Without doubt, the Nokia N97 is the worst phone I have ever had the misfortune to own. On paper, it seemed to be a great bit of kit with some great features – masses of storage, decent five megapixel camera, GPS and a touch screen to name but a few.

However in reality it is an absolute dog. Despite having 32gb of memory, it tries to install everything on a tiny C drive, which causes everything to crash. The touch screem often ignores you, as if you’ve done something to upset it and the camera lense gets scratched by the cover that is supposed to protect it. Brilliant. The battery will plummet from practically full to empty if you dare look at it in a funny way and you’d be quicker communicating with smoke signals than wait for the apps to do what they’re meant to (the excellent Gravity aside).

I had an N95 which was (and still is) a great bit of kit, so assumed the N97 would be more of the same, but it simply isn’t a patch on it. I decided against an iPhone for the reason that as good as it is, it still lacks some of the basics – for example I don’t like the onscreen keyboard (I have an iPod Touch) and would like to see a better camera – who knows what the next release will bring. Some of the Android phones look good though, like the HTC Hero.

With competitors such as these, it is no wonder the Nokia Vice President Anssi Vanjoki said it was a bit pants the other day. I’ve had it about eight or nine months now, and I thought that firmware updates would sort out the problems, but in the last fortnight or so if anything my N97 has got worse.

How I’ve managed to avoid throwing it against a wall I just don’t know.