My N900 packed up a few months ago, Nokia gave me a E7.
I tried to like it and to be honest it was not bad compared to a normal phone, but against a n900, rubbish.
I've just ordered a replacement N900 from ebay. $220 ish plus shipping. I looked long and hard at the other phones on the market and some of them looked good, like the Atrix but the n900 is just so flexible. Before mine stopped charging I'd over clocked it up to 850Mhz and it was running smooth and fast tri boot with power kernel and Android just to see what all the fuss was about. I've been without it for about 4 months and I can't want to get another. I think I'll get a desktop battery charger so I don't have to use the USB. Using WiFi, NFS, DLNA and a 32GB class 10 flash card it easy enough to get content on and off the device. If I can get another 12-18months out of it, maybe someone will have something close to its functionality.
It looks like Android is the next best thing, but the n900 is still the one for me.

On the subject of contact rates, I dropped mine by £20 a month when I went out of contact, it worth just buying the handset at that rate and just topping up rate as required.

In the same boat here, up for a contract renewal in January. Needs to have a flip out keyboard, an preferably dual core.

Live in the UK so don't get any of the awesome phones out in the US

There is no choice outside of Android and IOS space but N900, N9 is there as well but lacks hardware kbd.

Personally, I didn't want to repeat buy n900 and did not wanted to spend a lot of money and the only other potential choice was Android and I bought a Huawei X3 for $99, it does everything that and expensive SGSII does, bit slow but doesn't bother, smaller screen but I use it as a hotspot for touchpad so no issues.

I still have the N900 but currently using the Galaxy Note.
It's the perfect niche device for people like me. =P

1280x800 res makes for amazing web browsing experience, it's super fast, the Wacom based digitizer stylus makes it very special and it's pretty much the best phone right now in terms of media consumption. (ebooks, comics, videos etc etc) Everyone at my work were very impressed and now quite a few of them are going to get one.

count me in. i guess i stay with my n900 until it breaks down. hopefully there is some phone to replace it in a year or so

Ended up going with an E7 for the missus when her contract was up in the summer. Definately the only decent qwerty landscape device out there. Only issues which would put me off is the lack of storage expandability, and the display resolution. Either sim-free or on a cheap short 12 month contract would make for a decent device. Still plently of life in Symbian contrary to media opinion.

I know a few people with Iphones and WP7 devices, and the WP seem to be better received over the longer term unless the Apple owner is a serious fanboi... Find posts from a few days ago on the N900 V E7 thread about WP. Almost made me think about one!

It is a massive shame that phone choice has almost evaporated to the point that all you can get is a slab with varying OSs, or Blackberry, and I would never drop my own cash on one of those PoS (I have one for work btw).

Bro, do the USB solder mod. you will never need worry about your USB again!

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/79391/

How's that Windows OS looking now Nokia?

Keeping my N900 for good, regardless of whether I ever buy another phone or not. It is such a useful mini-computer even without phone or data.

I had the galaxy s2. I dumped the piece if crap after 4 weeks.
I went and got an iPhone 4s. I still have my N900 for all my nerdy uses.
The galaxy crashed as much as my n900 (which, like many of you, crashes constantly).

Well there's only one worthy successor to the N900 (and the N950 doesn't count because you can't get it):

The SG NOTE.

-The fastest SoC (cpu, gpu and ram) available
-The highest resolution (1280x800) screen in any mobile device (not counting the Grid10)
-The "best screen" because of the battery drain, viewing angles, deep blacks and good colour reproduction, and ten-point multitouch
-The largest screen'd phone... at 5.3" photos, movies and games are pleasant and virtual typing is bearable.
-Did I say Apps and heaps of customizations?
-It has all the modern connectivities (NFC and LTE pending on future version)
-It has an N-Trig/active digitizer pen "S Pen"
-It's very light and fairly compact still fits into my pockets!
-Excellent call quality, earpiece, loudspeaker, radio signals, battery life etc etc

I think there will be a Ubuntu (chroot) port to it, and perhaps a proof-of-concept-MeeGo-port too