I was having lunch with a mate yesterday and watched them get out their N97 to send a text message. Noticing the crappy transitions on the screen, I suddenly remembered the N97 promotion video from last year which basically makes the phone look god-like.

The real life story is somewhat different, I was actually going to put together a video myself then I found someone had beaten me to it. It speaks for itself – watch this:

When the N97 was announced I actually worked at Nokia, and what’s interesting is that no one I spoke to internally believed it could do what was shown in that promo video. We all knew it would be some clunky Symbian interface with the trademark N-Series feature of completely slowing down after a few months of usage. We weren’t disappointed.

It’s dangerous to mess around with consumers like that, especially when Apple and Google have raised the bar in all areas of mobile. Nokia can’t retain smart phone customers when they are struggling to imitate competitors, let alone set new standards.