Anyway, I just had to clear that “NOT this one!”-topic. I just feel – after a couple of months – that N80 is very much an underachievement. In a scale from 0 to 10 it’s just barely a six. It’s very buggy (for example, right now sending an SMS takes more than a minute, which is why I wanted to update it), clumsy to use, physically it feels like a secondhand Lada (making clunky rattling physical noises in your ears beyond lunacy whilst talking, scratching itself almost automatically thanks to its sliding case), the camera, although being a 3-megapixel-thing is much, much worse than my half dead ‘98 Digital Ixus (2 megapix)… oh, speaking about the camera: the ridiculous switch next to optics is just worth a batteryless dildo, actually, it must be courtesy of the Krasnojarsk Lada Factory. NOT to mention the stupid themes with a serious lack of contrast: it’s practically impossible to use it in bright sunlight with your goggles on.

Ok, at least the last one was sorted: I downloaded the “White” theme from s60.com and almost immediately wondered “why wasn’t this on board right from the beginning?” Then I remembered what a bunch of asscheek acne suffering overweight übernerds the developing team must be: they quite rarely encounter sunlight. And they do neither send text messages nor talk. They IRC. Which must be why the original development team didn’t notice the aforementioned issues.

It’s easy to go bashing but what can you do when all the good things fit in one short sentence: The screen looks good and it has a 802.11 plus a black case. The wrist band broke after only a month of use. Oops, that’s bashing again, dammit. :-D

As a side note, I had another Nokia moment today: a friend asked what would be a good model to replace her four year old phone, and instantly the three N80 owners in the table shouted “NOT this one!”

I wonder what we should do. I guess there are no easy solutions. It’s easier to bash bad user experience than to make it good, especially as there are so many design constraints in mobile devices.