Well the N9 came out at $500+ and I didn't buy one because 1) couldn't afford it; 2) didn't like the internal battery; 3) didn't like the lack of an SD slot.

Just last week Newegg had them on sale for $249 (16GB black) and I figured it was getting rid of old stock and this was the last chance to get one, and the price was attractive, and I could deal with the battery somehow. I had forgotten about the lack of an expansion slot, so I went ahead and ordered the phone.

At this point I'm feeling some buyers remorse because I had kind of thought I could expand the memory with a microSDHC card. So now I'm wishing I'd gotten a 64GB unit and I see someone has one on buy/sell at a ridiculously low price.

The phone I got was in an unsealed box but the phone itself is wrapped in some kind of plastic film and the little accessory cables are still wrapped up in their own plastic thingies. Newegg claims they sometimes open the phones to remove carrier locks, but I guess the N9 was generally sold unlocked.

So I'm wondering if I should: 1) sell the phone still in the plastic wrap as a new/semi-new unit, and possibly buy a 64gb unit; or 2) unwrap it and use it as a phone (I probably won't buy a data plan for it since those are very expensive in the US). If I start using it I'll probably be reluctant to ever sell it for security reasons: "secure wipe" on phones apparently usually still leaves private data unerased.

I have an N900 that I plan to hold on to, even though I don't use it very much because it's slow and its screen is too small and I'm afraid to recharge it too often because of the notoriously fragile USB socket. I had bought an E63 as a stopgap while trying to score an N900, but it turns out that I still use the E63 as my main phone because of its convenient form factor (its software frankly isn't very good). I also hate turning on the N900 because of the annoying music it plays when you power it up.

I guess I'm looking for people's general thoughts about the usefulness of the N9 as a voice and SMS phone that can run some apps (contacts, calculator, camera, etc), as well as a platform for writing and running my own Linux programs that use the hardware, specifically the camera. I'm also interested in using it as a car GPS because of the built-in compass, so am wondering how that is. I don't like Android and don't want to use "app stores" including Ovi, so the GPS question pertains basically to what's already in the N9 when you take it out of the box.

In the long run I think I really want a somewhat larger tablet (similar hardware to current Galaxy Note) running Mer, but that doesn't exist right now. Maybe someday.

Thanks for any thoughts.