Ditto. My GSM hardware packed up and I wasn't confident about attempting the spring fix, so I got a replacement n900 from eBay (boxed with cables and headphones and in brilliant condition, for less the 70 quid including postage and a 32GB SD card!) and am pondering how to set the old one up as some sort of server.

Same.
Well, a Neo900 if/when it's available...

That's what I said, (follow the link)..

Currently using my N9 as a primary phone until my n900 is fixed (USB broken, not a dealbreaker, but my slide is now also stuck and that makes it much more unusable).

N9 for phone/twitter and offline maps/GPS and as a bluetooth PAN server. Tether to iPod touch, Nexus 7, and laptop(when i need to).

My main profile is N9 and iPod touch together. All the commercial apps plus a real linux phone. I also run an Ubuntu chroot on the N9 and connect to it over VNC from a Nexus 7 for real LibreOffice and in the future, Qt Creator for mobile Qt development.

Nexus 4. Pretty good stuff.

isn't it better to run an ubuntu chroot directly on the nexus 7?

Yeah the Neo900 is out of my price range and it's not available now, so there are two strikes against it. Furthermore, it will still be dog slow with that hardware. After playing around with this 2011 vintage Android phone, i feel vindicated in thinking that the browser and some of the other slower parts of N900 experience are just intolerable at this point.

I'll go back to a linux phone when one is available at a reasonable price and reasonable configuration, but the premium i'm willing to pay for an open platform phone is not ~$700, unfortunately.

I flashed a custom ROM that keeps Gingerbread (the stock camera app can't be used on ICS ROMs) but increases the JPG quality, and the photos look a bit less fuzzy around the edges.

Let's see how they do at macro photos...

MyTouch 4G Slide vs. N900 -- Camera, Round 4

Macro

The N900 wanted to use the flash in these lighting conditions, and the resulting photo was actually quite good, albeit with a blue hue. The MT4GS opted not to flash, and I compare the detail of the photos without flash. Both exhibit some chroma noise, and again the N900 has a higher contrast, but again the MT4GS opted for higher exposure and did so without being as noisy.

When the flash was turned on for the MT4GS, it produced an image about on par with the N900's with flash, but in an overly warm color temperature. This seems to be the typical outcome: the N900 favors cool colors, both in its processing and its blue-tinted LED flash, while the MT4GS favors a warmer tone, and has a twin LED flash with a warm color temperature.

One thing that's definitely better on the N900 is the placement of the flash: it causes almost no shadow. You can compare in the final images, which show the macro with the flash on.

Could be, but my use case is this...

I run the chroot on the phone so I can do VNC from either the Nexus 7 or my iPod touch. I will connect my iPod touch to an LCD TV using the hdmi out and get a full monitor. Combined with iTeleport, i get a full screen Ubuntu. Using wireless mouse/keyboard apps, my iPod becomes a mouse/touchpad and the Nexus soft keyboard becomes my keyboard.

The N9 is truly my central PAN/switch. All my tethered devices go through it. I use udev rules to make sure the devices get the same IP always via bnepx assignments by MAC.

After my 2 N900s had their USBs failed I will move to Jolla. Thats what I'm concerned about my future phone - hardware quality not hardware specifications. Hoping that it will not have such mass defects as N900's USB ports.