At this point I figure if my n800 audio jack is dead and if it's permanently broken I'd rather buy another n800 or n810 to use instead of trying to send it to nokia.

So I opened it up and definitely one of the pins need to be resoldered but I fear that this will not be enough to fix it. The other channel, while the pin is not lifted, isn't very reliable either, so I think the internal connectors may no longer be making good contact.

In case I want to, has anyone had luck with either bending the connectors back into place internally or finding a new connector? I could try to put a different but shielded component onto the board since the pinout is pretty standard but would rather not need to. Thanks in advance.

this won't help you at this point (sorry) but on a related subject: the audio jacks and earphones used to be among the first things to break on my devices. even though the jack on the n810 seems very high quality i still did to it what i usually do now, glue the headset plug to the tablet itself with household goop (one big tube $5 at k-mart etc.) and applied goop to the ends of the headset cables for reinforcement. be careful not too spread it too far. pretty bomb proof.

sounds like a good idea. I did have a bent pin and I think I managed to solder that down but I think that might have just been the microphone. The left channel is not coming through and that is the tip and I think the internal connector is not making good contact. Tried to bend it into shape but that hasn't worked yet.

So I rung out the left audio channel with a jack with exposed wires and it was connected. What gives???

for fun i put in on the scope. no music on left channel seems to be very noisy compared to right channel and when there's sound, the full amplitude is probably at least 4x less than right channel but it's not nothing.

What I'd recommend, if you're brave enough, and since you obviously have a scope, is to go out, find a jack of the same size, remove the Nokia one, then add in the new one. It should fix your issues.

My quick google search when this first started didn't pull up any parts. I'm also not certain replacing the audio jack will solve my issues since when the connection was "good" it wasn't (and, ahem, I've made it worse at this point.) By now I'd just as soon rather sell it to someone who doesn't have a problem with the bad left audio channel and get something temporary until the n900 is out.