One of the things that I fear is that very soon I will reach a stage where I will need to hard-reset the N900, for me this is because despite the warnings I like to look at applications in the extras-testing and devel repositories. Sooner or later I will end up installing a rogue application that will hamper N900 performance and a desire to start from a clean slate will be born.

Now had this been a Symbian device, it would have been a simple matter of hitting *#7370# and I would be back where I started with a clean state in a matter of two minutes. Unfortunately on the N900 and Maemo 5 its now as simply. You will need to flash the device with a computer and for most N900 owners it will not be a walk in the park.

On the N900’s production FW (1.2009.42-11) all you get is this option:

However @MohammadAG kindly sent me this image from the Maemo 5 SDK that also carried the option to clear the device.

Now my question is why remove it Nokia? Was it for a technical reason or was it removed on a whim? Can we please have it back? Please make hard resetting the N900 as easy as it is on Symbian.