Thanks for your kind reply. I donated to the neo900 project when it was first announced, because it sounded like a nice refresh of the n900 devices. Doubling or quadrupling the RAM in an n900 would help a lot. I still use one of my n900s every day, mostly as a little ipython calculator, but I run some other apps too. Also, on rare occasions I will get a call from work when I'm away from any computers, and I have to run one of the X11 apps we've developed at work, so having a very portable X11 server (I tether it to my Android phone) is a real bonus for me. I've never found an X11 server app for Android that was usable.

For me, the additional privacy was never the big selling point. I wanted a better n900.

You can still buy new Android phones with removable batteries. Call me hopelessly naive if you will, but I don't believe they have secret inner batteries capable of keeping them running for hours after the main battery has been removed.