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Comment by benmcnelly | Hacker News Reader

You are not alone, I have two good friends that still have theirs too, and nothing will ever be good enough for them again. That phone spoiled them, and is the direction they wish phones went. Alas, they have gone the way of the masses instead, but you know if someone like a OnePlus came out with a modern powered phone, with a big battery (phone size doesn't matter to us), a physical keyboard, dual sim, expandable memory and an open source OS, there would be DOZENS of us that would snap it up. Dozens!

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Maddox would enjoy a reboot, too.

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone

The most objective comparison of two cellphones ever made.

Huh, i completely missed that Nokia made a Symbian variant of their split keyboard design. I recall a relative of mine owned one of the featurephone models.

Things like this is what makes me feel that the mobile market came to a screeching halt somewhere around 2007, and has barely been picking up speed since.

Owwww, the E70! I loved that phone. Still have mine.

I loved Nokia's smartphones so much. E70, E61, N900... Those were the pinnacles of smartphoning for me. Their successors somehow manage to fall short in vital aspects every single time, it's beyond frustrating.

Best i can tell its because back then smartphones were for productivity first and foremost. These days they are for media consumption.

Have you looked into sailfish? No physical keyboard, AFAICT, but it's based on the successor to Maemo.

Also, look into the neo900 project and Pyra. Neo900 is trying to upgrade the n900, and Pyra is the successor to Pandora, which is a pocket computer in a semi-similar vein to the old nokias. Neither is finished, but they're worth a look.

I've heard of sailfish before, but I had NO idea sailfish is somewhat maemo based. This really makes me want to reconsider the Jolla phone.

Sailfish is based on Meego, which was a merge of Maemo and another project. It was the OS that backed the N9, the last phone Nokia made before they went to MS.

> "and another project"

The other project was called Moblin. It was an Intel project.

It's a shame the N950 never got a proper release. The N9 got praised highly on release, but the N950 would've been the true successor to the N900.

Jolla was formed by devs that left Nokia after they abandoned Meego. I had an N9 and currently have the Jolla phone with Sailfish. They're very similar.

Keep in mind, if you live in the US, that the Jolla is an EU phone, and doesn't support US 3G or 4G frequencies. I was stuck with a Jolla on 2G for a while. Recently I got a OnePlus X and installed Sailfish OS on that, and the experience has been much better.

Sailfish is cool, I used to use it on my Nexus 4. Its app support has never been quite as good as Maemo's, IMO.

The neo900 makes me sad, because it's basically my ideal phone, but the price is just too much for me. I know it's not their fault, the low production quantities will do that, but still. It's an updated n900, with a fully FOSS stack and an isolated baseband to boot... awesome.

Did you check out the Openmoko Forerunner GTA04? Golden delicious just started early production!

I would have bought a Jolla ~4 years ago if their UI components (Silica) were open source. They said then that they plan on Open Sourcing them but they still haven't.

Plasma Mobile and Tizen are my only hopes for getting a non-Android Open Source OS on my phone.

>nothing will ever be good enough for them again.

Reading this made me so sad. This is exactly how I feel. Nothing will ever be good enough again. :(

I would kill for a Nokia N950. A proper keyboard, and a true Linux operating system with the usual userspace software you would expect.

Would you pay $3000?

Or maybe $2995?

My raspberry pi 3, encased in a rainbow colored 3d printed case and with a 3.5" touch screen, is what took the place of my n900. It's a fraction of the cost of an n900, but with a standard rpi linux distribution and modern specs. Sure I can't make calls with my pi, but the sacrifice is well worth it for the nerd appeal of having a fully functional computer in your pcoket.

Got some kind of build recipe for that? A mobile ssh station that doesn't suck would be worth my enternal soul to me. Or two of those!

I like xubuntu because it's minimalistic and not as bloated. It doesn't take a lot of effort to set up your favorite packages like a lamp server and the like after a basic install. My cheap touch screen is a little laggy, but when plugged into an HDMI monitor, the OS is as fast as a desktop computer. Be sure to buy the latest rpi though, because the original rpi1 is kind of slow and disappointing compared to the latest one with much nicer specs. With an external high-capacity battery and a USB wireless keyboard, it can even function as a laptop replacement if you're okay with using linux as your main OS.

Do you have an image of this? It Sounds like something I'd like!

Raspberry Pi has one big flaw as a mobile device: it cannot sleep. If you disable peripherals etc you can get it down to ~100 mA or so when idling, which is still order of magnitude more than a real sleep mode.

There are certain devices like this, right? A similar thing happens with the HP-15C calculator, it was so sought after in eBay, etc., that HP even made a special edition a few years ago.

The Dragonbox Pyra is nearing completion and taking pre-orders right now.

https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

Same here. Obviously you're 100% right in how little of a target demographic we are, but I'll never forget the sheer joy of finally saving up the money for the n900 and getting it.

As mentioned, it'd be a usable device on its own to this day. If newspaper sites hadn't become unusable without an adblocker, if I didn't need browser updates every nanosecond and if the latest memory-hogging web trend language wasn't, well, what it was. I'd still use it.

Now I own two mobile devices. A BlackBerry Passport. Great UI, physical keyboard, indestructible. Dead software ecosystem, horribly closed source, last of its kind and while there's a lot to love It's not hard to see why. Then there's a rooted HTC phone. Great choice of software (termux alone makes up for so much). Hate hate hate ssh'ing with a touchscreen. Typing generally. Terrible battery life. Seems like it'll die from one harsh drop.

If my social life would not force mobile messengers on me, I'd have gone back to 20€ dumbphones and text/voice only. Though I bet even those come with a horrible browser and the accompanying remotely exploitable holes now.

All in all? Wonderful project. I'm very much hoping for a third player in the mobile game.

Did you hear about the neo900? Would that be an option for you?

The Neo900 would have been excellent had it come out two years ago, as originally planned. However, the various delays keep pushing it back, although it still has the same hardware. It will end up quite underpowered like the N900 is now, combined with an older chipset that doesn't support things newer open phone OS's require (like Wayland).

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