I think it would be a good idea to have a starter available to use the N900 as a phone only. In case of system failure can have the option to work as a telephone with access to contacts.

I recently is system failure and while arrangements were without phone and had no other hand.

Is it too complicated to implement? Does it seem silly?

Excuse my bad English.

You mean like a subset of Maemo only implementing phone calls?

I'm sure it's doable, but it would contain more-or-less everything that is now in Maemo (well, perhaps the pdf reader could be stripped off it , so I don't see what you'd gain by that.

What do you mean by "system failure" anyway?

Yes I mean only the phone functions and contacts, but perhaps something else minimum. It is to be sure to have the phone function in case of disaster.

As a system failure I mean something like playing with a new kernel or modify files with different versions that end up affecting the operation of the device.

Example: I upgraded one of the times "KP V49" and stopped working, restarted every time you turn on. The only thing that worked was the "backupmenu"