A few quick questions re battery and N900:
- is it possible for the N900 battery to suddenly fail ?
- can the N900 boot without a battery ? (powered by charger)
- would 3.46V indicate a flat battery ?
- do batteries suddenly fail (following after a full discharge)

Problem:
My N900 is about 10months old and been working well with dual-boot Maemo & Nitdroid. I left it last night downloading a slow download from Android's Marketplace over WiFi and the N900 is now failing to start

When put on charge it will pulse/vibrate, the orange LED will come on for ~30secs, then another pulse and LED will go off for ~30-seconds and keeps repeating this. The screen is grey and showing NOKIA. The power-button has no effect.

With the charger removed and after the screen has blanked completely, the power-button lights up the LED & screen to white and displaying NOKIA for ~20secsnd and then off

It also fails to boot in flash/recovery mode I believe this requires >50% charge (??).

I've purchased a new battery and external charger, but with the holidays these will be a week before delivery, and I'd welcome any advice/suggestions.

I really hope this is just a battery problem, but so sudden ?
Oh! I have previously has the USB port replaced but this feels secure and it does recognise when either the PC or charger USB cable is connected.

TIA
--
HammY

Update: I was too impatient to wait for new battery & charger. So, with the aid of rubber-bands I charged my N900 battery in my N95 phone. It still failed to boot, but it did connect in recovery/flash mode and with "flasher-3.5' I re-flashed Maemo and now have my phone back Restored from a backup and it is now happily installing/updating all the apps,