I find myself in an interesting situation. One of the companies, which I am known to be a bit of a fan of, has in recent months been dropping the ball in some significant ways. In fact, I would say their entire product line of 2009 has been released before they’re ready and to a very poor reception as a result.

It is Nokia of course, and the phones released in 2009 have not been too well received for the most part.

The most recent example of the latest failings from the Nokia behemoth would be the E75 and the very important E72. Two devices targetting the Enterprise market, but which have generally fallen well short of the expectations put upon Enterprise products. Especially when compared with the amazing E71 for which they are intended to replace.

I have to say that it’s disappointing that, at the end of 2009, we’ve got a S60 3rd Edition smartphone with major issues. The core OS and FP2 modules must all be locked and stable by now, but the E72′s product team (and the N86′s before it, to be fair), with the addition of a new version of Web, of Email, with the inclusion of fancy transitions into the UI, have managed to create something which is eminently in need of a firmware fix-up from the very beginning.
Review: Nokia E72 - part 2 - All About Symbian

This seems to be a pretty common response lately. The N97 suffered exactly the same fate. I personally had significant issues with the first 3 firmwares for the N97 and it wasn’t until they finally released the v2.0 firmware in October that things started to improve. But even then there are still significant problems and another firmware is expected before the end of the year (so within the next 2 weeks.)

If you dig deeper in nearly all reviews, you’ll find that people generally have no problem with the hardware of the devices. But there are still significant issues there for many. The N86 using LED flash instead of Xenon. The N97′s camera lens cover scratching the lens. The N97 mini not having a lens cover at all, and the lense being raised above the back surface of the phone. The E75′s slider keyboard being another problem. But far beyond all the minor complaints about hardware, nearly EVERY phone Nokia released in 2009 had something significantly wrong with the firmware and I cannot think of a single device in which people didn’t consider it to be beta quality at best. And the E72 suffers the same fate.

I gave Nokia’s N97, Samsung’s i8910 HD and Sony Ericsson’s Satio a little extra time before delivering a verdict, since each, in its own way, was trying to do something new and different and a little patience from me wasn’t unreasonable. But the E72 should have arrived on the market in ‘finished’ form – the Eseries team have had a good reputation here – and, while hitting 90% of its software targets, doesn’t quite have the full package yet. I’d have accepted the current firmware as a ‘beta release with two months to go before availability’ and it’s frustrating that Nokia’s business customers are being used as guinea pigs here – the very customers who have been swearing on (not at) Nokia Eseries for reliability and dependability.

So, yet again, we have a modern smartphone arriving on the scene in a flawed state. The E75 team took forever (months) with their first major firmware update – the E72 needs to get one right now – or at least a downloadable patch for Nokia Messaging.
Review: Nokia E72 - part 2 - All About Symbian

Now, I’ve picked just one review from one of the top Symbian related sites out there. But there are plenty of others that generally come to the same conclusion. The reason I never reviewed my N97 when I got it was because the firmware was so pathetic on release. The reason I still haven’t reviewed it or any other phone is because I still don’t believe the device is what it could be. I am glad Nokia has resolved some of the major issues of the N97 in the N97 Mini, but that still doesn’t fix the overall problem of poor release firmware.

I have been using Nokia smartphones since the Nokia 7650 was released in 2001. But after my experience with the release of the N97 and what I see of the release of the E72, I am thinking the N97 will be my last Nokia consumer phone. With Snapdragon devices running Android coming out, they are looking more and more like where I am likely to go in the future. Maybe Nokia will pick up the ball again before I’m ready to replace the N97. If they do, I may reconider. But they really need to start making a genuine effort and releasing quality devices again, much as they used to 3 years ago.

With essentially 3 major smartphone product lines (E Series, N Series and X Series) in their device schedule, not to mention the other S40 and S60 devices targetted more at general consumers, maybe Nokia needs to really reduce the number of devices and consolidate several of their teams into fewer but larger working groups.