been lurking around here for a couple of weeks reading about n900 and maemo. i can upgrade next week and was going to get a htc desire, sell it on ebay and get an n900.

BUT.. the n8 came along. iv been using symbian for ages and am now using a 5800 which has been hacked and modyfied loads of times so thats why i thought about the n900 after reading all what you can do with it on this forum.

but iv also read people saying maemo is dead + nokia are more or less forgetting about it. and stuff about no flash etc.

the only thing about the n8 i would like is the camera, but even that is not too big a deal. i hate capacitive screens and im bored of symbian.

what would you recommend? im not programmer but dont mind modding the little things. i could get n8, sell it and buy n900.

what are the pros + cons of the n900? the only thing swinging me towards the n8 is the camera.

Welcome to the forum. The n900 is a computer first, phone second. So if you would enjoy having a full Linux computer in your pocket, and care only about basic phone functions then it might be for you.

It is not for programmers/devs only, but you should have an interest in tweaking things and be willing to get your hands dirty and learn some new stuff. Maemo is NOT dead and neither is the n900. There is still work being done every day on the open source parts of Maemo and Meego is coming down the pipeline shortly as well.

Also check out this post from Flandry that sums up some of the key issues/concerns about the n900 at the present time:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...034#post842034

I think you answered your own question.

N900 is a computer, and also, a phone... It gives you whatever you need, and from the day I've got it, I don't miss any features, seriously...

I suggest you get and N900... I just need to correct two things you always see in stupid reviews:
1- Processor speed
2- Video Formats it Can Play

The easiest example, is that smartphone championship thing... I think N900 is much more than a spartphone, but even if we think of it as one, it won the championship!

The thing that irks me about the N900 is that there are some things it doesnt do particularly well, and quite a few things it does spectacularly badly..

For the most part, I wish I'd stuck with a symbian phone. There are things I really like about the N900, but it's not a device I'd jump ship to. I program computers for a living, but I rarely open Terminal on this device.


Be really honest with yourself as to what you want it to do. For the most part, coming from an evolved and brilliant phone like the 5800, the N900 will be a disappointment.. If not now, then 2 months down the line when you've filled it with junk and it's running like a dog

In apple's defence, their devices dont do much but what they do do, they do really well. My 32G ipod touch has 7000 songs on it and the UI flies. My N900 has the same 7000 songs on and I cant find a music player that will render the list in anything less than about a minute, if at all. Having to mess about with third party apps for MMS and USSD is a turn off. The GPS is great, but the Maps app is slow to update the screen and cannot be reasonably used for navigating in a car. I'm experiencing random stupidities now that there are several thousand messages in the phone (such as when tapping on a yellow notification it thinks for a while, then the Conversations app quits) and the pain I had to go through to get Mail For Exchange working wasnt worth the waste of my life. The fact that there's no T9, and the device is useless/unusable in one hand is another major sour for me.
All the points mentioned above are done better by the 5800. The one thing this phone does that is brilliant and not done by the 5800 is the way Conversations provides a consistent UI to IM and SMS and the default protocol support out of the box. This is let down by the fact that the virtual keyboard is a complete turd and receiving any SMS or IM jams the whole phone up for several seconds while it works out how to render the yellow swooshing notification.

Take a really hard look at what you use your 5800 for and how you use it.. I can understand the argument about carrying a computer in your pocket.. A supernerd would love such a thing and forgive all it's faults (the major one being it's SLOW) but the rest of us would probably just carry a netbook when we want to and a phone like the 5800 that actually fits in a pocket - the phone does the phone stuff really well, the netbook does the computer stuff really well.. The N900... doesnt really do either very well

If you want slick and are prepared to sacrifice your ultimate flexibility buy a different device

I would have to disagree with this... the n900 does "computer stuff" very well. Since my laptop "broke" in June I have been using it as my primary computer and it has filled in quite admirably. Portability vs. performance I think n900 beats a netbook hands down.

this is why i cant decide. some people saying its slow, really buggy and crap. then someone else says its really good.

I think a good way to describe it is it is like feast or famine sometimes. Some things will make you want to bang your head repeatedly against the wall, but some things will make you go "wow I am really glad I bought this thing".

For me personally, the good has far outweighed the bad

Make a list of everything you do with your 5800 right now..

I own both the N8 and N900. The N900 is a year old device but it's still extremely capable and is already able to run Qt apps designed for Symbian^3. A new MeeGo (Maemo6) device is coming in the next few months. It could be December or January, we don't know. I wouldn't buy the N900 for anything over $300 right now.

The N8 offers vast improvements over previous versions of Symbian but the native browser is my only disappointment after getting used to the N900's MicroB. Thankfully there's Opera Mini that performs excellently and a new QtWebkit browser, the same one that will be default in the N9, is in the works and should be ready in November once the bugs are ironed out.