Older nokia smartphones were slow. A slow processor, low ram and an os which couldn't efficiently utilise all the available hardware was a sure fire recipe for slow reacting phones. But all that is history now. Newer nokia smartphones have a fast processor, sufficient amount of ram and an os which is capable of extracting and utilising every bit of performance that the hardware can generate. These phones are nearly as fast as any non-smartphone. Examples are nokia 5700, N76, N95, E90, etc. As for nokia's s40 phones, they've always been lightning fast. Actually i feel SE interface is actually slower than Nokia s40 due to all the fancy animations that SE insists you must see no matter how much in a hurry you are. As for SE smartphones, they're just as fast (or slow) as nokia smartphones. Even the latest P1i is no great shakes as far as speed is concerned. The higher amount of ram has only enabled it to run more apps in the background without running out of memory. The speed is the same as P990i or W950i.