Nokia's "feature phones" have experienced a decline in design quality as well. My last Nokia Xpressmusic brick/candybar had no "stop" button, so if you put it in your pocket the wrong way, a song called "Dance of Shiva" that was loaded by default (and couldn't be erased) would switch on, and you'd have to hit pause a few times. Very embaressing to hear mysterious oriental music in a meeting, and suddenly realize that it's coming from your pocket.
Want to send an sms to a number not in your phonebook? No way to do that either...no numeric inputs allowed in the number field when sending SMSes - you had to look up a number in the phonebook.
Nokia's feature phones are often described as their last hope, but, given the declines in design quality over time, I think they won't be.
My impression is that Nokia Xpressmusic is cheap smartphone very popular in India. Since Nokia must compete on price and not on quality in that market I wouldn't expect high quality there. As well it is quite old phone (released on April 27, 2008). I'm not sure if it is even fair to compare it to anything and make conclusions about Nokia's decline from 3 years old product.
I personally have Nokia N8 ("Made In Finland"). It is really solid and good made phone. I have not seen any of the problems you have with your Nokia. As well there are reasons why I wouldn't change this phone to iPhone and Android (like stable performance, good camera and free navigation). There are reasons why I don't like my phone: like browser that does not support HTML5 (while Qt has webkit that supports HTML5 features) but Nokia is working on those issues (google Nokia Anna).
P.S. Maybe I'm just lucky to get good Nokia smartphones :)
I was referring specifically to the cheaper "feature phones" (such as the Xpressmusic, which certainly isn't a smartphone). We often hear that they rule the low end market, but even in that segment, their design and quality seem to be slipping.
I would like to know why it is not smartphone? I don't see the difference. As well I think I agree with you that in low end market design and quality is slipping because Nokia has to compete with cheap phones from China. Wikipedia article on your phone lists visible things that were done to lower the price of this phone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_5800_XpressMusic#Price_Dr...). I'm more than sure that there are invisible ones as well. But as I have noted that says nothing about Nokia overall. If you want good Nokia phone buy good Nokia phone but not cheap one. You got what you paid for. That's like buying Toyota Yaris and complaining about lowering quality of Toyota cars overall.
With that said Nokia's brick phones have some of the easiest interfaces to use of any device ever
As someone who uses a recent Series 40 phone, I have to disagree with you. I think their last decent brick was the 6230i.
I got an XpressMusic (don't know the exact model number) Series 40 phone in 2009 , and, although it does the basics well, it has some serious design flaws.
It is a music phone, but it lacks a "stop" button to go with the play/pause button on its side. Therefore it is always on pause, so that, if it is in my pocket, and the "play" button is hit accidentally, a preloaded song called "The Dance of Shiva" starts playing. Very embarrassing.
And if you want to send an SMS, you need to save the number first as a contact, since the SMS UI doesn't allow for numbers in the "number" field.
These are shockingly obvious design flaws that Nokia missed. Something went wrong with Nokia a few years ago, and it wasn't limited to their smartphones.
Want to send an sms to a number not in your phonebook? No way to do that either...no numeric inputs allowed in the number field when sending SMSes - you had to look up a number in the phonebook.
Nokia's feature phones are often described as their last hope, but, given the declines in design quality over time, I think they won't be.