Friday 27 February 2009

Lost Nokia's fate in the lap of the cods


JCB’s handsets sell themselves as the most robust on the market. Nicknamed ‘Bricks’, they’re constructed from diamond-hard materials and by all accounts are tougher than a Russian Mafioso. But for all their manufacturers’ nails-hard posturing, it seems that a new challenger has emerged for their crown.

Enter Nokia, whose handsets have, in truth, enjoyed a rep for durability for years. In today’s Sun, you’ll find a decidedly fishy tale of how Glen Kerley mislaid his Nokia handset while walking his dog on a beach and was in the process of buying a new one when his girlfriend received a call from the missing mobile. Turns out that the phone had been found by a fishmonger in the belly of a 25lb fish and had defied seawater and the fish’s gastric juices to keep on working.

Relating the story Andrew told how his girlfriend looked askance at him and said: “Your old mobile number is calling my phone.”

He added: “She said some guy was going on about my phone and a cod so she handed it over to me and he told me where he had found it. I thought he was winding me up but he assured me he had caught a cod that morning and was gutting it for his fish stall and that my Nokia was inside it - a bit worse for wear.”

From Nokia’s point of view this is surely the kind of PR that money cannot buy. And couldn’t have come at a better time. Not least because this week it’s fending off reports that its Nokia 5800 handset is hamstrung by defective speakers. The latter in particular is embarrassing for a handset that is spearheading Nokia’s XpressMusic range and upon which so many of the company’s hopes are pinned this year.

In the meantime, I expect the Finnish mobile phone giants to make much of this story. As far as they're concerned, if ever there was a good day to bury bad news this is surely it.

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