Re: Dead Internal SD Card Slot
 

The internal slot is very sensitive, take care when inserting and removing your SD cards. Although, I do hate how the cover must be on for the memory card to mount. Sooner or later the mechanism will loosen up....

Re: Dead Internal SD Card Slot
 

Actually, I can and do blame the designers. Knowing how stuff gets made in the real world is an important part of being a good designer. Using nothing but adhesive to secure the magnet in place is a design decision. Not using enough/poor choice of adhesive is a manufacturing/quality control issue. Either way, this is costing them money in returned/repaired units and is causing frustration for their customer base, in part due to their rather infamous poor turn around time on repairing units. There are more than a few hardware design issues with the n800:

-rear door rattles
-top buttons excruciatingly small
-inner sd card retention mechanism is flimsy
-battery slot is too tight for easy battery swapping
-The felt like slip case is a complete joke

In general, the N800 does not feel as "tight" or "solid" as the 770.

Re: Dead Internal SD Card Slot
 

Yeah, I agree that the retention mechanism for the internal SD card slot is pretty flimsy. I originally thought that was the source of the problem, but it was indeed the magnet going missing that was the cause.

Re: Dead Internal SD Card Slot
 

Eh, as a former consumer product designer I can assure you the buck doesn't stop there. SOMEone approves that design, or even submits guidelines in the first place. Often it's marketing, or product/program management types. Either way, it's the natural tendency of designers to over design critical features-- and then some lugnut higher up with a red pen starts trimming.

Re: Dead Internal SD Card Slot
 

The slider can definitely move out of place, and it is worthwhile to take a look at it any time you have dropped or otherwise jolted your N800. Resulting problems do not always point in an obvious way to the mechanical attachment of the card.

My N800 boots from the internal card, and everything seemed to be working at first when I had dropped it. After a couple of days, I found that the browser and Media Player were not saving new bookmarks, and I could not delete existing ones. It looked like a problem that could be fixed by restoring a backup. The N800 said the backup was unavailable. That was the first indication of anything wrong with the internal card. It turned out that the slider had moved. All problems were fixed by returning it into position.