The power of Christ compels you: N82, she’s back from the dead *UPDATE*
By Stefan Constantinescu on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 7:00 PM PST In Nokia
My Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N82, the device that stopped taking pictures one night for no apparent reason, is finally up and atom. While hanging out with a bunch of friends tonight (Flickr album here) I received a call, went outside, 5 minute conversation, then as I was walking back into the pub I decided to check my GMail. Addict I know. One of the girls says “take a picture!” I forget my phone is defective and slide the shutter down and shockingly it worked. Before I could even hit the camera button my Nokia gets possessed by a Finnish demon. My phone locks, locks so hard I need to pull the battery out.
After reassembling my device and powering it back on, it booted and displayed a memory error. The phone says the memory is full and I should delete some files. I try to hit OK, but the phone locks again, hard, hard enough that I had to pull the battery. Booting …
Second reboot finished, same error. At this point I’m about to throw this thing at someone, so I give it the old *#7370 treatment, a key code combination many Nseries fans know by heart no doubt, to fully reformat the device to factory settings.
The device reboots, but it is now stuck at the white screen before the Nokia Connecting People shows up. I leave it be for 3 minutes, give up, pull the battery again.
This is the 4th reboot and even the guy with a Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) P990i at the table is laughing at me. It boots just fine, I take a picture just fine, go to the gallery application to send it to my friend over Bluetooth and surprise surprise there are over 4,800 items in my gallery. Apparently I left the screen shot application running and it filled up my phone’s memory, but one would think after a *#7370 treatment everything would be OK?
I’m speechless. My camera works. My phone works. I’m calling GhostBusters.
Update: Not 2 minutes after hitting publish on this article my N82, which is sitting on my desk, decides to reboot. I try to see if the camera is still functioning and I’m sad to say it isn’t. Time to call the priest.
Priest?…
Nah…it looks like u’ll need some bypass surgery to fix this one.
Is *#7370 the same as the the hard reformat the phone using the following combination: powerkey + dial key + button “3″ + button “*” press together to poweron the handset?
@blueskies.
Yes.
Just reflash it using nokia software updater. It seems like a software bug to me. Reflashing should get you rid of all the buggy apps you installed. Oh and maybe take out the memory card on the first boot after reflash, just to make sure the phone is trully clean.
the flashing battery symbol means the flash is charging. if you still have the phone try using a setting that does not require a flash and see if the camera will work. the manual says that the phone will not work if the flash is not charged unless you use a setting that doesnt use the flash. sounds like something might be loose, or just defective. sorry to hear about your problem.
is yours a pre-production or retail version? i have one and am loving it
I think I might have figured out the cause of the problem and a workaround. The lens cover underneath the manual slide cover is sticky. Normally, when you open the slide cover, a second or two after, the lens cover opens up automatically. When it can’t, you get the “dead camera” problem. To get around this, a second after you open the slide cover, gently but firmly tap the side of the camera with the speaker holes on the palm of your hand. That should force the lens cover open and start up the camera. Stupid, I know, but it seems to work in a pinch.