Ooops...

How does a Nokia N97 cope with being hurled out of a car window at 60mph, and then driven over repeatly? See above for the answer.

I have never developed a hatred for a phone quite like this before. The hardware was good, the hinge mechanism worked well, and the touch screen and keyboard worked well. I could cope with the scratches and dents, but what ruined it was the ghastly firmware. There were numberous and random glitches, and it had ludicrously poor reception. It would sometimes beep to say it was charging when there was no power supply plugged in and crash for no reason. Some menus would scroll smoothly, others would judder arthritically down the screen, and then randomly select something. The camera would activate randomly, and it was just a miserable experience using the thing.

I had hoped all the stuff I had read about the N97 being crap was wrong, but sadly it wasn't. As it was so battered already I thought there would be no point trying to sell it on and finally I'd had enough, hence the scene of carnage. I thought about making up a story about it falling out of my pocket while out on the motorbike but sometimes you just have to hold up your hands and admit you've made a mistake. Should have kept the E90.

Now I see why people are saying that the Nokia high end line has gone to shit. I've seen a few Android devices in work, and they are pretty decent. Of course there's the iPhone if you can cope with Apple's walled garden.

The only spare phones I had were car boot fodder, the tasteless gold D&G Motorola RAZR and a BlackBerry 8310, identical to my work one. I've now put my SIM into the BlackBerry and got it set up reasonably. It works OK, and will do for now.

In other news it was my Mum's graduation for her MA today in Bangor, which went fine. Fairly typical ceremony really, except for the initial music. Some woman played a piece on a clarinet, which was the worst piece of music I have ever heard. It sounded like someone just starting out, random peeps and tootles with the occasional scale, and loads of high pitched squeals like when you blow really hard into a wind instrument when you're a child to see what happens. This was, for some reason, combined with lots of foot stamping, prancing about, and a mask. It was horrendous. It made the harp music in the middle seem brilliant, and I'm not a huge fan of harps.