[sollewitt]

The N900 was my peak “mobile computing is awesome” device.

I went to see District 9 in the cinema in Helsinki. Uh oh, the alien parts are only subtitled in Finnish and Swedish and my Finnish is not up to that.

I installed a BitTorrent client, found the release on Pirate Bay, successfully torrented just the subtitle file, and used an editor to read the subtitles for scenes with a lot of alien.

The N9 had much better UI, but there was something of the cyberpunk “deck” idea in that thing, it was great.

[ZenoArrow]

I wish the N950 was fully released, there were some produced but I don't think it was commercially available. It was the true successor to the N900, it would have used the N9 software but unlike the N9 it also had a physical keyboard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N950

[cvak]

yeah I scooped n950 on some online marketplace for very cheap since it was bricked, fixed it and resold it for profit, but what a beauty of a phone, I wish I kept it.

[pmarreck]

wow dude, a new 950 in the box is a mere $50,000 on eBay

https://www.ebay.com/itm/154469885901

[xyzzy123]

Yeah the cyberpunk part is you can compute without explicitly needing someone's permission.

[mikestorrent]

So true! There will come a point at which there'll be two internets: the walled garden that only lets you in with Secure Attestation, Web Credentials for your verified age-of-maturity, etc. on a non-rooted device... and then the cyberpunk web where people running their own unofficial gear will be.

I wonder if one could do Anti-Secure-Attestation, like, only allow connections from rooted devices? Back to proving root by running a service on the good old sub-1024 ports?

[eru]

> I wonder if one could do Anti-Secure-Attestation, like, only allow connections from rooted devices?

Just ask the person to say a naughty word, I guess?

[mikestorrent]

If nobody actually sees an AI saying a bad word, is it saying it?

[theshrike79]

The N950[0] was literal perfection. I had multiple friends who rand self-hosted servers on retired N900's :D

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N950

[Tor3]

My N900 (Made in Finland, an early one) was great. I would have used it still if it wasn't for the fact that after 3G disappeared it was useless. The battery could be replaced (as others have mentioned), so it was perfectly fine still. Mechanically it was as good as new as well.

As it was basically like Debian Linux inside I could do what I usually do - write hobby projects and run it on the N900. I had my minicomputer emulator running. Nice to see my old favourite minicomputer editor on my N900.

[fragmede]

Have you seen the GPD pocket 4? There's a 4G option, but unfortunately not one for 5G (yet?)

https://www.gpd-minipc.com/products/gpd-micropc2

[girvo]

Gosh I loved my Nokia N9. Such an amazing little phone, and it's depressing a little that I can't use them anymore where I live

[gspr]

Here's what I don't get: why can't we have a modern one? It doesn't need to blow flagship smartphones out of the water. It doesn't even need to have a GSM baseband – I'd rather just connect through my "normal" smartphone than deal with all the complications of having a whole extra computer in there.

Surely this is getting close to realizable by hobbyists or a niche company?

[imp0cat]

Have you seen the Jolla preorder? It was on hn a few days ago. That is the spiritual successor of the N9XX line.

https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-preorder

[henearkr]

I don't see any keyboard or stylus in that Jolla.

For me that is not even in the same league than the N900.

[mpol]

There is the Gemini PDA from 2018 which has a physical keyboard. I heard it was mostly a disappointment.

There was another phone with keyboard around the same time, but I forgot the name. That was claimed to be very much in the spirit of the N950 and its cancelled follow-up, the Nokia Lauta.

All with Sailfish, the spiritual successor of Meamo/Meego from Nokia.

[Fnoord]

Mostly a disappointment? The keyboard is fantastic. I can tell because I have a Cosmo Communicator (successor with 4G) and Astro Slide (successor with slide mechanic and 5G). The keyboard of these is great, but... they got barely no support, and the company who build these is like AWOL. Either way, like the GPD Pocket series, the keyboard is larger compared to the Nokia N900 (3G) and Nokia N810 (WLAN only)

> There was another phone with keyboard around the same time, but I forgot the name. That was claimed to be very much in the spirit of the N950 and its cancelled follow-up, the Nokia Lauta.

