I have since two days ago near my G1 and Milestone also now a Nokia N900. I have therefore now compared with each other and this will now reflect my experience here.

Pro N900/Maemo:

• Maemo is more open than Android root access on terms again. Say rootsh (root local) and OpenSSH root (via SSH connection) are installed directly on the Programmmananger, and you have root access, either locally in the X-Terminal and / or through an SSH connection.
• There is an unofficial Android 2.0.1 port for N900 (see maemo.org Forum). But that does not matter here, yes.
• The applications on Maemo run as a native ARM binaries. This means that the N900 visually at least for me seems a lot smoother than my Motorola Milestone with Dalvik-VM, which has exactly the same CPU with the same clock and same graphics unit as the N900. Say both have a QMAP3430 SoC with the same clock and PowerVR SGX 530 graphics than unity.
• 3D applications such as games (OpenGL ES 2.0) run amazingly fluid than in the Milestone, although both have the exact same graphics unit. Yet I could not compare to a first For this I would have to first write an identical small 3D benchmark that will run on both platforms (for Android then on JNI for native code).
• The N900 has TV-Out, which works surprisingly well.
• The N900 has an FM transmitter.
• The N900 has Flash working in Gecko-based browser, which also works surprisingly well, and "liquid".
• The scrolling in Gecko-based browser for N900 is liquid at length as the Android WebKit-based browser on the G1 and Milestone.
• The Internet browser of the N900 and Firefox add-ons such as swallows AdBlock Plus
• Under Maemo is a normal X server. Say if you want, you can also normal X The treatments in a chroot Debian environment to run make and without VNC Forwardingkram (as it is with the Debianchrootkram the G1 does), say for example, Gimp 2.0, Firefox, Open Office, Audacity, LXDE , Openbox, and so on.
• Maemo is a normal Linux distribution with a completely normal standard Linux directory structure and normal libraries (only just stop for ARM CPU target as translated), which is very praiseworthy for developers, as opposed to with Android BOINIC and such.
• The N900 has 32GB plus additional microSD slot internally.
• Most programs are in / opt (symlink to / home / opt on a 2GB NAND partition as / home) installed, so space is enough for many apps available.

Contra N900/Maemo:

• Android Market is at length filled and better use than the App Store and repository (for apt-get on the console and in the Program Manager, Maemo deal) would certainly be no 15/08 users.
• Touchscreen capability / usability of the N900 with a resistive touch screen is very far Androidgeräten with capacitive touch screens. for example, in many places you need the stylus to many places to take at all exact.
• The Maemosteuerung is something illogical in some places, such as how to get in the program list, or, as it scrolls.
• The N900 is compared to my T-Mobile G1 Motorola Milestone and clearly a lot thicker.
• The keyboard of the N900 is significantly behind that of the T-Mobile G1s but roughly at the same level of that of the Motorola milestones.
• The Bildschirmuflösung the N900 with 800x480 pixel wide is lower by some as the Milestone with 854x480, but this is not particularly strong when compared to the weight. And the G1 has only 320x480 anyway here in the cold.
• The maximum volume of the internal speaker is smaller than my Motorola Milestone.
• Nokia is still undecided, which is now their primary OS, whether Symbian or Maemo. Say Maemo has yet an uncertain market future for those like me as app developers.
• Maemo is currently almost exclusively only in landscape mode to use the telephone application in portrait mode as the exception.
• The N900 does not have a digital compass.

Conclusion:

Maemo is in my opinion still strongly behind Android to make up for the mainstream users, and must still strong. So Maemo is rather more for geeks and Android rather more for the mainstream user. The bottom line is I will continue to mainly develop more programs for Android, and now and develop something for Maemo, Maemo has to be established properly.

Photos:

Nokia N900 vs. Motorola Milestone
Nokia N900 vs. T-Mobile Dream G1/HTC with the standard battery and cover (The stronger one thicker 2600 mAh battery for the photos I have previously replaced by the standard battery and replace the thicker cover by the thinner standard cover)

Memory consumption of the N900:

Nokia-N900-51-1: ~ # df-h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
227.9M 160.7M 63.0M 72% rootfs /
ubi0: rootfs 227.9M 160.7M 63.0M 72% /
tmpfs 1.0M 64.0k 960.0k 6% / tmp
tmpfs 256.0k 84.0k 172.0k 33% / var / run
none 10.0M 80.0k 9.9m 1% / dev
64.0m 64.0m 4.0K tmpfs 0% / dev / shm
/ Dev/mmcblk0p2 2.0G 112.4M 1.8G 6% / home
/ Opt/pymaemo/usr/lib/python2.5
2.0G 112.4M 1.8G 6% / usr/lib/python2.5
/ Opt / pymaemo / usr / share / pyshared
2.0G 112.4M 1.8G 6% / usr / share / pyshared
/ Opt / pymaemo / usr / lib / pyshared
2.0G 112.4M 1.8G 6% / usr / lib / pyshared
/ Opt / pymaemo / usr / share / python-support
2.0G 112.4M 1.8G 6% / usr / share / python-support
/ Opt / pymaemo / usr / lib / python-support
2.0G 112.4M 1.8G 6% / usr / lib / python-support
/ Dev/mmcblk0p1 227.6M 27.0G 26.8G 1% / home / user / MyDocs
/ 7.4g dev/mmcblk1p1 2.0G 5.4G 27% / media/mmc1