Yes, that's what the 1EUR top-ups are for, and in the unlikely case the project would have to get discontinued, "equal refund" means everybody receives same xx% of what they paid (prolly would be fair to say: "plus accrued interest, for early donors")

cheers
jOERG.

I finally got around to placing my down payment today. It just occurred to me that by using my voucher, it might have affected my accrued interest for the remaining months. You've been very fair so I'm guessing that it hasn't affected it but it would be nice to have a confirmation.

18 months have already passed since the fund raiser launched. If you placed a donation of €100 in November 2013, that's €42.82 interest right now. I'm kind of gutted that I didn't place a bigger donation back then.

http://neo900.org/pre-orders-and-vouchers
Please consider which questions/comments actually rather should go to the "Shop Questions" thread

Down payment done. Now I can't wait. I want my Neo900. I've dreamt about it for too long.

I chose the LTE EU version, but that's really too bad that there is no LTE EU version with GSM compatibility in the US. I don't mind losing Internet network when travelling if the loss is just for a few countries, but GSM, that's really too bad.

(And when we think that I'll be afraid of using it because of its price, to frightening to forget a €1130 phone in a bar after too much drinks...!)

That's so true and actually for me the design/choice of bands lacks any logic. Technically I see no reason why the PLS8-E can't do 850/1900 GSM. For all I can guess it's just a question of the "rules" implemented in modem firmware, so I still keep a little bit of hope for a firmware update fixing that issue.

Let's hope and cross fingers then... !

(Just in case, does being head of the Neo900 project facilitate the communication with them for asking? )

Afair a year ago Sebastian said something about Testing. It would also be the logical choice as it kind of balances the need for quick development that a new device needs with the relative ease some users might need to handle it.

Sort of. It's still Arm. So it would be as "normal" as Debian/armhf can get.
This basically means a light desktop like LXDE, Xfce or some WM of your choice without HW acceleration (so certainly no Gnome) and some software that's missing in the arm ports (e.g. Chromium).
We might even be able to borrow some software from the PYRA or RPi repos. So don't count Chromium out completely yet, if that matters to you.

Yes.

Easy Debian has to struggle with some additional limitations, the biggest being (not sorted):
1. low RAM for Debian ON TOP of Maemo
2. Maemo's outdated foundation (running Jessie on Kernel 2.6.28 is like building an F1 car on a 2CV chassis)
3. my incompetence

None of that will apply to Debian on the Neo900. If you want to get a better impression on how it could run, try DebiaN900 [1] on your N900 and multiply the performance by a factor of 1.5 (that is as long as your N900 RAM is not full). It's roughly on par with a fast Pentium II running a current Debian. You'll have to stick with lightweight software, but if you do that you should be able to reach a decent performance for simple office tasks.

You'll notice some other problems in DebiaN900 however:
1. No phone support.
2. Very poor battery runtime for a mobile device (6h idle).

I think the phone issue will get sorted out, if the existing problems of the fso suite in Debian can be solved. Shortly before the Jessie release it didn't play well with Systemd I think.
The battery problem might be no problem on the Neo900 at all. Everything we need is a kernel that supports S2RAM.


[1] http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=93878

Please note that Neo900 UG will ship boards and devices with a Board Support Package only. See http://neo900.org/specs
We might provide an OS installer that allows user to pick from the list of known-to-us distros, then downloads and installs one (or multiple) of them. Invariably those distros will be provided by community, not by Neo900 UG and we only support those projects, not lead them or take responsibility for them.
Neo900 UG particularly fosters FPTF and provides developer hardware for the project. Dos1 personally picked up on the duty to help SHR onto Neo900. For other alternatives please see http://neo900.org/#about

This approach guarantees that no closed development results will ever get distributed by Neo900 UG company and thus everything must stay open enough so there's no lockin or obsolescence/bitrot whatsoever.

PS: please note that >>Everything we need is a kernel that supports S2RAM.<< is NOT recommended approach for OMAP platforms, they have zeroclock and should never enter suspend state. That's what maemo fremantle is all about, and one of the main reasons for FPTF, besides the huge number of apps ready-to-use waiting in the maemo-extras(*) repo(s)

I've been really thinking about this since my last post and the conclusion is that I need a Neo900. If I want to continue browsing the web, check my emails and use the GPS, I will have to buy a Neo900, as a "dumb" phone can't do that and all the alternatives on the market are Android, iOS, RimOS and Windows Phone and those aren't an option for me. Even SailfishOS doesn't fully correspond to what I would like.

So I guess I am back in, even if I will have to borrow some money from friends to get one. I will make my down payment in a week or so, hope it will not be too late.
@joerg_rw any deadline on this?

I only have one doubt... I am not a developer (I only know some really basic bash scripting to do what I need), I am just a Linux user that prefer to learn and use Linux systems and software rather than Windows, Mac or the equivalent on mobile. Knowing that there will be less than 500 Neo900s made and some of those will be bought by someone like me (without any developing knowledge) I am afraid that there will not be enought developpers to have a stable, easy to setup and to use system with software full of features and without (or at least as few as possible) bugs and vulnerabilities.

I am willing to read and learn more, but I think that the most essential functions of the phone (like calls, sms and maybe other things) should work out of the box without having the user configure something really complex. For the other thinks not as vital, I am willing to "get my hands dirty".

I hope that I will not be disappointed by the Neo900, be it hardware or software.

Great!
No deadline at all, very late orders may have poor chances to really catch their piece of cake, but so far we not even started ordering the N900 which is next to happen and one of the riskiest components regarding repeatability of sourcing. You got a couple more of weeks to jump on the first train still.
Basically so am I There *will* be working easy to install OS images. See my above post about BSP. Keep in mind that the Neo900 is built to be compatible (as much as possible) to N900.

cheers
jOERG