Probably F(x)tec and their successors. Those have a similar small keyboard as Nokia N900 and Nokia N810

There's also the Hackberry. This device uses a real Blackberry keyboard, with custom firmware. It works together with a 3D printed case, and a RPi CM5. This keyboard, while small, is very ergonomic.

[mrmlz]

I loved my N9. But i'm somewhat hesitant on preordering that one. I need wireless charging.. And i still dont really get if Android-apps actually work or not, i.e. swedish Bank-Id/Swish etc.

[gspr]

I'd actually prefer one running a normal Linux. It's a travesty that certain things in daily life require Android or iOS, and that's a fight I'll keep fighting, but the idea of a tiny Linux laptop in my pocket is just so tempting.

[mrmlz]

Sure i can join you on the barricade, but i still want to function in a society :(

[best_answer]

Here you can see Sailfish OS banking app compatibility: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/banking-apps-on-sailfish-os/1...

[carlosjobim]

You can have another device for your banking.

[imp0cat]

I think this is the way. The Jolla device does have some Android compatibility layers, but I am sure banking apps will not like that.

[tincholio]

It's excciting, but I saw a review of a pre-release c2 on youtube [0] the other day, and it seemed extremely slow in the interactions. Otherwise, it seems like a cool device.

[0] https://youtu.be/5titW5dclwg

[linmob]

The C2 is a different device than the new one linked above, which was way more affordable (~250 Euro) with a 4G Unisoc SoC.

[gspr]

Promising! Thanks!

[girvo]

I haven't, and I don't need one, but I'm going to buy one anyway (though its likely not allowed on Australia networks sigh)

[Nextgrid]

This is absolutely doable by a niche company. The problem is that you need to run this as a business. What plagues every free/open/libre project is that they're not run as a business; so they get distracted in all different directions trying to cater to ideals about free/libre licensing and so on, and end up missing the big picture.

You need to operate this as a business first, with the freedom part being a nice bonus. Nobody cares how free your thing is if it's dead on arrival and gets beaten by an entry-level smartphone.

Make a competitive product. Nowadays that could very well just mean Android with manufacturer-sanctioned root access and preinstalled terminal & X/wayland server for those who want to run desktop apps.

The Jolla phone someone linked below actually looks like a decent product. The Android app support means it's actually usable in the modern world, and the specs look competitive.

[spankibalt]

> "You need to operate this as a business first, [...] Make a competitive product."

Not only that, but you should not get suckered down into overcomplicating things by chasing complex novelties, e. g. integrated slider- or clamshell-implemented keyboards, silly and outdated form factors (clamshell UMPCs, OQO already showed the way), etc.

You want a good, small keyboard? Design it to be attachable. This is possible in a variety of ways and can be adapted to your manufacturing expertise. It also leaves open third-party hardware support for your device. Not to mention maintainability/repairability. It's utterly puzzling to me how many hardware start-ups already fuck up the basics.

And never forget: In a satured market, even catering to a niche, means you should go for a somewhat unique feature set. How many ultramobile devices are out there that are truly accessible and usable? That goes beyond just safety or repairability.

OLED screen? I'd rather prefer something PWM-free. Precision control? Digitizer/stylus support. You don't even need to house the stylus in the device. But it would be very useful to have at least one. Audio? Yeah, 3.5 mm is a must. Dedicated, easy-access mSD (Express) card slot? Yes, please. Exchangeable batteries? Good idea, as long as it's a standard design in good supply. Kill switches. Maybe a modular camera set up like those Chinese flagships that are otherwise rather useless. Full-feature connectivity (1-2 x USB 4). Etc.

[Fnoord]

> You want a good, small keyboard? Design it to be attachable.

Get one of the BB + USB-C keyboards available.

