Nokia N73 Woes

After a while with the N73 it started locking up – going to sleep and not being able to wake, usually after a calendar notification or mail notification, and the only way to recover was to pull the battery.  Eventually this deteriorated and the phone would power down for no apparent reason.  I therefore contacted T-Mobile and arranged for it to go for repair.When it returned it was totally wiped (to be expected I suppose) so I put Mail for Exchange on it again and it started locking up again.  I decided I’d have to do without mail on this phone – my main reason for going for this model, so now it was just a phone . . . bummer!!A few weeks later the battery started discharging rapidly – less than 24 hours – with minimal use.  I got a new battery, which did the same.Another call to T-Mobile – phone went for repair and arrived back again.  Picked it up from thepost office – Sim Card went in, memory card went in, battery went in, back on, power up and shove the thing in my pocket and drive to work. Now I didn’t remember hearing the Nokia chime and the T-Mobile noise that usually announced the startup of the phone and when I parked up I got the thing out of my pocket and looked and it had hung during boot at the Nokia screen – strange.Battery pulled out and back in again.  Same thing – no boot up.  Now I was getting very annoyed.  I was ready to accept defeat and would have been happy to pay a little more and get the phone returned, upgrade to a Blackberry.  I phoned T-Mobile.The  person I spoke to said he would arrange for it to go back for repair.  When I said I was not happy for that to happen as the thing had just been repaired he was not interested.  I was refused an upgrade to a higher tariff and a different device as I’d only had the thing about 6 months on an 18 month contract.  Bummer . . .So, after a little more playing with the phone I removed the memory card, battery and SIM.  Thinking I’d give it one last go I put in the SIM and battery and it worked!  I put in the memory card again and it didn’t.  So, memory card and phone?I tried the memory cared in a number of other devices and they all read it fine.  I reformatted it and still the same – caused the phone to hang.  Conclusion – memory card socket or circuitry is damaged.  Since the phone can’t be used for what I wanted to use it for I thought I’d just forget about it, use it just as a phone and wait until the contract ended.  I went to O2 and got the Blackberry so now I’m back to 2 devices .  One good thing though – the Blackberry seems to be rock solid stable and great for e-mail (I got the Curve).  When it comes to contract renewal I’ll certainly be thinking about going for another Blackberry and I’m resolved never to get another Nokia phone.

Experience so far with Nokia N73

I thought I’d put some notes together on the N73 and how I’ve found using it in combination with my work Exchange account for anyone that might be interested . . .

I work for the University of Nottingham and they have an Exchange based e-mail system.  Previously I used a Windows Mobile  5 device (XDA Exec) to get mail using the push facility provided, but after changing to a Nokia N73 thought I’d try the Mail for Exchange (MfE) software.

Whilst this is not as sophisticated as the using Windows mobile, it allows me to triage  incoming mail quite adequately.  The only deficency I have found so far is in accepting appointments which does not seem to work reliably.  I’ll need to play with it some more to fully understand what is happening – more on this later – time permitting.

I am also starting to get RSS feeds to the phone  using “Mobiz LiveFeeder”, which seems to be working well.  Other software I have found to be useful is the GMail application for Symbian, the Nokia maps, which is really impressive, offering GPS navigation (at a price), and Opera which is a great improvement over the standard browsing capability of the device.