Taming Nokia's Wildest Linux Smartphone

The Nokia N900 is one of Nokia's most unique smartphones. This is the only phone ever made that runs the Maemo operating system. Which is an open source Debian Linux based OS.

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[ФеофанЭтополедолжнобытьзаполне]

Great stuff! Although, as a long-time maemo/meego/nokla fan, I have a bunch of useless but very urgent comments pending 🧐

First of all, I think you are incorrect about the way Nokla positioned N900 in public. It was by no means "dev phone". The emphasis was on "success", "media" (as per N-series) and "connect people". And the latter is what Maemo did best: for example, it was one of the first mobile OSes (if not the first) to implement full contacts integration. You could have any type of contact data linked to person' record in a phone book. Every app exposed its own type of record (like icq uin, jabber address, etc.) so you had like a global contacts list in your phone merged from every app. For example, you could install icq client and it would populate phone book with a list of your online buddies, and then you were able to merge those with existing, having-only-phone-number profiles, with exported icq uin being yet another property of each of said profiles. So next time you open icq client all those buddy uins were actually displayed as profiles from "global" phone book, with avatars you assigned to them and so on. Hell, you didnt even need "icq client" to be a dedicated app with its own GUI. Those IM services acted like adapters, so you could use system chat app to talk to people over any protocol, all in one place. For me personally it was such a killer feature, I stick to this phone for at least an extra year on account of this alone.
Also, N900 was kinda pricy. Nokla ran ad campaign, calling N900 something like ultimate way for young (but already soomewhat successful) to get online, connect and have fun typical N-series style. So yes, it was in fact a geek phone, but it was never positioned this way.

Secondly, again, for a non-dev consumer N900 was not that good. Dont get me wrong, I absolutely love it, but resistive screen was far from good and phone had noticable problems with responsiveness. It simply lagged. And it lagged much. Too much for regular user to cope with for such a high price. Combined with some sensor-related problems, MMS troubles, and also its weight/size, it lead to not so joyful user experience in upcoming touchphones' world.

On the other hand, its successor, N9, is absolutely great! The best, deep black OLED screen, good touch, perfect size/weight, and Maemo, transitioned into close-to-perfection MeeGo. But no qwerty keyboard. Swipes are good, it was really a revolution and to this day is way better than anything goolagol shitphones can offer, but still. Man needs his qwerty. Nokla made a small number of N950 phones, which were MeeGo+qwerty, but unfortunately those never hit first hand market, being (this time for real) a sample phone for devs.

I have both N900 and N9, and despite N900 being a very interesting and good looking phone, it's very hard to adapt it to every day use. But N9 is still good. In fact, it's still better than most of modern smartphones out there.

Also, I'd like to say that MeeGo was probably the best mobile OS ever (or had potential to be). It was designed not only for phones but for wide array of devices. I absolutely love laptop version of it! Neat, simple, very visually appealing, with GUI being somewhat reduced as far as regular PC user is concerned, but greately adjusted for everyday use in connectivity activities (lol) such as IMs, chats and whatnot. I have a number of tiny laptops originally released with MeeGo onboard, with Samsung N100 being probably the best nettop ever (keyboard alone, man, in this day and age it's impossible to find such a good kb). Although it's not that old as most of your findings, I think it should be noted in case you decide to elaborate on whole Maemo/MeeGo topic.

With that being said, I think a series of videos about MeeGo/N9/N950 would be a great niche content to make! It probably wont attract many new users, but it would be an absolute joy to produce. Getting your hands on N950 could be hard to pull off (single item for sale on ebay as of now, $2, 5k from Greece, claims to be mint tho) but this is no doubt a great artefact.

[jimmy]

I worked at Nokia when all this was being developed; exciting, but bittersweet times. There was some serious talent and tech that got cut short with the switch to Windows Phone.

[galacticboy]

I must say.. it gives me a strong wave of "this is what Android phones should be"
I loved that time, where it was all about features.

[iaakki]

Like tears in the rain.. Nokia truly made products where user can have full control and innovate with it.

[philipweiss]

Imagine having this phone with "recent specs" like SnapdragonGen1/2 or Dimensity8/9 Series with 4/8gb of RAM and USB-C would be a dream come true.

