Nokia N900 Necromancy

Posted by yaky 12/12/2025

480 points | 190 commentspage 4

BirAdam 12/12/2025|

I wanted an N900 so bad when it came out. A buddy of mine had one, but I had recently purchased a new iPhone. I couldn't justify switching at that point.

internet2000 12/12/2025||

Buddy, just buy a replacement battery https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=BL-5J

yaky 12/12/2025|

I looked, but TBH, not sure what to make of "genuine" and "OEM" claims for a battery for a 16–year-old device (or 10-year-old if you count compatible Lumias). Descriptions usually do not mention manufacture dates either.

pessimizer 12/12/2025||

> not sure what to make of "genuine" and "OEM" claims for a battery for a 16–year-old device

They're lies, but the batteries work. There were Chinese lines manufacturing knockoff BL-5Js, and there may still be one or two, or just a bunch of crates filled with old ones. Source: still use an N900, but just for podcasts.

> 10-year-old if you count compatible Lumias

Worse, those Lumia BL-5Js aren't actually compatible. The slots cut into the battery aren't wide enough to fit into the N900. Unless you're willing to cut apart the battery itself, they're useless.

space_ghost 12/12/2025||

I loved my N900. Enough that I eventually replaced it with an N9. It wasn't the same, tho. The N900 had a certain charm.

distances 12/12/2025|

It wasn't the same, but I had both and really loved the N9. My all-time favourite phone.

rcarmo 12/12/2025||

Pretty impressive. I have one of those (or related) around, might give this a go even if Maemo always ran like molasses.

ezst 12/12/2025|

Did it? I mean, even when you compare it to its contemporary devices (it took a while for Android to get close to smooth animations and fluid navigation, even without the type of true compositing and multitasking the n900 had).

alfiedotwtf 12/13/2025||

It’s a damn shame the Neo900 never happened :(

Even after all these years, my n900 has been my favourite phone.

ge96 12/12/2025||

Seeing htop running reminds me of Pine64 PPP ahhh fun to mess around with but eventually I sold em

bpiroman 12/12/2025||

Seeing this makes me wanna get the Blackberry passport!!! And boot linux on it

cookiengineer 12/12/2025|

Check out the Hackberry designs from ZitaoTech. They're pretty amazing. I'm currently in the process of porting Plasma Mobile onto the device so that there's a better UI for it.

[1] https://github.com/ZitaoTech/HackberryPiCM5

silveira 12/12/2025||

Oh, I wish I could do something like that for my Nokia N800.

9notorp 12/12/2025||

that was an enjoyable read! loved reading stuff about smartphones on forums, especially symbian ones where the die hard fanboys absoultely believed that this device was better than the iphones and htcs had to offer (including me). too bad maemo / meego died off, we may have seen more interesting devices. loved the "Contains no LLM-generated content" bit.

yaky 12/12/2025|

Thanks!

Maemo Leste is still around, I just tried it on a PinePhone with a keyboard not too long ago.

It's not postmarketOS with a popular DE nor Android, but has a terminal, browser, media player, et.

jaffa2 12/12/2025|

Good article i enjoyed it.

More comments...