I realize it sounds foolish, but I kept buying Nokia phones in the belief that Symbian couldn't be as bad as it was last time. I had faith. However, my face was roundly slapped each time. My new Symbian-based phone was always as bad as ever, sometimes worse.

For the past year I've had a Nokia E71, which runs Symbian S60. On a practical level I can't fault the E71. It's packed with contemporary and useful features, such as GPS and Wi-Fi. The problem is that Symbian tries very hard to stop me either accessing or enjoying these features. It crashes. It's slow. Even simple tasks are tricky. Whenever I begin a call, nobody can hear me for the first few seconds. I've learned to wait before speaking. Sending a SMS message to somebody in my address book involves thumb-cramping amounts of button pressing.

Ultimately, this is the chief issue with Symbian as far as I'm concerned. It appears to hate me. As far as interfacing with humans is concerned, a "make-do" attitude has always prevailed. There have been some user interface improvements in the recent Symbian^3 release but it's clear Symbian is only playing catch up with Apple and Android. When any technology is playing catch-up, experience tells us that it's ultimately doomed.

My advice to Nokia is this: Retire Symbian right now. Send it to the great OS farm in the sky. Lose the and give it a try. Your customers will love you for it.