As soon as i can get the phone off the booting screen I will try someone elses sim card see if there is any joy.

cheers for the help

The IMEI can also be found inside Settings in "About Product".

I don't think you need a SIM to read the device's IMEI, i could be wrong.

Btw, how did you upgrade, over the air or by flashing with a PC? Have you followed the instructions on the wiki here for doing a total reflash? (normally i would put warnings about loosing your existing data yadayada, but since you didn't even had the chance to use it once i guess you didn't had time to actually store anything in it)

Yeh except if i go to about product, the line where it should show the imei number is missing, wether a sim card is inserted or not.

And Ive just upgraded over the air and my phone has now locked up completely, has been on the boot screen for about an hour just flashing dots?

I have looked at doing a reflash but not entirely confident its something id get right and might cause more damage?

right well just managed to flash to rx-51 2009se 3.2010.02-08 version which i think is a previous version.

Am borrowing someone elses sim card which we know for certain is also working fine. still have the same issues, a sim card crossed out symbol and no imei number being displayed. Is it a motherboard failure or similer?

might have to take it to a nokia repair centre id guess unless anyone has some advice

Stupid question, but is the phone locked to a provider or unlocked?

It's been mentioned many times. Google search

well it was sold as unlocked to me, and ive read that n900 can't be locked? or if they can it is easy to unlock them.

think ill take it to the nearest nokia repair centre

I think what you read actually meant that the N900 doesn't need to be "jailbroken", there is no secrets to going around any limitation the carrier might place in regards to what programs you can install; worse case scenario, download the official firmware from Nokia and follow the full reflash procedures.


But i believe the N900 is fully capable of carrier and/or sim locking; but i really hope i'm wrong on this.

in that case does anyone know the procedure to unlock the handset?
would a mobile retailer be able to do that?

would that also explain why the imei number was not being displayed in the phone?

Depending on the laws on your country, your carrier should be able to unlock it for you if it is such a type of lock (might need you to bring proof you own it and that you got a contract with them or somthing, dunno)


In the settings, there is an option called "Enter code to remove operator lock", mine came already unlocked from the store, i don't dare touching that option for fear i might end up locking it, dunno what a locked N900 is like....

Hopefully someone else here will enlighten us.



edit: the actual code to be entered there most likely varies from case to case, it probably some sort of hash of the device's IMEI, some secret value for each carrier plus some other voodoo; in many recent Nokia devices, if you don't know the secret code, only with specialized hardware and severe physical hacking it was possible to unlock them, often the procedure is not legal. Also, if the lock code behaves anything like simcard PINs , if you enter it wrong more than once or twice you might only ever unbrick it with heavy duty technical assistance. And this might not even be the issue with your device, i dunno.