It's pretty simple: hacker vs. user points of view
i used both N9 and N900. N9 was a way more polished, user-centric device. I love the UX and even how the device looks
however, for (low-level) hackers, N9/N950 was a bit hostile environment compared to N900. The first major stumbling block was Aegis (somewhat similar to Samsung's Knox perhaps). With N900, you can just boot any other Linux by simply loading u-boot to memory using the flasher. Nothing else. N9/N950's Aegis prevented that kind of luxury, so you needed to mess with the OS first, deal with permanent ominous warranty warning, and risk bricking it (see https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=81579). On the other hand, N900 is basically unbrickable. So N950 loses to N900 because of these reasons, even though it has a keyboard, a somewhat better one in fact
Pine64 doesn't do any software, so the comparison is apples to oranges :-)
The software from the N9 became what today is SailfishOS (mostly FOSS, but UI closed), and for something fully FOSS, Nemo is also derived from Harmattan, https://nemomobile.net/
You can text and use gps on both of them, as well as make voice calls on the Motorola Droid 4 (calls work on N900, but you need complex audio routing and audio filtering. If anyone has experience with Linux audio, the project will appreciate their assistance)
Yes, they both have non-free PowerVR GPU, but its blobs work on Linux mainline, at least
I use Termux a lot too, because the Nokia N900 spoiled me and taught me to use Terminal on phone at all times.
Instead of Android + Termux, one can also look at Sailfish OS. You get all that functionality by default. There's also PostMarket OS [1], which should support at least some Android phones
I've never seen an iPhone displaying a CB message. Our mobile operator uses channel 50 to advertise network discounts, and iPhones don't display this, while many other phones do.
> Or was there something else about it?
It's pretty simple: hacker vs. user points of view
i used both N9 and N900. N9 was a way more polished, user-centric device. I love the UX and even how the device looks
however, for (low-level) hackers, N9/N950 was a bit hostile environment compared to N900. The first major stumbling block was Aegis (somewhat similar to Samsung's Knox perhaps). With N900, you can just boot any other Linux by simply loading u-boot to memory using the flasher. Nothing else. N9/N950's Aegis prevented that kind of luxury, so you needed to mess with the OS first, deal with permanent ominous warranty warning, and risk bricking it (see https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=81579). On the other hand, N900 is basically unbrickable. So N950 loses to N900 because of these reasons, even though it has a keyboard, a somewhat better one in fact