Hey, just wanted to share something. No rant, just want to tell somebody about this

So far, almost all 3G-capable nokia phones I've had (6680, 6233, 6288, E61 all did this) have had the same problem: there is a very high pitched sound coming from the phone's umts radio when it's being used. I'd say it's between 12000hz and 15000hz, but I haven't measured it yet with a microphone, but it's more or less in that range.

When I got my N900 I tested this and I didn't hear the noise, so I thought "man, that's great, I can use Dual mode". Now fast-forward to 2 months later... I don't know if some of the electronics, for whatever reason, degrade after some use, but I have started hearing this noise on my N900 too.

Fortunately, GSM mode doesn't make this noise, so that's what I have to use now. It's quite an inconvenience, because I can't use data at all, and I'm not going to change from GSM to 3G when I casually want to look up some information, or browse the web while I wait for a couple of minutes, I can't be bothered to be changing modes all the time, and I can hear the noise all too well in 3G mode, so it's either data or calls for me.

My intermediate solution has been porting my number to the only carrier in my country that has EDGE support (movistar in spain), not ideal but GPRS is so slow it's useless with a full web browser, and modest's imap is too data heavy to be useful, as well.

I hope you don't have sensitive ears, because sometimes it's a pain :P

You can try, in 3G mode, to make a call, turn the phone over and listen to the back cover, iirc bottom of the phone is where the noise comes from. I don't expect this to be fixed on my N900 (or any N900) because having had several nokia phones with this, it must be inherent to the technology somehow, just like GSM makes the well known noise when a phone in use is close to an audio amplifier. Too bad for me, I can't talk while on 3G mode on many phones guess I'll have to live with it!

happy n900ing