Hi all, After a couple of weeks reading this forum I decided to buy a N900. Actually I found a guy that swapped his N900 for my N97.

The first hour with the device was cool, I thought "wow my N97 was a toy" but after, the nightmare started...

I'm using Nokia handsets since 2003 and the first thing I do when I get one is connecting it to PC suite an update to the last firmware and I did that with the N900, OVI suite detected a new firmware and I flashed the N900.

It's true that I didnt test a lot the device before performing the update but after the update I experience a lot of problems with the handset, it's almost unusable...

When I switch the N900 on, It works ok, but after a minute, if you try to start an application it won't start at all, the phone freezes constantly and the lock and power buttons stop working so you have to remove the battery to turn the phone off. (This is the latest global firmware)

I then reflashed the phone with another firmware (USA fourth release), this time the phone worked almost ok, it freezes or crashes sometimes but it's very usable, the power and lock buttons worked ok all the time, I was very happy until I realized that I had no GSM signal, I put another SIM card but the problem persisted so I reflashed with the global latest firmware again...

And guess what, GSM signal is ok again, I can make calls again but power and lock buttons stopped working again after a couple of minutes and the phone freezes constantly...

I don't know if this is a hardware or software problem, the strange thing is the issues are completely different with every firmware, what is clear I think is that the previous owner ripped me off and the phone wasn't ok although I tested it for about 5 minutes before the swap and found no issues with it.

I think I ended up with a useless brick, the better idea coming to my head is flashing again the USA fimware and forget about using the N900 as a phone, using my old N95 instead but if you guys have a better advice let me know, I really dont know what to do...

It looks a great phone but at this time I wish I had my N97 back...

Overlock it to 1Ghz.

buy a 9mm and go after that guy



PS: jk dont do it

if i owned an N97 i would have killed a few people by now, such a dud phone

OP did you flash the emmc as well?

First make sure you fully flash the phone including emmc.

If that doesn't fix it, I have to assume it's a hardware issue.

I am wondering if it is possibly a memory issue.
It looks like you are experiencing some weird behavior and I am wondering if bad flash is not one of the possible causes.
Also, since this phone can be overclocked, it is possible the previous dude pushed it until the CPU fried itself.


TBH, I have been a little worried about the way the cell phone uses Virtual Memory. On the N900 we have 256MB of RAM and 768MB of swap. The swap is stored on the internal flash memory and it has a limited number of write cycles.
I assume that the flash memory will last from 100k to 1M cycles but I don't know how long it will take to reach such numbers. I can see applications swapping in and out all the time.

Can somebody chime in and shed some more light?



I think the previous dude already did that

well, if the flash goes bad, there should be some way to mark it as such and not use it anymore. not really sure how that works on this device though...

The flash on the N900 (and any decent flash memory) does 'wear leveling', so it writes to a different part of the physical flash each time, even when you attempt to force linux to write to the exact same disk sector repeatedly. Because of this, given 100k writes, a 32GB flash and writing at 20MB/s CONSTANTLY (That is roughly the maximum sustained speed of the mmc afaik. Needless to say this is a massive, massive overestimate) your flash should last 100000*32e9/20e6/3600/24/365=5 years. It is literally impossible to have broken an N900s emmc at this point in time.

EDIT: That post was almost completely off topic, sorry. I'd agree with the person who said do a full system flash including the emmc. If it works with the USA firmware it can't be a hardware issue. (Is the USA firmware usually incompatible with sim cards from other regions?)

Good first post! Not the usual: "Help my N900 has somekind of problem!!!!!!!!?!!"!!¤!&#¤!"

IMHO you shuld have gotten suspicious when someone offered to trade in a N900 for a N97. That's like getting a half empty can of beer for a Pom Perignon!

Re: Flashing the former firmware image:
It is a known issue, that after you flashed the latest PR image to the phone, the GSM and 3G functionality is lost until you really put in some extra effort(tweaks). These are not trivial, i never needed it, but you might search the forum for it.
Please follow these instructions http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_tablet_firmware Read them carefully regarding your PC OS, because there are some limitations, which, i think, will not be tackled by Nokia ever, to some Win7 versions.
Best result here was and is the use of a Debian- or Ubuntu-based Live-CD or installed system. But mileage may vary, according to everyone's experience and expectations.