Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

I happened to receive a Nokia N900 by mistake from Nokia. I have a friend in Canada, her name is Giulia. She had a N900 and sent it in for repairs/replacement because it had some kind of a problem with the phone memory. The Nokia manufacturer she sent it to is based in Texas. Well, apparently Nokia Care doesn't do international service! They sent her broken phone straight back to her! She IM'd me one night and asked if I could do her a favor. She asked if she could give them my address (I'm in Arkansas) instead of hers so the replacement phone would be shipped to me. In turn, I would ship it back up to her. We agreed to do this. I received the replacement phone from Nokia, and promptly shipped it up to her. When I got home from shipping it off, I noticed another package dropped at my door from UPS, exactly like the one Nokia sent. They sent me another replacement phone, brand new, unlocked, from the factory!

I asked her about this and she said she's fine with me keeping it if I want to. We thought about calling Nokia and letting them know, but because these are replacement devices under a warranty there was no monetary transaction made. Giulia figured since she's not getting charged for them, it's no big deal. Nokia still hasn't contacted her about their error.

Because it's a replacement, it came with no battery or accessories. I guess they assume I already have those. So as a thank you given the circumstances, Giulia bought a battery, a wall charger, and a micro-USB cable (all official Nokia products, not third-party) and had them shipped to my address. I just got them yesterday.

Now to the problem at hand...

The battery appears to be working and the phone is currently charging through the wall charger. The light will flash yellow as its charging and eventually it'll turn green minus the flashing, which I've learned is normal behavior. So, I think it's charging just fine. But when I turn the phone on, it goes to the regular loading screen with the five flashing dots...and it just stays there, hangs. The system doesn't actually boot.

Any idea why it's stuck at the five dots and not booting?

Thanks,
Phil

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

if the phone is on it's first boot , it stays for a while at the flashing five dots screen (not more than 3 minutes though) , if it is stuck for too long then try booting without the sim card , as some one previously reported his phone to get stuck because of the sim card .

if you think it's really stuck and it takes forever, just re-flash it , no big deal .
re-flashing the phone is really easy , if you don't know how , people here can help .

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Try flashing it. It will solved the problem.

Its easy. only 2 steps.
1 put your N900 in the toilet
2 Then hit flash

Hehe just joking. You're so lucky. Thanks for sharing your story. I recomend you do some reflashing. It will probably fixed it.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

you lucky d.., just reflash it should work fine.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

I'd say reflash too - even if the sim card thing solves it, it's a very good idea to learn how to flash and i think it's better to learn now while the device is clean than when you have it set up how you want it. Plus, it'll need the latest firmware and although this can be done OTA i much prefer flashing it

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

and now you posted in on a nokia-sponsored site...busted! jk.. nokia can't be bothered to read the threads around here.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Are you sure it's a new phone? They sometimes send a replacement and ship the broken phone back too. They did that with my N95 years ago and I was irritated too...

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

its a refurbished phone.. reflashing will sort your phone out :)

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Oh damn, I envy you! Try reflashing and let us know if it starts working.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Out of curiosity, is this the behavior her old phone had? Maybe they sent it back as well? If so, that would explain it.

Re-flashing is a simple thing to try really. Worst case, it's still busted, and you spend 20 minutes learning how to do a trivial tech task, no major loss. Best case, you get a cool working phone out of it. :) Good luck!

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Are you sure it's refurbished? It looked new to me.

On the shipping receipt, it has a table labeled "Content" and under this it has the phone's serial/IMEI number, product code, model number (N900), fault number, status or disposition (one of them says "Defective" and one of them says "Replaced"). The one that is labeled "Defective" has a different IMEI number than the one that is labeled "Replaced." The one that is defective says it was going "In" as in into the factory while the replaced one was going "Out" as in out of it and to me. I'm pretty sure it's a different phone. :)

And also, I read the guide for reflashing and it says I'll have to have it fully charged. I've noticed something odd about this thing when it's charging. The light will turn green as if it's fully charged, but then I turn it on and it does its thing where it won't boot, and then I'll turn it off and put it back on the charger. At this point, the little yellow flashing light comes on signifying its lost some battery power after just a few seconds. How long do I need to keep this thing on the charger to ensure that it has a full charge?

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

It's at full charge if it lights up green. It's normal for the phone to waste battery on boot since it's under 100% load. Just proceed with flashing.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Nah. Her old phone had some kind of memory error. The way she described it, a bug caused the amount of system memory available on her phone to reduce so dramatically to the point that her phone wouldn't run at all. Even so, the phone that I have apparently has a different IMEI number than the defective phone.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Question: When I reflash later, do I need to flash the eMMC "Vanilla" image as well as the FIASCO image, or just the FIASCO image? I think this phone is already set to the factory settings so would it be necessary or not?

