It depends on what you mean the early days. Nokia cheap phones were targetting a specific market, that did not want something more expensive. Bashing them for those phones makes no sense, since there were targetting markets that couldn't afford something else.

However, top of the line Nokia phones were had great hardware and construction quality. Look up Nokia E51 or Nokia N9.

What hobbled them was Symbian. Nokia N9 was close to "escape velocity" since the OS was really cool. But by then Nokia pivoted to Microsoft and...