choking my bandwidth.

3) Super slow rotation response.

4) Bait and switch CPU choice speed: It appears to be the proper cpu speed but the CPU speed is perfectly chosen to be slow enough that it constantly happens that the very millisecond that you get fed up on getting your command executed and touch the screen something else appears underneath your finger sending you off to something else wasting even more of your time. This is the result of Elop scumbag blocking updates defunding any competition to Microhard failure.

5) I cannot scroll the feeds without constantly hitting them as links.
6) Clicking on a feed item that is a facebook item results in no further information than what I just saw. That is extremely annoying, yet it takes up 3 minutes more of my time even though it results in nothing.

7) Scrolling does not work all the time on feed or native browsing, it is non responsive, except all of a sudden it is responsive sending you at superman speed all the way to the bottom of the page. I cannot function like that.

8) The native browser has no flash yet a huge amount of websites use it from hulu to cnn to everything else that matters in life including my bank (yet you weirdos somehow think I should not have flash) and this forces me to use the firefox browser which is super super super slow - up to 8 minues to load my bank home page on a 5 bars 3.5g connection- super unacceptable. My work break is only 10 minutes.

9) The battery false dieing issue: I just rebooted it and now it says it is at 20 something percent but yet you just told me it was dead.

10) Opening maps will crash your phone telling you that you have no battery left once you get to 30% battery area.

11) Opening facebook pics from feed simply does not work even on wifi. It just does not work. It is a lottery, once in a while it may work. Other times it seems it is downloading every single picture from the persons facebook portfolio you clicked on and will not let you see that specific picture until it downloads the whole library of photos from that person.
12) US Tmobile - You show 5 bars 3.5g as soon as I try to do something (browse a website or anything) it will minus atleast 3 bars, so that is fraud.
13) Double tap to open many times does not work, have to press power button
*more tired now going to sleep
Can't wait so much time for sailfish, it's just way too long wait time even though I like everything about it plus wayland.

I think I will get htc one.

1)Portrait only apps that play the stupid phone tricks game, "nanny nanny boo boo you can't close me!"

Didn't understand this, you mean you can't get apps to close by swiping down?

2) As soon as I double tap and open the phone and start to browse It always decides this is the most perfect time to do a feed update totally blocking all of my browsing by my choking my bandwidth.

Check your feed update settings, I have never seen this problem on either of my phones. By design nature all OS do this to some extend, as it is more power friendly to do those kind of task once simultaneously and stai idle most of the time rather than doing them one by one all the time staying active

3) Super slow rotation response.

Use N9QuickTweak to solve this.

4) Bait and switch CPU choice speed: It appears to be the proper cpu speed but the CPU speed is perfectly chosen to be slow enough that it constantly happens that the very millisecond that you get fed up on getting your command executed and touch the screen something else appears underneath your finger sending you off to something else wasting even more of your time. This is the result of Elop scumbag blocking updates defunding any competition to Microhard failure.

Didn't understand this either.

5) I cannot scroll the feeds without constantly hitting them as links.

I also experience this. But this has to do with our scrolling technique. My GF never has this problem.

6) Clicking on a feed item that is a facebook item results in no further information than what I just saw. That is extremely annoying, yet it takes up 3 minutes more of my time even though it results in nothing.

True. However, in a sense this is a design choice. What if the feed view is just meant to give you quick, twitter like, info and and the Idea is that if you want more you use the browser for example? At least for me this feels natural choice.

7) Scrolling does not work all the time on feed or native browsing, it is non responsive, except all of a sudden it is responsive sending you at superman speed all the way to the bottom of the page. I cannot function like that.

YES, this is really annoying! But I have never held a handheld device that does not do this occasionally.

8) The native browser has no flash yet a huge amount of websites use it from hulu to cnn to everything else that matters in life including my bank (yet you weirdos somehow think I should not have flash) and this forces me to use the firefox browser which is super super super slow - up to 8 minues to load my bank home page on a 5 bars 3.5g connection- super unacceptable. My work break is only 10 minutes.

This is annoying. Even though it definitely is not that much better, you do use Nightly versions of Firefox? They are at least somewhat better. Also, at least in my country banks offer special pages designed for mobile devices. Try find out if you bank does that as well.

9) The battery false dieing issue: I just rebooted it and now it says it is at 20 something percent but yet you just told me it was dead.

Don't reboot, use N9QuickTweak options to refresh the battery meter

10) Opening maps will crash your phone telling you that you have no battery left once you get to 30% battery area.

Hmm, never experienced this.

11) Opening facebook pics from feed simply does not work even on wifi. It just does not work. It is a lottery, once in a while it may work. Other times it seems it is downloading every single picture from the persons facebook portfolio you clicked on and will not let you see that specific picture until it downloads the whole library of photos from that person.

This is true and annoying. I personally have stopped using the stock facebook and just always use browser and the m.facebook.com version.


12) US Tmobile - You show 5 bars 3.5g as soon as I try to do something (browse a website or anything) it will minus atleast 3 bars, so that is fraud.

Yea, this is a weir thing. It must have something to do with how this phone communicates with the carrier. I changed from carrier A, to B here in Finland. And my reception got so bad, that I actually had to change back to A. All this even in city areas where reception for both networks had to be equal.

13) Double tap to open many times does not work, have to press power button

Don't use this, so can't really say anything. My GF never has reported this though.

*more tired now going to sleep
Can't wait so much time for sailfish, it's just way too long wait time even though I like everything about it plus wayland.

I think I will get htc one.

Why go backwards, set your sights to future. N9, with all its falls, was such a great promise about better OS than iSuckOS or Android that I believe with child like faith that Sailfish and Ubuntu are gonna rock the future.

Hang in there a little while longer

As I mentioned in the beginning of the thread, that time has arrived that I upgrade, I have to choose between Lumia 1020 or GS4, as much as I love Nokia products, I just may take the Android first time in my life...... Having used my friend's Note II for some days, the availability of Apps and Speed really got me hooked..... Especially Banking Apps which I use the most in business.... Now I noticed Lumia still lacks this type of Apps, I love the camera though.... And I don't have enough faith in Jolla, banking apps etc..