Easy, the large n900 would have a regular nokia charger and not braindead usb charging, so the usb port would just be just that a usb port. Or you could have two usb ports one for charging and client mode and one for host. Personally I would prefer the regular old nokia charger as they are much faster at charging than crap usb charging, which is really only fine in my book, for small battery dumb devices.

Well that will be one of he first things I try... I do assume there will be a telnet program for the N900 ... which hopefully will allow connection over bluetooth.

OK.

Earlier you said you use your N800 and cheap small phone.

As personal experience, OK, but other people would care for many other advantages as well as disadvantages between N800 and N900. Different OS, processor, amount of RAM, ...

How many customers are now going to use N800 + cheap small phone instead of N900 because N800 supports USB host mode? How many will hack around this issue? What are the alternatives?

Many customers will be happy with 32 GB internal + microSD, using BT, WiFi or 3G for e.g. file transfers or SSHFS. With N900 and Maemo 5 It is dead easy to make a picture and upload it to Facebook... which is very attractive for mortal users.

N800 on wired ethernet? Using a USB to ethernet adapter? How much throughput do you get with your N800 over wired ethernet? Do you really require that much MB/sec? What for?

According to quoted hypothesis not because its controlled by a pin (0/1). Like a jumper. Not by software. How can the Linux kernel ignore the refusal of USB controller not wanting to go in host mode? By screaming? That doesn't switch the pin, and from Mara's post it might be even difficult to hardware mod this...

Posts by qgil, ragnar and igor point out microUSB, power via USB are design choices. Tough choices. Design choices are always sacrifices, and there are always (potential) customers who will be unhappy with certain design choices.

Question is
1) how large is that number of (potential) customers,
2) what are their workarounds (software mod, hardware mod, other additional device, competitor device, ..),
3) is it possible to satisfy these people while not dissatisfying those who are happy.

Eventually it also boils down to a commercial decision (ie. very much related to time & money).

Sorry for the redundancy inherent in this post, but I'd just like to add that in my view, this whole business about the lack of a OTG/Host mode capability is a big mistake for what is touted as a handheld computer.

It's not a phone, right, so why does it even need a USB client interface? I've never used that capability on my N800, not even once, unless you count (re)flashing. None of my other computers have a USB client interface, and if it isn't a phone, why does it need to follow the new trend and support charging via a USB interface?

I pre-ordered an N900 the day it became available on the Nokia UK store. This issue has made me wonder, for the first time, whether or not this was a good idea.

Shame about the lack of a compass, but I never expected one. I didn't expect a retrograde step in the USB department though.

Not impressed.

Might be possible but I'd be very skeptical realistically of that possibility; my experiences with low level hardware like that is that while software might have an option to adjust to tweak a setting on a chip, a hardware pin that's designed to perform the same sort of functionality always overrides since it is usually bound to the physical gate itself. I.e. if you have software to enable "host mode power" on the 5V line, then the software acts as a trigger for the hardware transistor/switch to make it happen; if that same transistor/switch has a hardware input to perform the same function, then using the software to "override it" doesn't work because it can't "undo" the hardware state. Even if you could get a driver to "ignore" that state, you'd probably still have a hard time getting the rest of the OTG host functionality to actually enable... just my thoughts though, I haven't studied the data sheets on the USB chipset though...

My assumption here is that the root cause of this is of course the USB charging thing. If you think about it, they probably had exactly the same issue with the N800 in that they couldn't say OTG because there was no software support to be "approved by the USB consortium" at time of launch, so they stuck with the old Mini-B connector; hardware still worked, just had the wrong connector and no official support (basically fly under the USB consortium radar and say "hey guys, if you can make it work, sweet, but we didn't know anything about it wink wink nudge nudge"). On the N900 it's a different story though because of the stupid USB charging... you can't just leave it all wired up for OTG Host mode, and have USB charging support without some proof that the software properly supports the OTG signalling; otherwise you could release the "OTG software update" to enable OTG later on, and since it no longer has to be verified/approved by anyone (technially... I'm sure Nokia would test things, but we're talking hypothetically here) then what if the software update is goofed and causes the chip to go into host mode while connected to charger/etc. Big problems ensue, and everyone who has a blown up device has the potential to turn around and say "Damn USB OTG blew up my device!".

