[mwlai]

Wish you luck on your exchange also I've spent 6 hours with there customer service and they wouldn't exchange my unit without 100 USD out of pocket becuase I got the unit at a promotional cost.   As my unit also has the blacklight problem and others.

[bbianchi]

I am happy to report that I may have found a fix for the bricked/wedged phones that stay locked when booted and never completely boot the home screen.

Hookup your phone to your PC with the Suite installed with the phone turned OFF.

Start the firmware updater (only if using option a)

The phone should power on into charging mode, give it time for USB to detect it and do its thing. Once thats done power up the phone.

Option A (What I did)

Started the firmware updater on the searching for phone. Saw a blip of the USB Mode screen go by and phone finished booting. Was locked but had the USB icon. Was able to pull out the USB cable (before firmware updating started) and unlock the phone. I then using the hardware keypad typed *#7370# and waited. Took almost a minute but it finally came up. Did a master hard reset and im back in business.

Option B, take out the running of the firmware upgrade portion. Otherwise do the rest.

However in my opinion this isnt right. Im not convinced its the phone, but more the software. I have an RA finally and ill call in to confirm the addresses tomorrow since my other cell died because I Was on hold so long. Ill still probably return this phone and wait a bit before buying another. Just wanted to get this out to help the other poor fools... erm beta testers... erm customers out there.

[nickfd]

I wish i had that problem and not the blasted constant rebooting/crashing that never stops. Sigh.

[rionero]

Okay, I will post my experience so someone can try to find a pattern. 

I got the N97 white, Model # N97 NOKNA WHT, as I'm in the states.  I was not using a Nokia previously... so I did not try to add OVI store purchases, older Symbian programs, or even and SD card (32GB is puhhhlenty of space).  I installed the OVI suite that came with the phone... and it took a little manuevering to get the suite to recognize the phone, took a connect/disconnect of USB a couple of times for it to finally register it... but it is working well now.  Transferred about 5GB of music just fine (pretty fast, actually!)... sync'd my Outlook contacts and calendar just fine... hooked up to my home wi-fi (N- router) just fine... the browser works well and really fast.  Changed the home page to bing.com for a quick load on startup of the browser.  email, texting, and calls all work well.  Bluetooth pairing to my '10 Camry was just fine... works really well actually.

BUT... I have the backlight issue with the lock/unlock switch.  Sometimes when I press the button down to unlock... I can tell the phone unlocks, but the backlight stays off.  Have to lock it again... then unlock again... and it works (most of the time).  If I slide open the screen before getting the backlight on... I can't even get the backlight to go on.  Have to close the phone, do the lock/unlock sequence again, then flip the screen up AGAIN.  Another forum said to disable the auto lock of keys in the Phone settings... to fix this issue.  It did get better, actually... but the issue is still there.

It seems software related to me.  I had an N95-4 a while back, then moved to WinMo phones... and I've seen lots of little nagging things like this ... and they're almost always software related.

Have faith... I'm sure they're working on a fix now!

[bbianchi]

I dont know about you but I didnt pay $700 to "have faith" that my device's failures (which there shouldn't be any this sever) will be fixed "later".

[rionero]

I hear you, bbianchi... my situation is not as severe as some others.  I have a working phone, with an annoying backlight problem... some people can't even use their phone effectively... and that sucks... at ANY price point... but so much worse when you pay this kind of premium.

I would expect that since this is their flagship phone, and easily the biggest deal at Nokia in June '09 (heck, most of '09), that they would be reacting to find a solution STAT.  At least I would hope so... since they are a foundation cellular company.

I'm annoyed I didn't read all of this stuff before i unboxed it... could have sold it on ebay as "sealed, new"... damn.

[bbianchi]

Yea out of curiosity, does anyone use a Mac and if so what application to sync music?

Trying to see if theres any correlation there as far as bricking problems.

As far as applications I have no idea, i installed google maps and it bricked, others updated the OVI store and that bricked it. I returned for a refund my first phone, so the question is when do I order the replacement...

[nickfd]

---

bbianchi wrote:

Yea out of curiosity, does anyone use a Mac and if so what application to sync music?

Trying to see if theres any correlation there as far as bricking problems.

As far as applications I have no idea, i installed google maps and it bricked, others updated the OVI store and that bricked it. I returned for a refund my first phone, so the question is when do I order the replacement...

---

No mac for me, and my phone isn't bricked, but it reboots about 30+ times a day. 

I got a hold of a supervisor at nokia today, but they told me what they told you guys. No exchange with my promotional price the way it was.  The supervisor (melanie) said that she will try to get the okay from her management to only do a handset exchange to avoid the standard exchange process, but we'll see.  She was supposed to call me by 3pm (i spoke to her at 11:30am), but i only had my n97 on me and it rebooted at least 15-20 times from 12pm-5pm, so it's possible that she tried to call me and missed me.

I've given up on my n97 and am putting my simcard back into my n95 so at least i can have a functional phone again.

To be clear, if my phone has no internet/data connection, it's reasonably stable.  However, any program that even tries to open or use data, it'll reboot imminently and sporatically.

This is after several firmware overwrites, several 7370 hard resets, and using no aftermarket applications (unless you'd count for Mail for Exchange).

Sigh.

[lisaleeeee]

hi guys. i just wanted to let you know what happened with my n97. 

my keypad locked (a few hours after receiving it in the mail) and it wouldn't unlock at all. i called nokia the next day, told them i tried everything, and after about 30minutes, the customer service rep agreed to send me a new phone with free overnight shipping. she connected me to sales, they gave me an RA#, and the next day when the new phone was delivered, the fedex guy picked up the old phone. 

i'm not exactly sure why i was able to luck out. i paid $629 for the handset originally, not including shipping/taxes. (from the nokia website with a promotional code)

good luck! i hope you guys are able to get a new phone.  

