At the mobile trade show in Barcelona you can find a programme that measures how high you can throw a Nokia smartphone, an apt metaphor for Nokia's efforts to raise its game.
But gravity might not favour the world's biggest maker of cellphones, as the focus of the $169 billion industry shifts to software and services, the "mindshare" that is lifting nimble competitors such as iPhone maker Apple and Google.
For the first time, Nokia has opted out of the Mobile World Congress this year, another trend set by Apple, which eschews industry get-togethers in favour of its own, carefully choreographed events.
Nokia will host some meetings nearby, but is reported not to be planning any new phone launches.
At the same time the fair will be flooded with new phones using Google's Android platform.
The other big names in the industry, Microsoft, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, have also been struggling with the pace set by Apple and Google, ever since the first iPhone took the world by storm in mid-2007. Nokia is seen among the best positioned to cope with the onslaught thanks to its own operating system, investments in services, and huge scale benefits in phone production, but Apple already makes more profit from phones than Nokia.
Trying to replicate Apple's success in selling mobile software through its App Store, Nokia, Microsoft and others have opened their own online stores, but with little success.
As well as potentially upsetting operators, Google's open Android platform also presents a threat to makers of rival smartphone platforms, including Nokia and Microsoft.
The Nexus One, Google's first own-brand device, is also the first concrete sign it is paying serious attention to hardware.
Although Google has built considerable loyalty and a huge advertising business around its search engine and Gmail services, these are free to consumers.
Apple, on the other hand, has persuaded more than 100 million consumers to hand over hundreds of dollars apiece for its iPods and iPhones.
Top hardware makers plan to roll out increasingly cheap smartphones in 2010 to battle the new rivals in the mass market.
Twenty-four telecom operators have also formed an alliance to build an open platform that will deliver applications to all mobile phone users in an effort to compete with Apple's successful App store.
The move is supported by three of the world's largest device makers - LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, the telecoms industry body GSM Association said on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Telefonica and Vodafone are among those who have agreed to the initiative, the GSMA said.
Together these operators have access to over three billion customers around the world, the GSMA said, adding the plan would help reduce fragmentation in the industry. In the meantime Microsoft launched its new mobile phone operating software, introducing a range of music, gaming and networking features aimed at expanding its appeal beyond its core business customers.
The world's biggest software company, which is trying to wrest back market share from Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry, said new phones featuring Windows Phone 7 would be in stores by Christmas.