So yea, really far fetched, but think about it from other more paranoid perspectives and you can see how it fits; therefore Nokia has to keep everyone happy by making it impossible for this to be updated later on.

(And as for the USB charging thing VS the 2mm jack... unfortunately that's a political thing too; Nokia signed on along with everyone else earlier this year as part of an EU innitiative I believe to standardize all mobile device/cell phone charges to be MicroUSB; good idea normally to save everyone a lot of money/hassle/cable messes/etc, but in this case a bit of a pain.. My biggest thought on this was "how would you power the N900 and use OTG at the same time?... powered hub, that stinks").

Just my take on things... oh and for the record I've got my USB OTG numbers for the N800 adapters... over 1000 sold... plus all the other ones people picked up from ebay, etc kind of means that there's at least a basis for OTG given the number of NITs relatively speaking...

Many mobile devices have that.

Many mobile devices have that, and in EU there is political demand to have one standard charger. microUSB will become the standard.

How many mobile devices support USB host mode though? Not many. What are the use cases for USB host mode? Not many, and those which exist can be circumvented. For example, instead of digital camera -> USB host mode of device you can now simply use SD, CF, BT, or even SDIO + WiFi or use N900 + its relatively good on-board camera + Facebook to upload it instantly.

I seriously question the viability of USB hub + USB 3"5 HDD + N800 versus
1) a laptop or netbook with a 2"5 PATA or SATA HDD. I believe many people will be fine with the latter, even considering its weight, size, power usage, etc.
2) N900 with 32 GB on-board, microSD, 3G.

I really wonder what insane amount of GB people have to carry around on their 3"5 HDD that either of these 2 alternatives is not better option. I don't believe that is a common use case.

Contrary, I could say, why was there USB host mode? I have never used this feature on the 770, N800, and N810. Not even once; I never saw a reason for it. Oh, and I'm very disappointed that I cannot charge my 770, N800, N810 not via USB, because this would be so comfortable, and I wouldn't have to carry a charger around with me (which easily breaks when you carry it around too much). The HTC phones were a bliss, because I could easily charge them via USB wherever I was.

In the end, it's marketing that decides what features need to be supported, and what features get dropped due to a limited time frame.
But I'm happy for USB charging and don't miss USB OTG a bit. The least I want is stick some bulky devices into my tablet.

I guess this highly depends on how critical USB OTG is for you.

Maybe you should consider getting an UMPC instead as USB is what UMPCs are good at.

Sure - a standard charger for mobile phones, but, this is billed as a computer, not a phone, and that's how I want to use it.

On the other hand I couldn't agree more regarding your point about storage. I'm more interested in attaching non-storage devices to my N900.

I don't carry it around. I do sometimes pack my portable DVD drive though.

BUT, if my Nxx0 cannot connect to a HDD/DVD then I have to also own and maintain a PC so that I can access them when I need to. I don't want to have to purchase and maintain a PC just so that I can get data to/from a HDD/DVD when I need to. (For awhile I used my N800 as my only computing device. Recently it has become too slow for newer web-pages and I have needed a larger screen to run ddd. Thus I have begun to carry a small laptop/mouse/power-supply/phone/phone's power-supply and I find I leave the N800 home. I would love to go to just a phone an its power supply. But I need USB to do that.)

What kind of devices would that be? IMHO the N900 already has pretty much everything onboard, that you'd attach to other devices:

- WiFi: onboard
- 3G modem: onboard
- Bluetooth: onboard
- keyboard: builtin
- VGA-out: TV-out onboard
- 5M camera: onboard
- IR receiver: onboard
- GPS: onboard
- mouse: not supported by the OS anyway