The USB port on my N900 has finally died (totally broken,not just loose or comming off the PCB). My N900 is also wearing out in other ways (including cellular modem giving "no sim" error more and more) and its just not viable for me here in Brisbane, Australia to get all the problems fixed. Plus with 3G on my carrier going away sooner rather than later I would rather have something with 4G for future proofing.

Its time to replace it and I want advice on what I should replace it with.
The Pinephone isn't shipping for who knows how long (they say "January 2021" but with all that's going on in the world, I don't trust shipping estimates that far out) plus they say its for people who are developers/early adopters and not just people who want something for everyday use.

The Librem5 isn't shipping right now either (no sign of an ETA when I would get one if I ordered now) and the Fairphone is EU only right now.

The Droid 4 doesn't seem like its easy to obtain (here in Australia at least) plus I can't find any info on if it will even support the frequencies I need for my choice of carrier.

Buying a used N900 is an option but its not future proof (no 4G, lack of modern browser and so on) and its hard to find used N900s in Australia.

Can anyone suggest what might be a viable replacement that's actually available in Australia?

Note that for all sorts of reasons I don't want to go into here, buying something on eBay is not an option for me (Amazon and other marketplaces are fine, just not eBay)

The Droid 4 only supports a single LTE Band, 13.
Thats around 750MHz.

You can find bands in use in Australia here.
13 is not among them.
(Don't use the site to check for device compatibility directly, the supported bands are stored wrong for most devices)

Here in Germany LTE also does not work and the 3G antenna of my Droid 4 is a bit worse than the one of my N9, N900 and Nokia 808.

Like you, my device is showing it's age. It's not been my daily for a few years but is used for alarms and keeping a copy of some IT manuals available locally within arm's reach. The keyboard could do with a replacement, backspace key has worn off, keys need cleaning/ transparent letters have yellowed. I had an SD card give up a few months ago. Very early 64gb card, split into 2x 1gb swaps with rest as data. Read works fine, write doesn't. Phone reboots, laptop says it has written file but it disappears on removal. Replaced it with a 128gb configured the same.

I looked at Planetcom, Gemini and Cosmo, but not sure on specs. The FxTec 1 X looks more like it spec wise but it's in a crowdfunding project. Still haven't found that true N900 replacement. Last few years I've had a OnePlus 3T, also now showing age and battery wear. Might get a 9 next year. For now my Pi4 4Gb is having to support my interests.

You may still be able to get the manjaro edition if you drop them a email or directly. Also they are supposed to be working on a keybaord/battery combo for it too!

No promise, and it also seem you may not want a phone that need more work then the n900.

I currently have one and it can mostly work dpending on the OS you want to run. But my n900 is still my daily. But I might be forced to change starting jan 2021 .

Probably the fx Pro1/x is the best alternative if you want something that seemly mostly works. And rumored to be heading to main soon/eventually too

You haven't shared what your needs are and also what OS you want to run.

x

I am hoping someone who knows how to would make a 3D replacement backcover for N900 with room for 4G connection dongle stuff.

I would say the Pro1x from IGG is a very good N900 replacement with keyboard, multiple OSes and soon multiboot, mainline progressing significantly (hence hope for Maemo Leste) and chroot/LXC like EasyDebian. However shipping time is important for you now that your main phone died, so that won't really work. Christmas perks are all sold, and I am afraid it won't be easy to find one on the forum since there were only 10. If you like it, it could be worse buying a cheap phone in the mean time until the Pro1x is shipped next year.

I can see myself still using a Pro1 in years unless they make a Pro2, which is something that very much reminds me of my N900 too.

You can find videos from Netman, Mosen and I (Netman and Kib nicknames on YT). They're not professional videos, but we all have been using ours for one year and different uses (Android. Sailfish, Sailfish + Debian). Also we're TMO people, so for you it may give a better idea of what to expect than reviews made by Android pros who don't care much about keyboards or alternate OSes, and haven't use the phone for long.

In terms of OS it seems that all the phones running Linux are not available to me, unsuitable for my needs (i.e. not supporting 4G on Vodafone here in Australia) or not usable enough for a daily driver (e.g. Leste) so it looks like I might need to go Android.

The fxtec pro1 seems to be another device that isn't shipping until some future date so that's no good. (and the pro-1x is only available through crowdfunding and also not shipping yet so that's even less helpful)

I'm very happy with my pinephone. If you don't depend on MMS, it's perfectly suitable for everyday use. Calls, SMS, and power management are all working reasonably well on the latest distro releases.

They expect to ship the next wave out in January, which is only a few weeks. There isn't any reason to expect they'd miss it other than pandemic-related logistics problems, which could affect any overseas shipping.

If you do pick one up, spend a few extra bucks to grab the UART cable. It's turned out to be much more useful than I had expected.

EDIT: In case it's not clear, Pine64 has been reliably shipping Pinephones for months. They've been shipping various "community edition" phones since May, in batches every 2-3 months. Since a board revision after the first UBPorts edition, the only difference has been the preinstalled OS and branded back cover.

The next batch is the Plasma Mobile edition, with KDE branding and shipping with Manjaro-ARM Plasma Mobile in January.

Yeah like peflex mentioned. Called sms 4g working firefox good browser. Still lots mising but for sure usable. Last I test over 17hrs battery life on manjaro. But your still have yet to share your must have daily feature/apps.

x

Chromium also works well (at least on Arch), especially if you force it to use wayland.