hope u solve it

I hate to ask this, but... did you look to see how much CPU is being used? If you have something pegging the CPU at 100% it's going to use all the power from the mains to power the device, and not have enough to charge the battery.

in my case, the phone sometimes told me i had near 100% charge, only to tell me I had literally 0% a second later, a frequent "not charging" message, and on a boot up, to constantly reset, so its definately a major phone fault, a hardware cause or otherwise. I dont think I have anything at all in the background eating up all the power.. but even if I did, the phone would still have issues, since it cant even charge or tell how much power it does have half the time.

if some software (official or not!) has "damaged" the device in this way, i may never find out what.. although I could try uninstalling all software on the n900 to see if that makes a difference. not that id want to! ..but its probably the only thing I can do at if I dont want to try a re-flash or wait for some major update.
battery/reset/general power issues are common at the moment :-

N900 wont charge

N900 charge stays only for 6-hours

Maybe your USB port is loose

I thought that too, but that surely doesnt explain the phone resetting or deciding to eventually power up (for real this time!) when I have literally zero power in the phone and its unable to even show the screen. why would it only work then? half the time when I cant get the phone to charge, moving the minUSB lead at the phones end makes no difference- no power light comes on at all, not even the orange flicker as reported before, yet i can guarantee that it will happen alot in future.

thats why it sounds more like a bug to me, along with the "not connected", "disconnect to save power" messages, thinking its charged when its not, resetting, with no visible damage to the miniUSB. perhaps the orange light flicker when moving the lead is a seperate issue, but would still charge if the phone wasnt so buggy? mayb not, but who knows- i have (almost) given up on it!

I am now testing out a new pc usb lead, if that charges fine with no "stopped charging" message then at least I will be able to verify that its a fault with my mains adapter or its cable, and that my resetting might be simply to do with trying to boot up a phone with no power.. will know soon enough.. if no power light flicker is noticable after moving the pc usb slightly near the mobiles miniUSB connectors end whilst charging, then ill give it a couple of days of only using a pc usb to charge as a test-although this test still might not explain why my phone was sometimes giving out the incorrect amount of battery power occassionally on its main screen.

if the usb works ok, then perhaps that will suggest that the connection on the mains cable, is just as fragile as the miniUSB connection it fits into on the phone itself. if you also have a problem charging, try someone elses mains plug (if you know anyone with the same phone) or try the pc usb cable that you also received with your phone..

ps, if anyone knows :-

- how long does it take roughly for a full usb charge from a pc-if the n900 is next to having no power at all? I know usb should be slower than from the mains, but by how much?

- when disconnecting the usb pc cable from the mobile, should I receive any messages, or sounds from the mobile?

The charger chip's status line has a direct connection to the orange LED. The glowing pattern is, however, created independently by software.

A quick blink of orange (I've seen it look like red too, sometimes it's too quick to fully make orange) is usually caused by the charger chip sending out a pulse on its status line. This is used by the charger chip to announce fault conditions. If it makes quick flashes/blinks/flickers when you move the cable, then it's probably the charger chip complaining about input voltage disappearing, which would indicate a loose/glitchy usb port or cable.

"disconnect to save power" message is announced by the charging software whenever it detects charger disconnected, even if the battery is not fully charged.


If the battery is extremely discharged, so that it doesn't turn on at all (nothing on the display even when viewed in bright light, no reaction to keylock slider, etc), the battery charger will enter emergency charging procedure. The yellow light will shine brightly and steadily, no pulsing. It only pulses when the CPU is running and some sort of software has taken control.
If it however blinks/flashes faintly and repeatedly in a regular pattern, I think it was once every second or so, then it's a repeating fault announced by the charger chip doing a fault-reset-trycharge in a loop, and that fault would most likely be "extremely low battery voltage". It usually clears itself after awhile, unless the battery has been discharged so empty that it has self-destructed. In any case, the maximum length of the emergency charging mode is 32minutes, after which you need to replug if the system hasn't started and gone into pulsing yellow light yet.

The previous two paragraphs assumes fully functional and intact usb cable and usb port btw.

I had the flashing red LED and no charging problem.

I tried both my 3rd party N900 USB cable and also the small CA-146C adapter which lets you charge N900 via the microUSB by adapting a standard Nokia charger.

Neither worked as I had depleted the battery too much and apparently neither supported the emergency charging mode needed in this case.

However, I dug out my genuine Nokia USB cable and bingo! The battery I was about to throw away as a dud is now charging fine.

When the battery has been discharged so low the device switched off, the wall charger is far more reliable than connecting N900 to pc us ports..

I am having the same issues.

Phone not always charging, never while on, only sometimes when off

Orange LED staying on even when charger is diconnected

Phone starting up ond shuting down by itself

If I can get the phone on and connect the usb to Mass storage, when usb is disconnected, it still displays usb icon in the status bar and will not let me turn the phone off. It says it is still conected to a PC and to discounect it first.

I have tried re flashing the phone and it does not fix the problem.

Has anyone had any luck?

I had the same problem for quite a while with my N900. The N900 wasn't charging, and when I plugged it into the charger or USB cable, it would light up for a short while before going dark again. It would then restart and do this over and over. Had almost given up on it.

One important step helped me resolve the issue:
I bought a desktop charger on ebay for the BL-5J battery to charge it. This enabled me to charge just the battery (without the phone). I let it charge for a couple of hours.

I put the battery in the N900, and lo and behold, the phone didn't restart and it booted up. There was just enough charge for me to plug in my Nokia travel charger and charge the phone completely.

Apparently, once the battery is totally dead, the N900 can't boot into charging mode to charge itself. Bad design Nokia.