[gspr]

Maybe you're right. But at the same time I feel (based on nothing) that even the performance of an entry-level Android phone, coupled with libre hardware and software, and a tiny little keyboard like the N900's, running an ordinary Linux distro, actually would find a market. A small market made up of us weirdos who find this HN thread interesting.

But then again, experience shows I'm wrong.

[Nextgrid]

A bit on the larger size, but this already exists: https://www.gpd.hk/gpdpocket

[Fnoord]

I recommend against GPD, since they're from Hong Kong / China and their warranty is terrible.

If you do decide to buy one, the hardware (of the Pocket 2 at least) is OK. Easy to open and such. You can even buy replacement battery. Buy one from Amazon in EU if you can, they have to provide 2 years warranty, at least.

[LtWorf]

A small laptop which needs wifi? And?

[mbirth]

Planet Computers Gemini? Or their Cosmo Communicator? (To be fair they’re more Psion 5-sized.)

Or do you remember the Beepberry/Beeper?

OTOH, your phone is more than capable, so maybe a small bluetooth keyboard is all you really need. There are apps like iSH on iOS or Termux on Android that give you a Linux shell.

[amelius]

Because banking apps will not want to run on it, basically.

[tim333]

I'm not sure that has to be a deal breaker. I'd be happy to have the banking apps on an old iphone I left at home.

[Sharlin]

It was such an incredible phone. Easily rivaled the iPhones of the time and was light-years beyond any Android.

[carlosjobim]

Not directed at you, but what kind of person would [flag] and [dead] the other reply to your comment? Talk about not having a life!

As for the N9, it still has the most modern and beautiful GUI of any smart device, 15 years after being discontinued. It will take at least 15 more years for iOS or Android to reach that level, if ever. The physical design was also very nice and refined.

For those who don't believe me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCFNXhiFnKY

[pessimizer]

I always thought that flagging would get the comment put into a review queue (one that would put even your ability to flag at risk), but it seems that mass flagging gets you an automated flagkill of late. People can get flagkilled for not sufficiently loving particular products or for not being orthorexic enough.

As for the N900, I just wanted one or two more hardware iterations (the design flaws were annoying, and a couple mentioned in the OP.) The N9 looked great, but I couldn't get over the loss of the keyboard (although of course that was our dictated future.) The Meego transition seemed unnecessary and annoying (not the UI changes, but everything else), especially the move to rpms from debs. They were just hostile to Debian mainline for some reason; if they had been less hostile, their work would have survived without a break even after Elop intentionally tanked the company. That proprietary moat is just irresistible.

iOS and Android literally grabbed the designers of Maemo/Meego and WebOS to update their horrible UIs. Back then, they were still even refusing to multitask. Android copied WebOS almost exactly.

[officeplant]

>Not directed at you, but what kind of person would [flag] and [dead] the other reply to your comment? Talk about not having a life!

Going by the username having a near slur in it. Probably that.

[testfrequency]

My favorite story to tell friends about District 9 is how the first two times I watched it at home, my version did not have subtitles at all - so I was always so confused by the alien monologue scenes.

It wasn’t until I was at a friends home who had it playing in the background, I glanced at the TV and jokingly said I wish we knew what the aliens were saying…lo and behold, there’s subtitles.

[TimByte]

It wasn't just a phone, it was a little pocket computer that assumed you were allowed to solve your own problems

[BatteryMountain]

Same here. I miss my N900 dearly. It was one of my most expensive items at the time, and I enjoyed this device more than the Galaxy S I9000.

It had the best slide-out keyboard of all the phones, nice and rubbery keys. Super smooth sliding motion.

It also had a FM Transmitter (not just Receiver), so I could blast audio in my first car back then without struggling with bluetooth kits & audio cable (neither was standard).

It also had an infra-red transmitter that was programmable, so you could use it as a remote in certain circumstances.

It the time, the 32GB storage was absolutely massive for a phone.

It also had stereo speakers & a kick-stand, so you could watch a movie on it without issues.

