It's not perfect, it's far from free hardware, and it's not a very good form factor for a phone replacement. But I rarely take any calls, so it's good enough for me.
And the ability to install whatever OS I want trumps everything else. I'm tired of phones where updates depend on capricious manufacturers. I want a real Linux and not a bunch of apps. I can't wait to see a tiling window manager running on that thing.
Agree, along with the ability of actually developing and compiling, and running your software directly on the same device. There's just nothing else out there in this kind of form factor.
I feel like that would come with the territory of a niche, small-batch device. They wouldn't be large enough to benefit from economies of scale, and they're not bringing in enough money to employ teams of engineers to optimize and refresh the hardware regularly.
It wasn't perfect (I seem to remember the battery life wasn't great), but it was a great device, more like a Swiss army knife than a phone. Wish Nokia had done a full release of the N950 (the N9 with a hardware keyboard, only released to developers, with a weaker screen than the N9) as that was shaping up to be even better than the N900.