[nickfd]

---

lisaleeeee wrote:

hi guys. i just wanted to let you know what happened with my n97. 

my keypad locked (a few hours after receiving it in the mail) and it wouldn't unlock at all. i called nokia the next day, told them i tried everything, and after about 30minutes, the customer service rep agreed to send me a new phone with free overnight shipping. she connected me to sales, they gave me an RA#, and the next day when the new phone was delivered, the fedex guy picked up the old phone. 

i'm not exactly sure why i was able to luck out. i paid $629 for the handset originally, not including shipping/taxes. (from the nokia website with a promotional code)

good luck! i hope you guys are able to get a new phone.  

---

lisa- my problem is that I paid (with overnight shipping and getting the 70$ nokia bluetooth headset) 495$ (for shipping/tax/etc).  When i tried to get the exchange today, even the supervisor didn't have the authority to grant me an exchange and to still honour that price because of the messed up way Nokia handles exchanges.

I'm sure if I had paid 629+shipping/tax/everything, they would have no problem replacing mine.  But i dont really want to pay anymore than what i've already paid.  So we'll see.

[bbianchi]

My fix resolves this issue temporarily.

[charliest]

I received my N97 about 36 hours ago and have been going crazy with spontaneous reboots. I've been trying various things to find a work-around and last night, I disabled 3G and restricted data to edge. I haven't had a single reboot since. In case it is important, my carrier is AT&T.

If some of the folks with this kind of issue will try this as a fix, I would appreciate some feedback.

Charlie

[nickfd]

---

charliest wrote:

I received my N97 about 36 hours ago and have been going crazy with spontaneous reboots. I've been trying various things to find a work-around and last night, I disabled 3G and restricted data to edge. I haven't had a single reboot since. In case it is important, my carrier is AT&T.

If some of the folks with this kind of issue will try this as a fix, I would appreciate some feedback.

Charlie

---

No kidding.  I will try that today.  I have an n95-1 as my last phone and have been using it lately since my n97 is completely unusable with the 30+ reboots i get in the 8hr workday that i need my phone sync'ing email and being connected to the net. But the n95-1 doesnt work on american 3g band, so i've been stuck on GPRS.  Interesting.

What kind of simcard do you have?  Mine is an older one that says CINGULAR and 3g on it.

Thanks, Nick.

[asiaticdefense]

Weird......my freezing, rebooting and black screen of death is gone. Last 4 days have been great with my white N97. I don't understand what could have caused all of the issues and I haven't tried any of the fixes posted in this thread but all is well now.

Although.....the lock/unlock switch on the side of the phone is still acting up. I have to slide the switch down 3 or 4 times before my phone will unlock with the light on. Very frustrating

. 

[nickfd]

Oh charlies, one other thing i wanted to mention - even though my last phone (n95-1) wasn't 3g and i didnt use 3g with that and my simcard, I did borrow a friend's n95-3 for two weeks, and during that time, my simcard was connected to at&t's 3g network and using it with data for 8+hrs a day constantly while at work and never had any problems.

Not that it rules out the simcard, but it needs to be said.

I've been stable now without a reboot since your post (45min or so), which is a record.  That's it then.  However what does that tell us?  Is it the 3g frequencies in the radio that are messed up?

I'm going to get on the phone with at&t and ask them if i can get a new simcard.  I'm still going to push to get nokia USA to replace my phone, because i'm convinced it is a hardware issue.

There are people on howardforums that are using at&t over 3g frequencies just fine without any reboots like we're having.

[charliest]

My sim card is of more recent vintage than yours, though I suppose that may or may not mean the card is the culprit. I have used 3G with this sim card on other phones (the N95 and E90 come to mind) with no trouble. I don't know enough about the innards of the N97 to speculate as to whether to point the finger at Nokia or ATT, but the fact remains that the N97 is the only phone with this kind of problem.

Charlie

[nickfd]

---

charliest wrote:

My sim card is of more recent vintage than yours, though I suppose that may or may not mean the card is the culprit. I have used 3G with this sim card on other phones (the N95 and E90 come to mind) with no trouble. I don't know enough about the innards of the N97 to speculate as to whether to point the finger at Nokia or ATT, but the fact remains that the N97 is the only phone with this kind of problem.

Charlie

---

Charlie - i just got off the phone wil at&t and will be going to one of their corporate stores in the next hour to get a brand new simcard.  I'll update with results shortly.

[nickfd]

Well, two things to note.

1) Using GPRS and no 3g, the phone never crashed/rebooted for me once.

2) Got a new simcard and using 3g seems better.  Only two reboots since 11am.

[charliest]

Just to muddy the waters a little more, I switched back to auto switching and still haven't had a crash. Gosh, almost 24 hours without a glitch! I will, of course, reserve judgement. It would be nice to have something firm to point to as an explanation for all of the reboots.

[rionero]

Strange about the reboots.  I am with AT&T, in San Diego, with a sim card that's about 2 yrs old, so pretty new... and have had no issues with random reboots.  I do have that annoying backlight issue with the lame, cheap feeling lock switch on the left side of the phone. That switch feels poorly made to begin with, so it annoys me to have to use it 3x's more than it's meant to be used. 

One other thing that seems weird to me... is that people have been complaining in reviews that they can't get the phone to connect automatically to their home wifi without the phone always checking with them for approval.... but my experience is the opposite.  I keep turning off wifi, but it keeps finding my router and connecting!!!  I want to save battery... so I don't actually want it to keep connecting... lol.  Impossible to make everyone happy, eh?