I really miss this phone & era. Maemo OS could've owned the market today, as at the time it was much better than early Androids. Nokia messed up so hard after this, the N9 was shitty in comparison.

[nico]

Amazing! One time I did something similar. Went to see a movie that was dubbed in Spanish, so I downloaded the movie in English and extracted the audio ahead of time, then I played it on my phone wearing headphones while watching the movie (had to pause/play to adjust timing a few times in the beginning, but after that it was great)

[aa-jv]

I was always kind of dissuaded by the chunky, bar of soap nature of the Nokia devices. (But then again, I had a few OpenPandora to play with as well..)

I had high hopes for the Creative Labs Zii Egg back in those days, it seemed to me to be a better Linux-based phone-like device. What a world it was...

[larodi]

It is amazing Nokia missed on the mobile revolution as n900 predated iPhone if I remember correctly.

But Nokia did one massive mistake and it was to bet on Linux for this device. Even when they already had lot of Symbian experience, which also was week though when it came to user apps.

The modified BSD on the first iPhones was simply blazingly fast.

[carlosjobim]

Linux was not a mistake on these devices. And I say that as the foremost hater of open source and Linux you can find around here. In fact, the N9 Linux phone was a huge success among everyday people in several countries. Farmers, teenagers, everybody got an N9. You couldn't go to any small party without at least two people having the N9 phone. Everybody loved them. It was in no way a hacker device for nerds.

What killed these Linux phones was Microsoft doing a hostile takeover of Nokia. The owners of Nokia felt they couldn't compete with Apple's iPhone and decided to scuttle their business and transfer out as much money as possible to their own offshore accounts in the Pacific before the company going belly up. I think they could have competed if they weren't such cowards.

[larodi]

Microsoft did take over Nokia much later than the N900. In fact, Nokia lost value after iPhone showed, and it is only when MS could take over it. And the Android is a side effect of the fact that the .NET was not ready to run existing phones, and Microsoft decided to release the WindowsPhone as non-Nokia branded one.

My BSD statement stays, though, MS did some very good work with the WinPhones, and in fact they were super snappy and useful, very close to what iPhones were at the time. And let's not forget, that the flat looks of (not sure which macos) was directly influenced by these winphones...

[carlosjobim]

N9, not N900. Microsoft took over right before the N9 launch and instantly discontinued any further support for the platform. The "burning platform" as Elop called it.

[0x457]

> You couldn't go to any small party without at least two people having the N9 phone. Everybody loved them. It was in no way a hacker device for nerds.

I don't think I ever saw N9 or any of the N9XX phones in real life.

[uecker]

The N9 was not sold in any major country. I ordered mine from Poland (from the US at that time).

[ErroneousBosh]

The underlying OS makes no difference.

BSD and Linux are the same thing. That's the whole point of Posix.

What made the difference for the iPhone was that Apple's most expensive part of the whole device was the design. At the point it came out they had something like 23 years of very high end UX under their collective belts. It's one of the reasons why the little 128k Mac that came out the same year as the clunky old IBM PC AT was so expensive, too.

Good design is expensive, and it's the most important thing you'll spend money on.

Remember earlier in the week, all the discussion of Damn Small Linux and how a lot of the conversation around its UI was along the lines of "But I like it without all the wasteful whitespace" contrasted with "The whitespace at least needs to be consistent and the widgets need to look like they weren't thrown from the far side of a barn"?

[larodi]

Good design of the packaging has nothing to do with underlying OS, unless say it overheats a lot. TBH, the N900 had a fair design, I've used one, not talking from a bystander view, and it was good indeed. Save for the keyboard that perhaps costs 30% the device in order to be where it was (sliding and all). But also, the Nokia Nx's were slow as hell compared to iOS.

> The underlying OS makes no difference. perhaps you've never experienced the bliss after setting up a BSD that just works 10 years after... and have never experienced the incredibly stable and snappy multiprocessing this miracle of a kernel (and OS) exhibits for decades now.

