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How to fix your N95 in case of total death


Recently I moved house which involves the move of ISP and various accounts.  In total my ISP is taking 28 days to move my ADSL setup to another telephone exchange and set up the services that I use.  28 days of almost zero Internet.

So checking around I discovered JoikuSpot for my N95 which allows me to open a WIFI hotspot on my N95 and use the UTMS (3G) connection to get online.  It’s pretty awesome all round, I can use my corporate VPN, surf and email.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing with Vodafone, who seems to have poor UMTS coverage here.  I noticed very strange behaviour with various Internet sites, Facebook for example is delivered in the form of the mobile site.  Why would I want the mobile site on my Macbook??  Why are Vodafone making decisions about the content that I want to view?

JoikuSpot is pretty amazing kit, but I’m fully aware that it’s stretching the device beyond its design.  My N95 agreed that it was all too much and died.  No beeps or flashing lights, just sudden death.  After playing with the battery, charging for a while reset reset reset, nothing was working!

As a last ditch effort I called my good friend and resident know-it-all Steve Hartley (Adobe) who imparted this pretty weird how-to.

  1. Take the battery out
  2. Get a copper coin
  3. Press against the battery pins on the inside of the phone for 2 secs
  4. Replace battery and turn on

And voila, the phone powered back up!

Steve explained that Nokia devices hold a charge for the clock and certain states, even when they are apparently powered down.  Shorting the pins causes a full power down, and thus reset of the device.

So there you have it: How to fix your N95 in case of total death :-)

This entry was posted on October 18, 2008, 12:01 pm and is filed under , Devices, Mobile Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  1. #1 by Scott Janousek on October 18, 2008 - 2:47 pm

    That’s a great hackers tip. Thanks, Mark.

    Also, for WSOD (the “white screen of death”), there is the “4 finger salute” on a lot of Nokia devices. Very similar to Windows & Control-Alt-Delete. :)

    http://flashmobile.scottjanousek.com/2008/03/03/nokia-n95-whitescreen-and-4-finger-salute-to-hard-reset/

  2. #2 by Bill Perry on October 18, 2008 - 6:01 pm

    cool tip, thanks for sharing.

  3. #3 by Leonardo on October 19, 2008 - 10:11 am

    Hi Mark,

    this is a really coool tip!

    thanks you!

  4. #4 by Eugene on October 22, 2008 - 5:02 am

    I am seaching for some idea to write in my blog… somehow come to your blog. best of luck. Eugene

  5. #5 by Eric Johnson on November 10, 2008 - 12:09 pm

    Hi,

    The 4 pints you mention are are really cool torecover the mobile in case of death.

  6. #6 by Ravek on January 3, 2009 - 3:10 am

    Mark/Guys,

    Thank you so much, copper coin/shorting worked fine.
    Sincere thanks again.

    Ravek

  7. #7 by John on March 31, 2009 - 11:27 am

    Thanks for this. This worked great for my phone.

    John

  8. #8 by nokia on April 24, 2009 - 1:43 am

    That is great!

Comments are closed.