How I managed to fix my totally screwed up Nokia 5800
While on a business trip some days ago, my Nokia 5800 decided to go totally crazy. It stopped accepting touch input. It was frozen in lock mode. Sometimes the screen would just go blank (with a weird reddish tint just as it was dying) and then restart, time and time again.
It was UNBELIEVABLE!
So I am sharing my experience here for the benefit of anyone out there facing the similar problems with their Nokia XpressMusic 5800.
I suspected that the problem was caused by the Fring beta. So I removed it. Still the problems persisted. I also removed other apps I was not using. I even tried a soft reset. But nothing seemed to work.
Then it occurred that the problem might be the large number of messages in my sms inbox. Because I subscribed to watwet.com (similar to twitter) I get a lot of sms’s. So I had around 2000 sms’s in the inbox. Mind you, the performance of the phone always stayed very fast. Scrolling through those 2000 sms was very snappy.
So I decided to delete all these messages (some of them I wanted to keep, so I used an App called SMS Export, which worked great to backup all my messages as text files to my Mac. Remember, Mac users don’t have Nokia’s desktop software, PC Suite, or whatever it is called).
Just like magic, the phone returned to a healthy status after dumping these messages.
I have to say that I am getting more freezes that when I bought it some months ago. But that’s nothing compared to the unusable state the phone was in.
I looked around on the web for people who faced similar hanging, freezing and crashing problems with their 5800 but really didn’t find much. So I hope this helps. If you have faced any problems with the 5800 feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.
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March 30th, 2009 at 12:12 am
check this out …
http://i.gizmodo.com/5162297/millions-of-flawed-nokia-5800-xpressmusic-causing-issues-nokia-now-selling-euro-version
March 30th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Never happened to me.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:36 am
Not the 5800, but an older Nokia – it was freezing, even after a battery pull-out. And I did the same, delete 3000 messages and everything was fine.
You know, having that many messages even slowed down the way the phone started-up, the way the inbox opened, the way the menu worked…and almost unbelievably, it lowered the battery life!
Welcome to your messageless future
March 30th, 2009 at 9:12 am
My 5800 XM sometimes freezes when I get a call while using fullscreen applications. The call will get through, but after hanging up, the phone will freeze trying to return to the fullscreen app.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Thanks for the tip, yet I thought that it will help me in my brand new E66 which is still in the maintenance.
I bought it new for JD320 and I sent it to the delaership (Golden) for the third time now.
The log kept jamming and sometimes it does weird stuff (e.g. it does not keep the defaults for some contacts who have more than one number).
My only concern is that they refused to change it and they claim that they changed the board.
Finally I still feel that I need to use connections to change it, in other words this is the type of after sales service that they promote!
March 30th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
i am on my 6th lifetime Nokia, and 2nd E series. but since my work got me to carry a blackberry (curve 8300) last year alonside my personal mobile, it finally dawned on me how shitty the new nokia business phones are.
Some of the older Nokia’s like 6310i are legendary, and the current 6300 are decent affordable phones, but blackberry is a whole other world of reliability, speed and funcionality.
So everytime I hear someone complain about their fancy nokia E or 8 or 5-series I urge them to ditch Nokia alltogeter.. unless you’re looking for a simple/basic phone (like 6300). Not a single glitch or even a delay in response after 11 month of intensive blackberry Curve usage.
February 27th, 2010 at 8:21 am
Hi everyone,
can you guys help me to solve my totally crazy Nokia 5800. I cannot use it as a modem to my Mac I am using Mac Power Book G4 and it has Mac OS X 10.4.11
I follow all the instruction from the Nokia but it always says modem error??.
Cannot use it however, I can use for internet directly from the nokia but as a modem for the computer.