I've never understood this about N900 fans.
My experience with the N9 was great, and never left me wishing I could go back to something more like a Sharp Zaurus with modern cell connectivity.
What is it that makes the N900 appealing? Is it strictly the physical keyboard? So the N950 would have been the N900 killer? Or was there something else about it?
First of all ot was a true Linux phone. Running a derivative of Debian, complete with apt etc. Most of the apps on it, even the app to make a phone call where preexisting open source Linux applications with a nice mobile UI. An UI that was clean and consistent without the need off branding that other platforms suffer from.
I could simply write bash script for it to extend its functionality. For example I remember writing a script that would record and sent recordings of phone calls to my server.
I installed Pidgin the chat client and used it to chat with my friends when MSN was still popular in my county. It truly felt like having a PC in your pocket.
The keyboard was the best keyboard ever made in my opinion. I could actually type blind on it sensing a message without looking at the phone at all. I still own 3 N900's with the hope of every managing the find the enthusiasm to rig in the another phone or a pi.
I've had them all, including a Zaurus, various Palms with phone, various XDAs, Nokia N900, Free Runner, Firefox phone, Ubuntu phone, you name it... but IMHO the N900 was the best form factor and UI - the only reason why I got rid of it was the band didn't support where I was traveling to.
Still sad the NEO 900 went nowhere. I would jump at that. Still interested in trying the Purism and PinePhone, but with my time as limited as it is, I'll stick to my Pixel 4a running LineageOS for now - but can't wait to get me back a pure Linux phone that works without issues!
On top of that it was actually usable for normal users which the n900 failed at, largely due to not being usable in many networks due to the radio IIRC. The UI of the N9 was also much more polished. So unless you never used an N9 I don't understand how you would prefer the N900 (except for the keyboard).
The keyboard made it. It was very usable too. I took it once to a hackathon and was able to follow along nicely.
> Or was there something else about it?
It's pretty simple: hacker vs. user points of view
i used both N9 and N900. N9 was a way more polished, user-centric device. I love the UX and even how the device looks
however, for (low-level) hackers, N9/N950 was a bit hostile environment compared to N900. The first major stumbling block was Aegis (somewhat similar to Samsung's Knox perhaps). With N900, you can just boot any other Linux by simply loading u-boot to memory using the flasher. Nothing else. N9/N950's Aegis prevented that kind of luxury, so you needed to mess with the OS first, deal with permanent ominous warranty warning, and risk bricking it (see https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=81579). On the other hand, N900 is basically unbrickable. So N950 loses to N900 because of these reasons, even though it has a keyboard, a somewhat better one in fact
Still better than pretty much every alternative at that time though.