2009 saw some unbelievably fantastic handsets hit the market. The last year of the decade also saw some phones that really should have stayed at the drawing board, but instead either snuck out or were released amid a huge amount of praise and marketing, only to severely disappoint customers. Here is our top three of the worst devices of the year.

3

iPhone 3GS

Sorry Apple fans. Whilst there isn’t actually a great deal ‘wrong’ with the phone, the main reason it makes this list is because it was unnecessary. While other manufacturers release successive phones with different designs and features, Apple decided to buck that trend and instead just offer some mostly minor updates. This would be fine, except that the iPhone 3G also did this, as did the firmware updates, and the 3GS came with a hefty price tag. So what was different? The most advertised difference was the speed and the camera was slightly updated…And that’s about it.

Beyond that, MMS and video capabilities were on the 3G model. Apple still missed the fundamental points that were absent from the previous models though: a good camera (3GS saw it upgraded, but it still lacked. It wasn’t a 5MP Carl Zeiss dual-LED flash now was it? No, it wasn’t), flash, video calling or at least a front-facing camera. You could also look at the 3GS all day long and you would find no noticeable changes to the appearance of either the device or the OS – the homescreen still being utterly pointless other than to have a wallpaper. The battery remained fixed in place meaning there’s no chance of carrying a spare should you be out while it dies (which it probably will) and more annoyingly if the battery had a fault or the life of it drained over time – as is a normal and expected occurrence, especially on a 2 year contract – you couldn’t simply replace it, but had to send it for repair or get a replacement handset. That’s just not good enough, Apple.

The iPhone also has its problems that are widely-mentioned on the internet but also widely-overlooked, largely because of Apple’s die-hard, almost religious fanbase. I’m sad to say that, despite what you have probably been led to believe, the device isn’t perfect. It is generally regarded as pretty reliable, but there are still a pretty high number of complaints of it freezing or crashing. The 3GS is known for getting very hot especially while making a phone call, and the slick, smooth design of the front can make calls uncomfortable, with reports of it causing sweating or slipping off the user’s ear. There are also a lot of reports that the call quality is subpar. Despite the 3GS being the third iPhone on the market, it still only allows one method of text-input, so no T9 or 3×3 button layout. Apple also made it so that no other browser can be installed, leaving the customer to live with Safari – a pretty good browser, but not one to play flash.

All-in-all, the iPhone 3GS demonstrated that Apple refused to acknowledge that it had competition and that the competition had taken mobile phones to another level. The iPhone 2G was a game-changer, undeniably. Even the 3G was a welcome market addition. But the 3GS, well, it just seems like a bit of a cash-in. Hopefully the upcoming 4G will see Apple once again pushing the boundaries of mobile technology.

2

Nokia N97

This one probably comes as no surprise to the majority of readers – the N97 was so notorious that when I enquired purchasing it in a number of stores everyone said to me not to buy it because it was buggy, unreliable and Nokia had to keep releasing firmware updates. Ouch! It’s not often a phone is so bad that the people trying to sell it to you advise you to steer clear. It’s also not often that the manufacturer admits the device failed, yet that is what happened with the N97. The phone was Nokia’s flagship device, intended to take multimedia and mobile social networking to a new level. On paper, it succeeded: 32GB mass memory, homescreen widgets with Facebook and Twitter announcements posted directly, a pull-out QWERTY keyboard, 5 megapixel camera and a front-facing camera for video calls and a nice big screen. On paper, it worked, but in reality, it didn’t.

The main problem with the S60 touchscreen devices is that it was basically S60 3rd, designed for non-touch phones, but with touchscreen capability plastered on top. This made it clunky, slow and quite a headache to operate. But that’s excusable if the phone worked, yet Nokia, for some mind-boggling reason, put such a small amount of RAM and c: memory on it that users were bombarded with messages of low memory. What worsened this situation was the default setting to install apps and save messages and emails to the c: memory, allowing it to drain at record speeds. As a result, freezing, crashing, rebooting, dropping calls and closing apps were common experiences. The phone had the potential to multitask, but the lack of memory meant that the user should expect at least one to close when the memory got too low, and sometimes they all closed; often the whole thing crashed. Nokia tried to rectify the situation by offering a number of firmware updates which admittedly did help, but the main problem was a lack of internal memory so the ultimate problems are long-term. The strangest thing about it is that the mass memory was a startling 32GB, so why not just put 1GB c: memory? Had Nokia done that, this phone would be very near the top of the ‘best devices of 2009’ list, not the ‘worst devices’ list. Sadly though, the problems didn’t end there. The touchscreen was temperamental, with it sometimes acknowledging it being touched and other times acting as though nothing happened. The screen lock-switch on the side of the device was known to break off, leaving the customer having to insert something like a pin into the hole to lock or unlock it. And the camera came with a lens cover to protect it from dirt, but a design flaw left it leaving scratches and marks on the lens which could only be rectified by having a whole new one fitted. Fingers crossed their move to Maemo is permanent and they ditch Symbian and under-powered devices altogether.

1

Sony Ericsson Satio

Topping off the list as the most unreliable phone of 2009 is the Sony Ericsson Satio. So bad was it that Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4 U, the UK’s two largest phone stockists, pulled it from their stores after a high number of complaints. The phone came with a lot of hype about the 12 megapixel camera, widescreen and advanced media capabilities. Unfortunately it didn’t live up to the hype and instead the camera and other media functions were sluggish at best.

In addition to that, the phone would freeze up with most complaints reporting this happened when opening an application or answering/making a phone call (in other words, the exact times you don’t want it to freeze). The alarm clock bug caused the alarm to go off either at the wrong time or if no alarm had been set at all; some customers noted that their ringtones were inextricably lost and when the device randomly switched itself off it was not unusual for users to have to remove and reinsert the battery just to be able to turn it back on. To top it all off is the so-called “software glitch”, put another way, the phone was unreliable and couldn’t be trusted to perform. What adds insult to injury is that the phone was treated to a multi-million pound advertising campaign and was Ericsson’s flagship device, intended to reverse the losses the company took in every quarter of 2009. What makes the situation that much worse is that it is in dire straits as it is, with a decreasing marketshare. Ironically though, had Ericsson spent the money it allocated for advertising on getting the device release-ready, this wouldn’t have occurred in the first place. The only saving grace was that some clever clogs located the source of the problems as the “skins” that Ericsson put over the OS, because the skins Orange and Vodafone used caused none of the problems.

by Rich White