The screen on my N810 now flickers as I open or close the keyboard. Has anyone else had a similar problem? Is there an easy fix, or are my device's days now numbered?

Unfortunately, that probably means the screen-keyboard connection strip is breaking

yeah sounds like the "ribbon" that connects the 2 pieces together foa all data transfer is damaged or something. i had the same think on my n900 after dropping it. had to get the ribbon replaced. not sire about the N810 but replacing the ribbon on the n900 means replacing half the phone as the ribbon is not fully detatchable so could be costly

I sent my N810 back for repair summer of 2009. The screen was flickering constantly, and had become completely unreadable. They held on to it for about 3 weeks before sending it back, unrepaired with this message:

"Upon opening your phone, we discovered corrosion damage that we will not repair."

So a few months later, I got an N900 that I have been perfectly happy with, and I kept my N810 around, sitting on a shelf. I recently gave it to my father, (an electrical engineer) so he could maybe clean up the corrosion, and this is what he sent back:

"Well.

It isn't what you wanted to hear, but here it is:

I know what went wrong with the N810.

The power/interface flex cable for the display developed a nick in one edge and was in the process of tearing through. I know this because as I was trying to reconnect everything, it did tear, catastrophically. Flex cables do that: they are 100% robust until the moment that an edge gets stressed enough at a weak point for a tear to begin, and then it propagates right through without stopping. Darn.

Anyway, I saw no signs of rust at all. lt was dusty in there, and you might have had some potential for keyboard-slide loginess because of it. But nothing that I could see had corroded. It's just that one conductor in the flex cable for the display had parted (because of the nick and keyboard-slide-out wear/stress) which shot the data being sent to the screen in the foot. If I can find a replacement cable on line and it isn't an arm and a leg, maybe I'll get it next semester and see if I can get it working again. If not, it's a real brick. It won't turn on now that it knows the display isn't there. And of course, none of the parts are compatible with later models, including the battery, which has a different placement for the contacts. Why? So you can't use it. What else is new.

There is a faint possibility that I could scrape off the insulation over the copper runs, knit the whole thing back together with micro-sized bridge bits and reseal it with kapton tape without it a) being to thick for the keyboard slide to work anymore and b) being such a weak link that it fails within hours of being closed back up. And I suspect it will take hours under a binary microscope with soldering tools I don't have and steady hands which I really don't have. I'd far prefer to see if I can replace the cable. Maybe someone has destroyed or worn out their keyboard (overmash!) without damaging the cable for the display...and is willing to sell their brick for cheap. That's be cool, but it'd have to be pretty cheap.

Anyway, know that it wasn't anything you did that killed it, originally. They lied to you to save face: they had no intention of wasting the effort of finding out what was actually wrong with it (and from the looks of it, didn't even bother to open it up!) They probably saw the signs of wear and moisture/accrued dirt around the edges, and gave you then diagnosis they figured you couldn't counter. Nothing new there. After all, repair depots used to be where the engineering-level people actually found out what broke, and fixed or replaced it. Now-a-days, they have a three-ring binder, and not only won't, but don't know enough to depart from it if they wanted to.

Sorry I broke it the rest of the way (although that is actually one of the valid troubleshooting steps), but at least it was mine to break. 8^P"

Non-Warranty Nokia repairs are not the greatest, just to warn you.

I really like the N810 and haven't found anything that comes close to being a suitable replacement, so I bought one from an eBay auction. I've been keeping the current one with the screen open at all times and just not carrying it around until the new one arrives.

Maybe someday someone will make something better...