It's probably not as bad as i think it is. But i remember hating the screen on my 5230, which was a 3.2 inch resistive screen, that was my first touch screen phone to. I hated that phone so much it almost made me never want to get a touchscreen phone again, but that could be down mostly to Symbian ^5 which was rubbish IMO. After that i got a N8, probably the best phone i ever had, I have a 808 Pureview now.

Maybe i should put my 5230 past behind me, I'm sure the N900 screen is fine, you don't have to press down hard to make it respond do you?

Not at all.... but getting a good n900 is the real challenge...

I don't have to press hard on mine. I've gotta admit, though, that I love the fact that you can use your fingernail rather than the pad of your finger (something that you can't do on a capacitive screen); it's a lot more accurate, and more comfortable. (Pressing my fingertips against a glass screen over and over again eventually becomes painful...)

Or the stylus. Don't forget the stylus. I love the fact that you can use the stylus. The lack of ability to use one is for me the main disadvantage of capacitive touch screens. They are like in the Hitch-hiker's Guide: you vaguely touch the screen in the approximate vicinity of where you want... and hope. Resistive screens are much more accurate.

Cheers everyone. If the resistive touch screen is good, then I'm much more likely to give the N900 a go as thats mostly what was holding me back. If theres one on ebay cheap maybe 60-70 quid.

well..here my opinion,
i think using N900 as main gadget for today mobile computing are rather to late.
especially for web surfing. most of today web page using heavy scripting and tons of images.and that's are heavy to handle on it CPU and ram

but for me, this device just awesome i treats my N900 as my precious one and pray it will be life so long.
and just bought new battery coz the original battery was swollen

installing alot of applications, store my movies and musics collection in it. so far it still excellent for me. Last week i install Yappari it just awesome i don't need to bring my tablet anymore

I just switched from the nexus 4 to a n900. the n900 is used from amazon, missing the stylus, and with a spare battery. cost $99.

the resistive touchscreen is much much better than what i had expected. it took me 5 minutes to learn how hard i needed to press.

the only things i miss from my last phone are nfc and 5ghz 11n.

Hi!

I've just bought one refurbished unit from some seller in Amazon. It's coming via Singapore post. I hope it will be arriving some day next week. I have faith on what I'm going to find on this device: physical keyboard, precise touchscreen and lots of thingies to play with (both in hardware: IR, FM transmitter and software: full-on Debian!).

I see I'm not the only one who's thinking of switching (downgrading?) to a Nokia N900. What phone are you coming from ceene?

Just give it a chance.

Touch is not comparable to 52xx/N97 (worst). I switch between N9 and N900 on-the-fly.

HW keyboard is the best.

OS is free and hackable.
It took me some time to getconvinced of N900 (used only S60 phones) but then I will never give it up.

Of course you should love Linux and like to tinker and live with some disadvantages (old HW and some app flaws like no MMS support).