Let me tell you something - 20 years ago Linux was slow and unstasble as shit, and even slower on embedded. On the other hand FreeBSD and other BSD-derivates were super stable, but took more effort to setup and work with. They did not have the UI though, what Apple did was to wire their half-baked NeXT-inherited GUI on top of it and it flied.

I'm not even going to comment on the abomination called ObjectiveC, but matter of fact - the underlying OS workings were done in a brilliant way, WHICH, more than everything else enabled all the glitter tossed over the UI that you guys love so much. Like, there's a reason for game engines being written in C++ and not Python, right? Still a programming language though...

Sure lot of people adore what Sir Jony Ive did to the overall look and packaging of these products, and for a reason. But what truly distinguishes all these Mac products is what they can get out the hardware.

Sorry, but win3.11 did not work well on a 128kb RAM device. I've followed everything MS released since DOS 3.30 and witnessed firsthand the evolution of Linux and many of the distros. Nothing comes close to what Apple could do and is still doing with their hardware/software. No matter if you like Tim Cook (me personally - not) or Steve Jobs (very inspiring guy).

One of the reasons MacOS could draw attention from developers, who now form very important part of the user-base, is the fact they have a Unix-like thing at their disposal, and a very fast unix-like thing with some sort of a not-so-disgusting UI (wait for MacOS 26 though).

Nobody cares about darn window shadows, edges, or the unreasonable animation effects that we'd be turning off sooner or later.

[Nursie]

Good god no.

The iPhone was out two years ago before the N900.

Nokia was already fucked because it had set up a system in which internal divisions designed competing phones, as a result it had flooded the market with similar but-not-quite-the-same handsets with overlapping features, and it had missed out on usability advances that iOS had made.

Symbian was undergoing an overhaul which would eventually lead it to be ’good’ again, but by then it was too late as Android and iOS were already eating its lunch. And around the time of the N9 launch (touchscreen-only Maemo/meego phone), Stephen Elop took the helm and issued the famous “burning platforms” memo which put Nokia on the path to windows phone exclusivity, purely to the benefit of Microsoft, who delivered the killing blow by first forcing the doomed “Windows Phone” onto them, then buying the mobile phone division so MS could churn out more doomed handsets for their stillborn mobile platform.

tl;dr - The company was a clusterfuck riding on name recognition and then an MS plant killed it.

Linux on the N900 was neither here nor there. It was a skunkwork effectively, a niche device for nerds (and a great one). But it neither sank the company nor could have saved it.

[uecker]

The N9 could have saved the company in my opinion. It was great. I had it for some years before it broke and then found the Android I had afterwards to be poor compared to it.

[t43562]

The happy ending is that MS took the brunt of the disaster. :-)

[chriswarbo]

A bigger mistake was to not give the N770, N800, etc. phone capabilities. I was buying a new phone around that time, and thought those devices looked cool; but I couldn't even consider them, because they couldn't do basic calls or SMS. They fixed that with the N900, but had lost their head-start.

[larodi]

perhaps because phone capabilities require more chips, and SDR that would've made the N800/N900 too pricey. but, honestly, this thing was slow as shit, I loved the design so much, and hated this half-baked Debian equally.

The fact you could run apt on it did not help that much for the regular user.

[burnte]

To me it was also a huge disappointment. I had the N810 and it was amazing, I still have it. I wish I could get a new board for it. But the N900 was all cheap plastic, no metal like the 810, the magnets fell out all the time, the software was janky, and several promised features never arrived. It could have been awesome, but Nokia had already been distracted in their 5 device plan that the N900 was part of. We never got the follow up and Maemo was abandoned.

[atmosx]

> I installed a BitTorrent client, found the release on Pirate Bay, successfully torrented just the subtitle file, and used an editor to read the subtitles for scenes with a lot of alien.

... while you were on the movies? That's "Mr Robot" level, kudos!

[jack_tripper]

>I installed a BitTorrent client, found the release on Pirate Bay, successfully torrented just the subtitle file, and used an editor to read the subtitles for scenes with a lot of alien.

