In this feature, I've been taking a long hard look at the top-end smartphones in the Symbian powered world over the last three years, pointing out their flaws and frailties, and - where appropriate - pointing out what should have been done to fix things up. Yes, Symbian has been cracking along with record momentum in the mid-tier, with Nokia trouncing the iPhones, Blackberries and Android phones in terms of raw unit sales, but Symbian's partners have been scoring rather a lot of own goals in recent times. And what of the 2010 Symbian^3 crop, such as the imminent Nokia N8 - will these suffer a similar fate? I'm optimistic...

"A recurring theme in tech podcasts, especially those in which I'm involved, is to sadly bring up the essential truth that there's no such thing as a perfect smartphone - yet. Whether looking in the wider phone world or whether looking just within the Symbian ecosystem, every model seems to have compromises that go beyond what you'd expect given the form factor. Now, there are often reasons given why such and such a model lacks such and such a feature - usually down to bill-of-materials and cost (fair enough, in the lower tiers of the smartphone world), but sometimes also down to simple marketing - even to the point where a particular feature would have been 'confusing' to the target market. Add in my pet reason - that the designers simply failed to (come and ask me what I thought) really think about what their product might be used for(!)"

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