Nokia's profits dive 90 per cent

The world's largest maker of mobile phones, not to mention cameras, saw net profits down by 90 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 compared to last year, though the company blamed de-stocking for some of drop. Net profit for the first three months of 2009 came in at €122m, compared to €1.22bn during the same period last year …

[moylan]

will never buy nokia again

used to love nokia. best hardware. good os.

then i got an e71.

good phone. 3.2mp camera with flash and macro mode, radio, very good gps

was never going to use the radio as the head set sticks out of the side at a silly angle which would snag in any pocket i put it in. why didn't the head set stick out of the bottom or top? the mp3 player suffers from the fact that if you ever eject the card it considers its databse corrupt and has to find all the songs again.

very good gps that works indoors let down a bit by the fact that the software for downloading maps is windows only. worse the software is a bloated .net piece of crap. why can't the phone itself suck down a countries maps over wifi in one go? the rest of the connection software and updating firmware software is a pile of crap that seems to require more updates than there are firmware patches.

macro mode was a brilliant addition except for the annoying beep every time i turned it on. i could see when the macro mode was on as they flashed the viewfinder green. i would have killed for an option to eliminate that annoying beep.

there was a global search on nokias since the e61. it was fast and did what you wanted. it could search all, some or just one applications data. great! the e71 version was slow flashy and crap. the old version started in a second. the new version took 20+ seconds to start on mine as i have over 300 notes. the search was ok but it was now limited to all or one group. this was a major fuck up for me as it made the device so slow to use. my e61 can be used faster than the superduper modern e71.

when i got the e71 it took pictures silently. i like cameras to be quiet as i use them in lectures/meetings and other places were if everybody was using noisy cameras to take notes it would drive you insane. then they updated the firmware to add a stupid fucking camera click. it was the breaking point for me.

there are legal reasons to add a camera click in the usa. not in ireland. they should have warned people that they had to make the device compliant by adding the click. i would have probably bought an e71 just for the latest firmware and kept one silent camera. was looking at the n97 and the 5800 for purchase this year.

now i will never buy another nokia device again. ever. ever ever. a lot of folk ask me what device i use as i make a lot of use of mobile tech. i'm averaging 4 non recommends for nokia a week.

[James]

@moylan

I think it's compulsory for camera phones to make a noise when taking a picture. Too many pervs out there.

[Anonymous Coward]

@James

In some places. But not all cameraphones do that - I'm looking for one now, and my understanding is that the Motorola ZN5 allows you to turn off the shutter sound. But it's got no GPS, which is a problem to me. Some of Nokia's firmwares can be hacked to remove the shutter sound, but that's an awfully unpleasant-looking procedure, and in my view also rather neatly disproves that Symbian is really "open." But that's another rant.

Moylan, there is a dedicated silent camera program available called "ccam", and its whole purpose in life is to take pictures without making noise. I understand it's crude and occasionally difficult to install, but you might look into it?

[Herer]

@moylan

I share your irritation at the faux shutter sound. However it's easy to turn off, if you know how.

You can turn it off simply by editing your profile so that warning tones are switched off. That suppresses the sound effect when you take a picture, but also stops beeping on error and the low battery sound which always starts when I'm asleep.

AFAIK this works on all S60v3 Nokias, including my current N96 but also all the several other N-series phones I've owned.

Don't steer people away from well made and easy to use phones. Otherwise, they'll have no choice but become born again Apple zealots...I wouldn't want that on my conscience, at least.

HTH

[moylan]

@Herer

you are right about well made. the hardware is second to none. the battery life is above and beyond anything else on the planet.

however the software is now getting worse rather than better. the warning tones i knew about but does not work on my unlocked version of the e71. now i could get techy and start changing the regional code in the firmware and try to find one that gives me a phone that is silent when i use the camera but it's not a productive use of my time. i could open the bugger and desolder the speaker. (i rarely make voice calls. 1-2 a month and could use a bluetooth headset). so they can't stop a determined person who wants a silent camera. its just not worth wasting my time on this. i feel that nokia has stolen this phone from me, i use to use it 2 hours a day minimum. now its averaging less than 5 minutes a week.

i bought an iphone at christmas to see what they were like. i hated it. but i now hate it less than my nokia. it's about the tech level as my first symbian device. a nokia 3650. crap camera. no global search and crappy at inputting text.

os3 should add some global search facility. a newer version may add a better camera (only buying if it can be silent!). still crappy at entering text though. oh and a sucky battery life though it lasts all day for me. its a crap media player as well as it only syncs with one itunes account (yes there is a hack to cirumvent that but again i'm not wasting my time on it.)

really waiting for somebody to see a palm pre or android here in ireland.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Herer

Thank you for being the first and only time I have encountered a clear, concise, and comprehensible explanation of this. If it makes you feel better, that was really the major thing keping me from getting one of Nokia's phones to double as a snapshots-on-the-go device. (I do hope you're also actually correct...)