Thread: Problems with N900 USB port becoming broken / loose and resulting warranty & repair issues
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cr0c0 is offline cr0c0
2010-03-11 , 21:41
Posts: 147 | Thanked: 228 times | Joined on Feb 2010 @ Toronto, Canada
#1096
Originally Posted by lemmyslender View Post
I'm sure my wife won't mind when I get up and turn on the light so I can plug "that thing" in properly so I don't stress the connector before going to bed.
Well, you shouldn't have to start charging it in the middle of the night. And what exactly are you doing up while your wife is already asleep? (Just kidding, I'm a night owl and had my share of arguments with my girlfriend about going to bed waaaay too late)

Easier said than done It's those pesky darn accidents that always get you.
True, but accidents will kill pretty much anything. I sat on my very first Palm Pilot 5000, and cracked the screen. I guess I should have demanded Palm use diamond instead of glass.

If the hooks weren't needed (or need to be as big) I'm sure they would save money and design the cables with smaller hooks, or without them, right?
They wouldn't save any money for using smaller hooks, but you're right about bad design. Nokia really dropped the ball on the surface mounted USB port though, not on the USB cable hooks. It's IMPOSSIBLE to break off a pass-through component without breaking the PCB in half or destroying the component itself. Too late for that redesign though. Nokia will keep using the current design and just improve the adhesion of the USB port. It will help, but it won't make it indestructible.

And void your warranty in the process
I'll give you this point too. But many people like myself have no warranty at all. I preferred to take a small risk to make sure my N900 survives. Even if I had warranty, I'd probably still open it up to fix it. Just look at some of the crap people have to go through to have their N900 fixed under warranty.

All good advice, but I shouldn't have to immediately void my warranty, start modifying cables, changing habits, annoying my wife, etc just so I don't have to worry about being without my $500+ device that I become more dependent on every day.

Mind you, I filed the hooks completely off all my cables, I'm careful when I put the plug in, and will probably epoxy it (after the warranty expires, assuming it makes it that long). But I shouldn't have to do any of that.
Completely agree, it's a very, very poor design. But Nokia gave me lemons so I made lemonade. And I had fun being the first one to completely document the N900 disassembly (except for the screen, but I did that on my old N810 to replace the slider, and THAT was a pain I don't want to go through again).

Bear in mind that not everyone who has had this problem voted in this poll. Ultimately, we have no idea how widespread this is. Our community is just a small subset of all the N900's sold. Quadruple the number of people that took this poll ~2000, even if no more people have issues, that's still around 3% failure rate. That is unacceptable to me. I am very concerned that this could be an issue in the future no matter how careful I am. If I were looking to buy a N900 and was unsure, this would certainly give me pause.
A bit off topic, but laptops have a 15-20% failure rate in their first year. The main difference is that laptop manufacturers are MUCH better at standing behind their products than cell phone manufacturers. It's an understandable attitude though, because it's far less likely to drop a laptop on concrete, or to dump it into the bath tub or toilet.