[KOSMOSA]

this thing is bonkers, absolutely nuts for a phone of this time.

[Iskandarko]

I still have one. Love this thing. Once I used it to jailbreak my PS3.

[bmanc]

This device was something else. I bought an N900 shortly after it came out back when I was in high school and that phone still sits on my desk to this day. This device (and the N800 I had before it) introduced me to Linux and is the primary reason I am now a software engineer specializing in embedded Linux.

[Sb]

Maemo, that's a name I haven't heard in a long long time.
Another legendary phone that came out in 2009 was the HTC HD2.

[villesyrjala]

Ahh, I have (mostly) fond memories of working on the N900/N950/N9. And then Elopcalypse happened and the whole thing got flushed down the drain. I still remember the deafening silence when Elop announced his Windows plans to a building full of dumbfounded Maemo/Meego developers. Sad end to to an otherwise great journey.

[lekonjak]

I still have one of these.

It was my first phone and I was very recently introduced to Linux. It took some effort to learn its 'how to', but it was an amazing device. 64 GB of storage allowed me to carry around whole discographies to listen anywhere. Very nice camera as well.

Since then I've got really used to Linux; in all my machines for almost a decade.

Got me inspired to take it out of its resting place and play with it again.

[bpruszczyk]

I really like your videos and your style of storytelling, so calming. This type of peaceful material is priceless this times.

[yeety]

tip: reduce the music volume
anyways, great video and now I really want this phone!

[shaunclarke]

Damn. Crazy to see what could have been. I didn't know this existed.

Also, TV out over TRRS jack was on other N series phones, like the N95.

[ThalassTKynn]

The N900 was my first smartphone, and it's still my favourite. Unfortunately when the first Galaxy Note came out I got the new toy lust and got one of those, and because money was tight I sold the N900. I'm still kicking myself. That, and getting rid of my minidisc player are my two biggest tech regrets. And both of those things are pretty expensive nowdays. 😢
Also I didn't know the technical drawings were available for the N900. That's really cool!

[marvinochieng]

As usual, criminally underated niche content. Keep up the excellent efforts and always remember us loyal viewers before you go big and maybe become a nebula or patreon only content maker. Good job !!💜💜💜

[prakar]

Fantastic upload, much thanks 🎉❤.

I bought an N900 when it first came out, in 2009, and am waiting for the full opensource kernel based Maemo Leste to come out.

The instructions you gave here, such as flashing and installing Uboot, and root access, are super helpful, and i believe, unique across the internet. Even the forums don't explain it beyond some jargon heavy instructions, which challenge more than help.

This is truly an outlier video 😊

[Anonymous-qbvc]

This approach to OS could have became a serious contender for android and iOS if it wasn't for Microsoft buying out Nokia for their own Windows phone OS which remarkably failed just like many other OS of its time including Samsung BADA OS which ran on my first smartphone.

[msmialowski]

What an epic device that was! I had (have) one. You could do almost anything with it. You could actually over clock and under clock the thing at the same time. Basically, you could add both a new lower CPU freq to save power and new upper CPU freq to go faster.

I actually used the thing quite a bit even after switching phones. I had it running as an odd network music device. It was plugged into an analog stereo that it controlled via the IR blaster so it could turn the stereo on/off, volume up/down, mute, etc. It called the IR commands via a web server that it ran so you would actually control it using any other device on the network with a web browser. Oh, and the music was actually hosted on a separate NAS, not the N900.

From what I remember, I had some kind of software that read the music files in my collection and pushed them to a web app that I modified to add the IR code buttons to. Great fun.

It really did have its short comings though. From what I remember, web browsing in general got to be painfully slow to the point of frustration. Also, phone calls themselves weren't all that great if I recall.

But over all, I had more fun with that thing than any other mobile device. I have it in a desk drawer still. It would be cool if you could run it like a thin client these days, though I don't know if it could even handle a VNC stream. Plus I'd need to find a new battery for the thing. The original went all blimp on me.

Thanks for the blast of nostalgia! Great content BTW. Love your overall style. Subbed.

[zakyzigzag]

The N series were always on top of the game. I was quite a heavy Symbian modder back in my school days, and I really miss those days.