I've got my N900 last week! Never owned one before! It's my daily phone now. My iPhone 8 still sleeps...

It depends what do you want to achieve with this device? I got mine, when it was young and rocking through the mobile world, then, for a long time I have no use for it, it was only the backup phone.

In nowdays I still use it, when I don't use a n9. I had poor knowledge about unix system before, today it improved significantly as now I have a lot of fun trying new things, learning more about some would say silly stuff I already know. This is good time killer for me. Apply something like stats/overclocks scripts and see how it is working why it is not working and so on.

I got is as my phone most of a time, because carrying 2-3 devices
(Even I still have n9 as close backup) is pointless and I would never recommend for user only as phone today.

No matter, welcome to maemo-n900 wonderland

But what I´m really missing is cutetube (doesn´t work) and an instant messenger, who runs also on android and iOS.

What do you need exactly? There is Pidgin in Extras-Testing repository that supports between others facebook new messanging proctocol.

I'm using Pidgin with Telegram and Facebook messenger plugins. Both work fine to my needs. Telegram plugin supports both sending and receiving photos, Facebook plugin supports just receiving. Also neither support nowadays' fancy Emojis but gives you white squares instead. So if your friends are used to post lot of them, you can only guess if that white square means a heart or a poo.

Cutetube also works. Find a package called cutetube2 (from extras-devel I guess). It works, but sometimes it gives you that "no streams available" -error.

Imho, nowdays n900 is still better suited for social media and day-to-day use. than younger sister n9. n9 lacks supports, maemo;org is now all about n900 and maemo (+Leste). With proper configuration n900 will work with everything but n9 from day to day is fading away.

Only swipe and performance wins over n900

And it is so much more desktop feeling on the road than any mobile!

Just imagine typing an answer here in browser and use ctrl-c, ctrl-v even from just received mail.
Or if you made typos or big mistake (accidentally deleted whole written stuff) just use ctrl-z ...

been using one for four years now.
Pro:
Extremely fond of the keyboard.
I can fix things using a terminal.
Formfaktor (like the landscape).

The BUTs:
Browser showing its age with websites switching to tls 1.3
Camera is showing its age
Device is aging (things get corrupted sometimes)
Speed (in comparison to modern phones)

Would I buy one again? Yes. But when traveling I might get a travel phone as addon to have a modern browser and better maps.

This makes me remember the days of 2010 and it was a long way down from there.

2010-2011 N900

1) all over sudden we had a real desktop in the pocket
2) you were not supposed to be answering all the time, even being present on Skype to most colleagues simply meant that you were stuck to a desktop office PC somewhere (like them)

The struggle of copy-paste, typing control has never been compensated by the speed increase on modern phones IMO but some other people may have adjusted their behavior as we now increasingly see a "never used /needed a desktop generation" running the world.



N900 + Maemo is still the prime example of the best mobile user interface ever.

Confidently HWKB ctrl+c knowing the computer will register this key command beats forced real time touch screen text select and right click any day. No matter how fast the processor making the daily struggle smoother if you want desktop like performance in typing and command input workflow.

And only to remember this point , If I had no N900 today in 2018 I would surely buy one if I could still afford the rising second hand or NOS price.


Not that the Nokia N900 deservese only praise for its many features such as a built in kick stand, It is regretful that while Nokia knew that 1GB was the minimal RAM memory amount for this device yet decided to prevent it becoming the one to rule them all for a long time by putting 256MB and promote 1GB (256MB + Swap) in marketing terms only.


Now listening internet radio stream by the N900 through the FM of a 1970 receiver.
The so called useless features like FM radio broadcast feature nobody needed , remember, just like we did not need IR for our universal remote.
DAB+ is already dead in the water thanks to the N900.