These are the worst smartphones we’ve ever used. What’s yours?

As an added bonus, after I sold the phone, the person I sold it to told me that it was constantly overheating and shutting down. Also, for some reason, the US version of the phone had a fingerprint scanner, while the European one did not, which I didn’t know would be the case until I bought it (for a US price). Just a consistently disappointing experience.”

Maybe Nokia improved the software via updates later but at the time I couldn’t wait to switch back to my daily driver. There’s a reason the successor to the Nokia 9 is yet to be released, there is plenty of work to be done for Nokia to make things right.”

Experimental phone designs in general

We all love something new and different, but such experiments with smartphones have almost always lead to disappointments: the cool-looking LG Wing is a phone that is just too big and bulky to be comfortable, experiment for the sake of experimenting; the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 is a futuristic new design with many advantages, but also way too heavy and impractical for most users; and back in the day, other phone experiments like modular phones (remember that?), phones with 3D screens, super thick and heavy devices, incredibly tiny phones, phones in the shape of a pencil, and all other sorts of weird ideas have just left people disappointed.

So my worst experience recently has not been with one particular smartphone, but with a general trend: experiments made just for the sake of releasing something a bit different than others, not fully tested or thought out.”

Eventually a system update made the phone usable, but the Storm never lived up to its hype. It was, however, a huge money maker for Verizon whose customers were dying for a touchscreen phone to compete with the iPhone, then an AT&T exclusive.”

The Galaxy S III Mini really disappointed me at the time, and I ended up giving up on it six months later, after taking it for repair two more times. For a couple of years after that, I just blindly hated everything ‘Samsung’ just because of that one faulty phone. It’s funny how sometimes people just assume something isn’t good because of one experience. For some reason, the Galaxy S III Mini stayed in a drawer for ages because I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, even though it sucked.

The camera was so slow it was painful. It only offered 16GB of built-in storage, so I was constantly trying to free up space. This all got worse with updates, not that there were many of those. Nowadays Sony’s known for fast updates, but back then it would take 7-8 months for new versions to roll out.

Oh, and remember the water & dust resistance I mentioned? Yeah, that came to an end after about 6 months when the rubber seals started to peel off the flaps. Eventually, I pulled the flaps off entirely because they wouldn’t stay closed.

I held onto the phone for two years. Towards the end, I hated it so much that I swore I’d never buy a Sony phone again. In conclusion, I should have bought the HTC One (M8).”