apps for Maemo

Whilst you may not have many non-desktop apps installed, there are plenty in Debian already. The whole GPE suite, most of the Free Smartphone stack, intone, tangoGPS etc. There is of course still a great deal of work to be done on this front, and simply installing plain Debian (or emdebian) on a freerunner or N900 could currently fairly be described as 'crappy', there is quite a lot of activity giong on to make this less painful and more mainstream.

Maemo or Mer or SHR plus a pile of extra apps from Debian is already straightforward.

And there is at least one phone platform which already runs on an emdebian base and is partly built with open hardware (balloonboard): the Toby-Churchill Lightwriter
(my current day-job). But you won't like the prices!