That's probably what I would do but that's also why the iphone beat the crap out of Nokia, because that example of what you did with the N900 is a 1% of 1% of what users would use their phones for back then, and Steve Jobs knew it so he won consumers over with a pleasant and simple UX that lacked features instead of piling on Power User features that nobody would use.

You're not gonna sell too many phone if your target userbase is those who know what BitTorrent is and how to use it on their Linux phone.

Such Power User focused niche devices are only financially viable for small companies to develop and sell, but you can't keep a company the size of Nokia in business by only catering to Linux phone enthusiasts.

Their demise was inevitable at that point no matter what they did.

[fragmede]

Back then, absolutely. But the long tail of the Internet, which is far more pervasive these days compared to back then, means that such a device could exist. Which arguably it does, with the GPD win max 2, if you install Linux on it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2467566.The_Long_Tail

[jack_tripper]

>means that such a device could exist

That was never the problem. The problem was how could Nokia stay competitive to Apple and Google when their focus was selling Linux devices aimed power users.

[uecker]

I owned the N9. This was a phone which was perfectly good also for average users, and it seems it sold very well in the few markets where it was actually sold (sadly no major markets). But when it came to the market, it was already decided that Nokia will kill their own OS development in favor of Windows Phone, which then flopped spectacularly. A decision which many people called out for being stupid before the consequences had fully unfolded.

[jack_tripper]

>This was a phone which was perfectly good also for average users

Not good enough to save it from the iPhone onslaught.

People on HN make this mistake to assume that they represent the "average user", the same mistake Steve Wozniak made. No, the average user wasn't interested in all the features of the N9. They much preferred the simpler iPhone and the proof is in the pudding.

>and it seems it sold very well in the few markets where it was actually sold

How do you know it sold well when Nokia never release official sales numbers for the N9?

Estimates put the N9 at less than 1 million sales in the 23 markets it was sold in. A drop in the ocean compared to total iPhone sales of the same timeframe in same 23 regions which estimate at 50 million total. Face it, the N9 was a sales flop no matter how you try to spin this, and launching in more markets would not have moved the needle significantly to make a dent in the iPhone.

>(sadly no major markets)

It launched in 23 markets mate, mostly EMEA and Asia. Not NA because even Nokia leadership realized the N9 won't stand a chance to compete with the iPhone and Blackberry on their home turf.

>A decision which many people called out for being stupid before the consequences had fully unfolded.

Nokia was already dead man walking even before that. Even their own employees said so when they got to play with the first iPhone in their HQ. The N9 was the band playing on the decks on the Titanic.

Blaming Nokia's inevitable failure on Windows Phone is historical revisionism. They would have failed either way since they lacked the software ecosystem beyond the phone that Apple and Google offered their users.

Fanboys praising the N9 as something that would have magically saved Nokia even they have done X or Y or Z with various Linux spins, are huffing some top end copium.

[uecker]

A million sales (I heard 1-2 million) for N9 are very good, considering that smartphone sales were in the millions at that time and that it was not sold in the US, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain etc. and had no marketing. Wikipedia says the original iPhone sales were 6 million in the first year which is a better comparison than the 93 million of total sales for 5 years for several iPhone generations. I think the "dead man" walking story is an interpretation which is not rooted in any hard fact. It is based on the idea that nothing can beat the iPhone, which is demonstrably wrong because Android did. And compared to Android (also a Linux phone), the N9 was definitely much better. But I also point out that far from everybody considered the iPhone impressive. In Europe initial sales for the iPhone were also not good.

In contrast the explanation I have for Nokia's failure gives a logical explanation: They panicked, prematurely declared thir existing phones obsolete, cancelled there next-gen development such as N9, and instead offered a poorer product (Windows Phone) at a later time. It is difficult to see how this can lead to anything else than failure.

Whether N9 and co. would be successful enough to save them in the long-run is pure speculation, but I see no fundamental why it could not, and it was ready at a time where Nokia was still big enough to get some app developers on board.