UPDATE!! I will never buy another Nokia phone again!

The rant you see below is still valid for that awful n80. However, after I calmed down a bit I realized that I still needed a new phone as my beloved Treo 750 was dying. I decided to give Nokia one more chance. I wound up with a new 5800 and this one is a winner. The wifi seems perfect (I am posting this fron the phone) and I really like the onscreen keyboard and music player. This looks very promising indeed.

I recently acquired a Nokia N80 smartphone. On paper it appeared to be an impressive phone. Music player, 3.2mp camera, wifi Internet access, it really seemed perfect.

Well, I just got my refund for it. Let me put this clearly, Nokia’s wifi sucks! If you plan to use a Nokia phone for free Internet access at parks and libraries, forget it. Nokia N and E series phones, including unfortunately my N80, are all plagued to varying degrees by a bug in the wifi software that produces an error called “no gateway” when trying to connect to a wifi hotspot. What makes it so irritating is that the problem is apparently completely random in how it manifests itself. The phone would effortlessly connect with some hotspots and would stubbornly refuse all efforts with others. It was easily the worst wifi device I ever encountered. Nokia, for reasons they alone know, has done nothing about this flaw despite having known about it for years now.

If you are thinking of buying a Nokia phone, do yourself a favor and first Google your phone’s model (N95, E71, etc) and the phrase “no gateway”. If you see results, be very very careful or you will wind up making an expensive mistake. Consider yourself warned.