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Comment by lphnull | Hacker News Reader

I spent $300+ (way too much!) for my n900 and I still think it was worth it. It was my replacement for my tmobile g1 phone.

The n900 is everything that I thought the g1 was going to be, but wasn't. In a way, it was my fault for blindly creating my own hype over a first generation product I knew nothing about. The g1 turned out to be my bad and disappointing foray into smart phones.

Also, yes I have heard of the neo900 project, but am sad that the project is so far from its goals. There will never be enough n900 users to meet a crowdfund. :(

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I wouldn't be so sure. There are a lot of N900 users and fans.

Another interesting project which might fill my desire for a true mobile computer (if only I could afford it) is the Pyra, the more powerful successor to the Pandora. But at $~500-$~600, it may not be worth it, and it still hasn't actually released yet (although the company did make the Pandora, so they have a history of Getting Stuff Done).

If you're going on the cheap, you can always hack together a Raspberry Pi and a tiny screen, keyboard, and battery into something semi-workable, and use a phone for the rest.

> If you're going on the cheap, you can always hack together a Raspberry Pi and a tiny screen, keyboard, and battery into something semi-workable, and use a phone for the rest.

You can get a GSM board from Adafruit fairly cheaply, which would give you 3G data and voice/SMS on a Pi. You'd have to do your own wiring, but if you're building something like this that wouldn't be a problem. Throw a Ting SIM in there (or your other favorite carrier) and you're good to go.

Basically a mobile phone version of Bunnie's Novena laptop, though not quite as open source (at least not until Broadcom finishes opening up the RPi's processor).

I think the Pyra even has an (optional?) modem module you could potentially make calls with (using a Bluetooth headset rather than sidetalking-style ;-)):

https://www.pyra-handheld.com/wiki/index.php?title=Modem

Yeah, but it costs 100 euros extra.

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