n900 broken
Yesterday, as I was trying to charge my N900, something bad happened. I must have applied slightly too much pressure when I tried to enter the battery charger into the micro-USB port, and I heard something crack. Next thing I know, I see the micro-USB port is not where it's supposed to be anymore, and it won't charge anymore, at all.
This isn't something that's unfixable, but it's not something that's in my skillset to fix. So I'll need to send it in for repairs, or some such.
Since the battery was almost flat, and the red traffic light behind which I'd been waiting at the time switched to green, I just switched it off to save battery life, and moved on. When I got home, I tried switching it on again so that I could take a backup of the device before sending it in for repair and/or finding someone to fix it, but the battery was apparently already quite dead at the time -- I could boot it, I could start the backup application, but around the time I pushed on the 'new backup' button, the phone decided that the battery level was just too low and powered itself down. D'oh.
So, here's a silly question:
Does anyone have the necessary skills required to help me solder the micro-USB connector back on? Alternatively, does anyone have a (charged) Nokia BL-5J battery that I can borrow for a few minutes so I can create a backup and store it on the micro-sd card?
Your help is very much appreciated. Mean time, I'll be off buying a temporary replacement phone now.
Hey Wouter!
I had a Canon battery that I needed to charge, but for which I lost the charger. I bought a generic charger that charges at the right voltage. It is able to charge from 1.2 volts to 7.2 volts. It detects this automatically, don't ask me how
I'm sure you could insert the Nokia battery to the device. It's a DESQ International charger (desq.eu, Zeewolde), model 80001.
If you're ever around Utrecht, you can come pick it up if you want to borrow it.
Thanks for the Debian work!
Allard Hoeve
Hi Wouter,
If you have the time to wait a week or two for delivery, DealExtreme [1] sells really cheap replacement batteries [2] and external battery chargers [3] for the N900.
[1] http://www.dealextreme.com/ [2] http://is.gd/eY7Iqf [3] http://is.gd/EOAtLd
If you are in a real hurry, you're welcome to borrow mine.
Best regards, Martijn.
I forgot to mention: I am in Eindhoven, NL....
Regards, Martijn.
You can use my battery anytime you like (if you are near Ghent during the day / Dendermonde during the evenings).
If you require something more in the Antwerp neighborhood, I'm sure you can find somebody with a N900 at our Inuits office (hemeltje) who will allow the use of his battery for a while.
Jan.
FWIW: this is the most common problem with the n900, a lot has been written about this. I cannot help you with the soldering, but I'm willing to borrow you my battery for the duration of the backup.
Hey Wouter, if you're in Brussels you can use my battery. malmostoso at gmail dot com
The same thing happened to my n900, they had to replace the motherboard - but had none in spare, so they sent me an Nokia N8...
I got in touch with the company that sold me the N900, and got my money back, and bought an Nexus S.