Epoxy is the best way to preventing it from breaking too easily. It will still break if you yank it out. BUt if you take good care of it then it won't break. I broke mine twice. Repaired and broke again. Enough is enough so I repaired it myself and saved me $120 service fee.

I soldering my broken USB back to the motherboard using a 0.5mm soldering iron head. Got it back onto the board and welded it on securely on the pin + epoxy glued the microUSB onto the board and the surrounding area to extend the movement protection. So far still solid.

HI,
I m from India n I m facing the same problem. My nokia N900 is still under warranty but the service center people say that detaching of usb port is a physical damage and hence not covered under warranty. please guide me how i can claim the warranty or get the refurbished handset if possible.

Aditya

I don't know if it is an option in India, but try Nokia's website.

I've had a problem with the charging cable/usb cable not attaching to the port very well. There would be times when I attached the charging cable and when i put the device down the cable dissconneted and I didn't get a charge.

Today I noticed the port seemed to have alot of "dust" in it. I picked up a very thin needle and started carefully carving out the dust from inside the port and you wouldn't believe the amount of dust I carved out! My port now feels brand new and the cable attaches with ease.

This has nothing to do with the port breaking, but I thought it was still OT.

Nokia in Greece replies that they have recently removed the USB break damage from the list of the ones covered by warranty! Obviously it costs too much.

The third-party repair shop that took a look at the detached USB port replied that iron-soldering it back is not an option because they do not have a clear view at the point they had to work on. Things are too crowded in there. This is the reason why they would not try to use 300 C heat either, since that might harm other sensitive parts (camera etc).

I will ask elsewhere before I give up though. Does anyone else besides maxximuscool has a success story of iron-soldering to share?

Yes you can scrape away the paint either side of the connector itself and solder it down but please be aware this will invalidate your warranty.

Epoxy will work but not indef and either way you have to take the device apart even to epoxy so better to solder if you go that far, nothing wrong with the epoxy after soldering.
This measure is only workable as long as the data pins have not left the board at the rear of the usb socket and no usb detachment problems have occured ie before anything goes wrong.

I found the Soldering advice needed for re-attaching N900 USB to mainboard thread.

By the way, I just realised how it happened in my case. It must have been the way I charged N900 in the car. I used the ProClip Mount & Holder with Tilt Swivel and I connected it to a cigarette lighter charger + Nokia CA-146C Charger Adapter. Obviously that hanging cable added too much weight to the already defective USB port and eventually forced it to break.

Instead, I should have bought the ProClip Charging Holder with Tilt Swivel and Cigarette Lighter Adapter, but that seemed too expensive...

So all of you out there that have the same charging habits beware!

Hey Mowgli,

I'm working at an european ASC(authorised service center) and the thing is: the production of N900 units has come to an end and there are no devices left to order for us.

Nokia updated the N900 service bulletin recently and allows us to swap severely damaged N900s to either N8 or E7(btw, it's the same for the Nokia 8800). I wonder how the customers will react to this(we still have some swap units on stock), so far the 8800 guys weren't too happy.

I also have something to say about the whole usb port topic: wether your warranty is kept intact is up to the service center. Yes, it's really that random. We usually tend to swap any N900 with a broken port while other ASC are more strict. It's a design flaw on one hand but also needs someone to actually break it on the other, so there's always room for debate and some ASC don't want to get in trouble(Nokia could reject the swap which means the ASC doesn't get paid + Nokia not beeing happy with your work is a big deal for the ASC). I for myself never had this problem with my own N900, maybe because I'm always extra careful with these fragile ports(not only with the N900).

If you have to deal with a broken port and the ASC doesn't want to help you I advise you to look for another ASC or a Nokia Care Point. Maybe another ASC is willing to confirm the warranty. At the NCPs you usually find rather capable people who can help you out with a good soldering job for a good price(Nokia also provides a service manual for the usb port issue)

The most cost-effective step is prevention -- minimize your use of the usb connection. This is easily done -- stop using it to charge your N900. Get a separate charger -- that might set you back $10 or maybe a bit more. Get some spare batteries -- now you're looking at perhaps $30 for two better batteries than Nokia sells.

Of course, if you have already worn out your usb connection, this won't solve anything, but it will certainly slow down further deterioration.

If Nokia had kept the charging connection they used for the N800 and N810, this would not even be a problem.

Got my n900 back from Nokia care,although it's been repaired I nearly had a heart attack when I inserted the usb charger it felt really tight but when I tried to take it out it was so tight that it felt like the whole housing would come out!!!!

I have three new scud batteries that have also arrived today and will be using my slow but trusty external charger and ssh to transfer files.