Nokia, once the preeminent cellphone manufacturer, isn’t doing so well these days. I’m not surprised. Once, I can recall their phones being a delight to use. Take the Nokia 5150. It was easy to use, with a big friendly button that, when pressed, did what you most likely wanted it to do—answer the call, dial the number, etc.

My current (work supplied) Nokia 2700 is not so friendly, and I’ll give an example of just how badly it fails.

One of the most common things you might want to do with a cellphone is mute it. Good meeting etiquette (mandatory etiquette in some circumstances) demands that you put the phone into meeting mode.

Consider how you do this on an iPhone.

1. 1.You flick the mute switch
   

This is one of the precious few physical switches on the iPhone. It has tactile feedback—you can do it without looking or even taking the iPhone out of your pocket, and you can tell—again, just be feel—what mode the iPhone is in so you can easily restore it. I repeat, Apple is notoriously parsimonious with its physical switches on the iPhone. They dedicate a physical switch to the mute function.

Consider how you do this on the Nokia 2700

1. 1.Press central button
   

2. 2.Press * [to unlock the keyboard]
   

3. 3.Press “Go To” soft key
   

4. 4.Press up 5 times to get to “Profiles”
   

5. 5.Press central button to select “Profiles”
   

6. 6.Press down twice to get to “Meeting”
   

7. 7.Press central button to select Meeting
   

8. 8.“Activate” is selected. Press central button to activate meeting mode
   

9. 9.You probably want to press “exit”, “button”, * to lock the keypad again
   

That’s 13 key presses to perform what should be one of the most common tasks.

You can make it a bit faster by rearranging the items under the “Go To” section, and put “Profiles” as the first, in which case it goes down to 8 key presses.

But wait—what was the item that was originally first under the “Go To” soft key?

It was the Ovi store.

Nokia thinks that the most important thing for you to do with your phone is buy stuff from the Ovi store.

And that is why Nokia has fallen, because that epitomises the contempt that Nokia has for its customers