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by finchisko 1918 days ago
Still have this little linux phone. It missed compass hw, so map experience was not great and also resistive display was inferior to iPhone, but still loved it. It's bad Nokia didn't manage it create viable platform, but rather switched to Windows phones and also died there with broken teeth.
2 comments

One nice thing about the resistive screen is that it's pressure-sensitive. This was particularly great for painting apps - I remember using one called MyPaint which mapped touch pressure to the intensity of your brush stroke, which let me draw things that just weren't possible on iPhones of the time.
They had released the N9 and there was a developer only N950. I'm still using my N9 even today though the lock mechanism on the SIM holder no longer works.
Wow, I had to abandon my N9 after all of my fixes including buying a new SIM holder failed. I still have my N9 and my N900. I really wish Nokia had stuck it out with the N9 OS a bit longer. It easily beat all of the Android phones at that time. I would still be using it if the CAs hadn't expired and the SIM holder wasn't horked.
> I really wish Nokia had stuck it out with the N9 OS a bit longer

I think we have Stephan Elop to thank for that. I never really understood why Nokia didn't just focus on the market outside the US. Had they continued producing phones like the N9, I'm sure they could have retained a lot of market share in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia.

> I would still be using it if the CAs hadn't expired

I'm not sure whether all of the CAs had expired, but I wonder if it would be possible to get an updated package with up to date CAs. The main issue I have is that it can't negotiate an agreed upon cipher when trying to establish a TLS connection.

I'm still able to use the Firefox browser to browse a number of websites like Facebook and Reddit. Hacker news still works with the built-in browser. Facebook sometimes works with the default browser and the old subdomain reddit website will lock up the default browser in my experience (the current reddit website layout is a no-go).

I'm still using my N9, and I'm holding my SIM card in place using a big rubber band wrapped twice along the longer side of the phone :)

Lately the "main" button has been failing, and since tapping the screen doesn't get it out of sleep anymore, I can't pick up calls anymore. So to access the phone, I get out the SIM and re-insert it.

It's time to abandon it here too, but it was an excellent phone in use for almost 10y.

I don't look forward to the day I have to completely abandon it. I have mine set to show the screen when double tapping it (which still works better than my Nokia 7.2 Android phone).

> since tapping the screen doesn't get it out of sleep anymore, I can't pick up calls anymore.

Mine will show the the screen and prompt me to swipe up to answer the call. Does yours work in a different way, or is the touch system failing?

I thought long about buying another N9 second-hand, but in the meanwhile MeeGo/Harmattan has been abandoned, and I never succeeded with installing the Mer [0] project (revived Maemo/MeeGo successor). I'm using my phone regularly to program and run simple applications for my own use. For this I've used Tclkit [1] a lot on the N9 (and the N770).

I'm now more thinking about continuing that using AndroWish [2] instead (Tcl/Tk on Android).

My N9 in better times did exactly that when someone called, but now the screen stays black and nothing reacts (it still rings though). I don't know what causes this, because out of the sleep mode then touchscreen works fine. I have to pull out the SIM everytime as such, put it back in and log back into the network (and then often call back myself ofcourse ;)). Not going to bother anymore, but I suspect a software problem. It also started to crash/hang it's applications from time to time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo#Mer

[1] https://www.equi4.com/tclkit/

[2] https://www.androwish.org/