Help, I'm shunning Nokia

I was at a wedding at the weekend. One of my best friends was getting married to a delightful girl.

My role? Usher. Unlike your standard everything-at-a-hotel sort of wedding, this one featured four different venues — a church, a country house (for photos), a restaurant (reception) and a river boat on the Thames — so the usher duties were substantially larger.

The problem? Well, I’m having issues with Nokia — and this has only really become apparent in the last few days, particularly over this wedding weekend.

I’m reacting quite badly to the contrast between a Nokia device — any one you’d care to name vs an Apple iPhone.

At the wedding, I handed the iPhone to the groom’s mother — one of the only people I’ve met in a long time who *does not* have a mobile phone. She doesn’t own one. She’s familiar with dialing on a handset, but that’s it.

A brilliant test subject then? I gave her a 30 second tour of the iPhone. That was it. That was all it took for her to start flicking through photos, working the iPod functions, making calls and typing in text. She was using it comfortably within 60 seconds. The contrast between the iPhone user interface and the Nokia interface is just shocking.

I should point out it’s not Nokia, per se, that’s the issue. Every other mobile manufacturer has a problem. We’ve all known that the interfaces have been fundamentally rubbish. But without an alternative, well, we’ve put up with it. I’ve put up with it.

My rebellion began last week. I really don’t feel good about Nokia any more.

Subconsciously, I’ve found that I’ve moved Nokia down in my mind to the same level as my washing machine. A utility.

So bad is my anti-Nokia feeling, my, ‘where the hell have you been?’ feeling, I stopped using the camera on the N95 and the E61i. Normally I’d be using the devices like no tomorrow during a wedding.

But no.

My subconscious is doing something strange. I’m not feeling it with Nokia any more. From nowhere I’ve all of a sudden become really, really, really annoyed by the stupid delay on the N95 when it takes pictures. I am openly cursing the interface when I’m writing a text message and all of a sudden hit the wrong button and cancel it by mistake. I’m filled with a strange isolated anger when I slide the N95 into multimedia mode (“it’s what computers have become”) and the little menu animations jar and the whole thing takes 1-2 seconds to open. Last week I was delighted with the device. This week… I don’t know what’s come over me.

So bad was my feeling, when I came across a fantastic offer on a Canon EOS40D camera on Friday, I bought it and went on to spend the wedding day shooting really brilliant 10.1 megapixel SLR images.

The N95 stayed in my pocket. Goodness me.

I’m even thinking about a Blackberry.

Good Mobile Messaging is routinely rebooting itself, like a frustrated Windows 95 user, every time I press the message icon on my Nokia E61i. That’s not a Nokia issue per se but I’m associating it with the brand and now looking for substitutes or alternatives…

What IS going on with me? Dear me.