I wish them all the best, but I can't say I'm optimistic. The N900 was one of the best phones I owned.

I agree. N900 was one of the best phones experiences, and a pretty good mobile computing experience. Then mine succumbed to the lens-cap-sensor-preventing-sd-card-from-being-recognized bug. Which quickly made it a whole lot less useful.

i personally found mine an outstanding mobile computing experience, but as a phone it was pretty mediocre. the ergonomics of holding it to your ear weren't all that great, and they never did fix the bug where it took so long to swap the phone app in that the caller hung up.

what finally made me give up on it and move to android, though, was the (also never fixed) bug where the gps would take anywhere from 20 minutes to forever to get a lock.

that said, i am very tempted to move back to meego if this effort takes off and has decent hardware. i loved how easy and pleasant it was to write little personal apps for the n900.

the promise of meego was one original reasons I picked up the N900. Between Jolla continuing w/ Meego, FirefoxOS, and a newly open WebOS - I'm quite bullish on the future of handsets.

I still own it and see no reason whatsoever to replace it.

Interestingly enough it still feels fresher then other smart phones that have the same amount of usage (~18 month).

While the story is cool and it all sounds neat and very ahead-of-the-curve-esque, I'd just like to make one objection:

Despite all the advances in smartphone hardware and software since 2009, I still know many people who couldn't consider using any other phone than the N900. This was and is the only smartphone that you could actually make your own.

My Nexus phone would care to disagree. I have full control of everything running on it, and I can flash anything I like on it, including non-Android operating systems.

I think you're actually quoting my "history of MeeGo" post here, not this article :-)

But yeah, you can do a lot with Android, but somehow it still doesn't feel as durable and personal as Maemo was.

many people. not all people. Personally, I think that the N900 feels a lot more like linux than android (and personally, I don't have the time (and arguably don't have the skill) to port desktop linux to your smartphone hardware.)

the thing about the n900 is that it doesn't just run desktop linux; It has an interface that runs reasonably on a smartphone. But, you don't have to rewrite all your programs in a horrid java knock off. porting from linux to your n900 is not a particularly difficult thing, compared to porting to java.

Here is some background to Jolla and the MeeGo saga: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/meego-diaspora/

Also, the HN discussion when that story was up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4214263

Great news, although I'm very skeptical. The idea of more open ecosystem is great, but that doesn't mean anything if it doesn't translate into a better user experience in the long run. I just get the vibe that these are hardcore FOSS people who just want desktop Linux on mobile.

Then you may want to read some of the N9 reviews. Jolla is mostly staffed by people from the teams that made it happen.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/22/nokia-n9-review/

http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review

http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/portable-cathedrals/

I have an N9, and it's great. :)

However, I'm not sure if they have the top talent in their team, such as Peter Skillman who worked on the N9 UX to the best of my knowledge.

Is there any information on when an SDK/documentation/emulator will be available? I've been curious about the project, and what they're doing beyond the Mer core.

"The next big change in the mobile world will come from China.."

I hear this being repeated a lot, but how can one be so sure?