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

If it's eMMC is untouched you probably only need the FIASCO image, but for the safe i'd go to completely flash it to prevent any kind of error that might appear.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Which do I flash first? eMMC (VANILLA) or FIASCO?

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Update!

I flashed the phone, and it's working...kind of...

Now, a few seconds after it takes me to the desktop it reboots! And it does this over and over and over again, like it's stuck in a loop.

What's going on here? :/

EDIT: Nevermind, read in multiple places that after flashing eMMC that I have to reflash the rootfs image.

Just reflashed rootfs and now I'm back to the original problem. It won't go past the five-dot screen. I waited for five minutes.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

flash again

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

haha how about returning the device to nokia for repair see how lucky you realy are haha :) :)

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

No luck. It's still stalling.

I have a feeling I'm not doing something right. The directions given on the guide for flashing (the guide on this site) aren't the clearest out there, you know. :/

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

I was about to suggest that, lol.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

If he gets 2 back send one my way please :)

O and btw when i flashed my N900 last i flashed emmc first then fiasco imgae second make sure not to reboot inbetween flashes.

hth

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Alright. So it's emmc and then fiasco.

When I said "rootfs" earlier I meant fiasco. Just read the Readme again and it said something about unpacking the fiasco image into separate parts (rootfs and kernel). So, how do I only flash the kernel or rootfs and not the whole fiasco image?

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Put the .bin file into maemo folder and run the command with -F "image_name" -f -R parameters.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Not what I was asking. That'll just run the entire FIASCO image.

The readme file states that the FIASCO image can be "split" into "rootfs" and "kernel." This means one could install the rootfs without installing the kernel or vice versa. So...how do I do this? D:

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Why would you want to? What you want is everything pure. You don't want to preserve anything

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

I guess so. Of course. I just thought that would help or something. Blah.

Just flashed again. eMMC image first without rebooting, took the battery out briefly, then flashed the FIASCO image with reboot. Now it stays at the black loading screen for a bit, and then turns off and reboots itself. It's in that reboot loop again.

This is getting very irritating. :(

EDIT: Just took the battery out and put it back in again, and now it's at least going to the desktop. Still having this reboot loop problem though. I've tried flashing over and over but each time I make it to the desktop I get the same result -- reboot loop.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

sucks.. hopefully some of the experts find this thread and can help you out.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Hopefully those experts don't work for Nokia. They might tell me to send the phone back. :p

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

I am still suspicious that the battery isn't fully charged. This is why it's good to have a spare battery and independent charger. If that's not the problem, I don't have any other ideas.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

I just charged it before the last time I flashed (which was at the time of my last post where it's mentioned) and it was green. However, even though it's an OEM battery (it seems legit according to Nokia's genuineness test anyway), Giulia bought it on Amazon from a third-party distributor. I'm a little wary that it might not be as good as a brand new battery straight from Nokia. So, do you think a low charge might be the culprit of the loop?

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

i have same problem with my second unit. as soon as i close the slider keyboard phone reboots but it also does reboot without sliding it in, sliding keyboard makes it instant.. i have tried reflash like 20 time so far. but to no avail. i am out of warranty so i do not know what to do either.
by the way i got my second unit the same way you got they sent me twice and both had different imei than what i had sent in.

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Well, damn. After it rebooted from the desktop the last time it wouldn't go back. It just got stuck at the white Nokia screen and shut off. It won't respond to my charger now any more either.

:(

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

I believe it's officially busted. I'm not sure why it kept rebooting like that but it also was giving a memory error. They sent a defective refurbished product as a "replacement" so to speak. This isn't on me because I hadn't started doing so much as touching or playing with the phone until I received a battery and immediately joined this forum afterward.

What do you think would Nokia do if I told them they sent me a clearly defective product as a replacement? I have the IMEI number of her original defective phone and the shipping receipt which shows this phone's and her old one's information, and she could easily send me a scanned copy of her purchase receipt. See where I'm going with this? Hehe. :)

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

dont push ur luck

Re: Received a new Nokia N900, now I'm not sure if there's a problem with it or not...
 

Charge your battery to full using some other phone.
Once you have it charged,
Remove the battery out of your N900. Connect the USB.
Use this command to flash fiasco image-
flasher-3.5.exe -F C:\fiasco.bin -f
(replace C:\fiasco.bin with the right location of your fiasco image and file name)
Once you have executed the command on command promt and it is waiting for the device, connect the battery and start pressing "u" on the keyboard.
Once, the fiasco image is flashed, do not turn off your phone. do not remove the usb. Use this command to flash the emmc image now-
flasher-3.5.exe -F C:\emmc.bin -f -R
Again, replace C:\emmc.bin with the right parameters.
Once, emmc is flashed, your phone will restart and it might start working fine.