People all over the world are reporting that their Nokia N8 has randomly just stopped working, and that it no longer powers on or even charges according to The Next Web. It started with technology site Hexus, who while in the process of reviewing the N8 said that: “At the start of this week we attempted to turn it on and got no response from it.” They wanted to ignore this, thinking that hardware failure, while rare, does happen from time to time. Then they saw a tweet from Eldar Murtazin, the famous Russian writer who owns and operates Mobile-Review, that said: “Story repeat itself. Nokia N8 like 5800 has damage parts in first production volumes. N8 are dying across the world. All phones are affected.”
Two isolated cases don’t equal a widespread problem, and I wasn’t going to even bother writing this article since I know our commenters like to point out my colored past with Nokia and label me a hater, but on Nokia’s very own discussion forums there is a 5 page thread where things are rather grim.
User “teeyf” writes: “I’m from Nokia’s dealer from Malaysia. I sold several N8 to my customers. I found many of N8 was dead and can’t turn on, can’t charging even I tried the hard reset button (menu, volume down + camera key +turn on button), is no work at all …”
Another user “nuuneoi” writes: “‘Im owner of N8 community in Thailand. From user’s post over there, I found that about one-fifth or more has dead-phone problem.”
This isn’t exactly the kind of thing you want to happen before the holiday season, seeing as how this is the “flagship” device that many Nokia and Symbian fans have been looking forward to since it was announced back in April of this year. We’ve contacted Nokia and are waiting for a comment regarding the situation.
Update: Here’s a video of Nokia’s Niklas Savander talking about the Nokia N8 hardware failure issue. He claims that the issue has affected a small percentage of users, and that “[in the] overall scheme of things” it’s not a huge problem for Nokia. If you’re affected, Mr. Savander advises you to make a warranty claim, as the problem is covered by your manufacturer warranty.