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Have a look at (soon to be launched) Jolla.
It's made by the ex-Nokia team who made N9 (and N900?), which isn't that bad either. And, although not officially confirmed afaik, there may be an optional hardware keyboard via the 'other-half' design (likely with wired connection to the phone for communication and power).
Check some reviews/demos of Sailfish OS on the web too.

All in all, currently this looks to be the most promising geek phone.

Perhaps get a Jolla instead?
http://www.jolla.com/
Yeah, I've already pre-ordered mine...

I have no faith for HTML5 being mature enough for the spotlight. Your best bet would most likely be the MeeGo successor Jolla.

I would put good sliding keyboard as the 5th pillar. Considering getting back to the N900 just because the real good keyboard it had. Hope Jolla will have a keyboard other half for their upcoming phone.

> Most of the Nokia engineers I know are self-starters, and most of them can't stand Ballmer's manner

Sure, some laid off Nokia engineers joined Jolla to take MeeGo forward.

No matter how self starting you think they are, they still have careers to build and families to feed.

Ones who were shoved into new hands, such as Symbian engineers shifted to Accenture (a consulting company full of MBAs), took it without a peep and are suffering quietly. Microsoft, with all of its faults, values engineers.

Most governments can tax or subsidize as they will. So they are free to move money from one entity to any other entity. We don't say that doing any business with a society is supporting everything that society does. We weigh the complexities against one another.

Microsoft is mildly advancing lockdown on ARM. They are taking an already moderately locked down platform and further entrenching lockdown. On x86 so far they are providing a slight move towards avoid OS level hacks, a bit more security with little lockdown. Microsoft has a fairly long record of supporting open systems in hardware. Microsoft has a fairly long record of being hostile to open standards for software.

They are a bit of a mixed bag. But obviously supporting Microsoft is not supporting open system. Obviously there are some vendors that are more open, but not many. Sun was more open in terms of file formats but more closed in terms of hardware. I'm not sure who on ARM is really much better. I'd say right now http://jolla.com/ is probably the most open but it is unclear if they even intend to sell in the USA.

The problem with Linux on a tablet is not installing Linux but making it usable with a touchscreen.

Gnome/KDE/Unity are moving towards a more touch-screen friendly approach [whatever you think of that], as well as Linux Os's designed for it https://www.tizen.org/ and my personal favourite sailfish http://jolla.com/ you need to keep your eyes open.

It's still very early, but there is Jolla. I'll be curious to see what they do and whether I'll be switching from my N8 ( which is :-\ ) to a Jolla phone in a couple years.

(Holy crap I haven't posted here in years. Writing out anchor tags in comments takes me back...)

If any hate is spewing, is targeted against the ex M$ bigwig Elop which brew this destructive strategy.

As pointed out above, it was the board that was already decided at ditching the previous CEO and hiring Elop/MS instead.
Now, as Dilbert has pointed out, this was a strategic move of sheer genius, with which MS has realised three very strategic goals:
1. Windows phone introduced in the market,
2. Nokia, the biggest competitor for their own phone hardware sales ambitions has been crushed,
3. Linux as OS for the mobile phone has been disabled.
Luckily, there is still the Jolla (currently connection time out) initiative with Tizen.

The grand question: How did the Nokia board get played up so much by Microsoft?