Harmattan is a very nice UI with some innovative features. But if underneath it, loading software will require chasing down "dependencies," then maybe the beauty is only skin deep.

Bad repos might have been the source of your 'dependency' problems, Nokia was the only mobile device user to embrace apt and had a much better product than the CE devices that used 'reflashing' as in wiping the universe and starting over.

N770 was understood and loved by the hackers, but not by the general public, and was a commercial failure. It was also more powerful than most of the other devices out there and ran more general purpose software than the popular PDAs and smart phones. (WM could run CE apps but not Windows apps, N770 could run any X application with recompilation.)

It wasn't until the iPhone that a Unix device was accepted by the general public, and only because Apple did a better job of hiding that from the public. (And other things as well

I find it hard to apply the label 'Unix' to an OS which cannot multitask. A few directories wholly hidden from the user, with no available shell, gutted utilities and services, and little if any meaningful interaction between programs, does not constitute Unix.

Of all the mobile electronics I've ever had, I remember my N770 the most fondly and wistfully. next to my then modern HTC Apache Windows Mobile device, it was like an artifact from the future. I coded up several great apps for it in python including a personal finances ledger and a price checker using the Amazon API. The thing was amazing. Even though it has since died and I've moved on to Android, I miss it.