Seems Nokia's got a few quality control issues with the 5800 XpressMusic. Buyers be warned.

Post from: http://www.mobile-review.com/articles/2009/5800-brak-en.shtml


"All Nokia 5800 come with a defect?!

We have been looking into the situation around the faulty earpiece on the Nokia 5800 and analyzing feedback from the users since early December. For me this work was exciting from several perspectives – for one, I was able to find a connection between warranty claims and certain usage patterns, as well as put together a thorough picture of various types of defects (both hardware and software) present in this phone. We are not going to cover the 5800 XpressMusic’s software issues, though, as they are fairly easy to rectify with a new firmware version, whereas its hardware flaws require the user to return the phone for repair, so they are a lot more crucial. Also, we won’t touch upon the statistics on warranty claims and issues of this nature – rather, we’d like to tell you more about the design flaws in the Nokia 5800 and also the real scope of the problem.

Before we start I want to note that since December we have torn apart over ten retail units of the Nokia 5800 – basically, we put them through a whole array of tests and experiments, in an effort to find out what the reason of breakdowns was. While one could argue whether we have tested enough phones to make any sort of competent conclusion, we have reached the point when we are no longer eager to spend money on these experiments, as no matter how many phones we try, the end result is always the same. The same defect manifests itself under similar circumstances in all units without exception, including those that were fixed by Nokia’s authorized service centers.
Anamnesis

The main problem that many users complain about is the top right corner of the casing that tends to loosen up with time, and, supposedly, causes the earpiece to give up the ghost or, at very least start making creaking noises and spontaneously changing its volume while in a call.

Apparently, it stood to reason that we needed to investigate these two flaws as one, since a loose-fitting part of the casing probably made the earpiece slip several millimeters down from its original position. Skipping the details, I’d like to say that this approach has proven to be inadequate – these are two separate problems, because over the course of our experiments we ran into several phones that didn’t have any issues with their casings, however their earpieces were barely usable and vice versa.

The right corner of the phone tends to loosen up because of a slightly displaced screw. All in all, this design flaw is characteristic of most 5800 XM units. However, it’s rather an unpleasant feature, as the frame surrounding the earpiece doesn’t go anywhere, meaning that the abovementioned issue with the 5800’s casing has absolutely no effect on its earpiece performance (in that it doesn’t slip down or start to wobble in its slot).

With this in mind, we decided to focus on the problem with the 5800’s earpiece and here is what we have managed to find out.
Nokia 5800’s earpiece

The Nokia 5800's earpiece isn't soldered onto the contacts on the circuit board, rather it's pressed into the circuit board. In fact, the 5800 XpressMusic is not the only phone that employs this design, most other Nokia-branded phones do too. However, their percentage of failures isn’t nearly as substantial as that of the 5800 XpressMusic.

As a rule, you can get a malfunctioning earpiece to work simply by disassembling the phone and putting it back together, without touching the earpiece module at all. This method was stumbled upon by employees of Nokia's service center and in truth it made the situation even more perplexing, as we managed to bring one 5800 XpressMusic back to life in this manner.

This indicates that the problem probably lies in a thin oxide film that forms on contacts and breaks down whenever moved. Although the question remains as to why similarly designed earpieces found in other phones (like Nokia N85 and Nokia E71) don’t suffer from this effect as well? However it turns out that they do too, just like the Nokia 5800, but the number of failures is insignificant.


Essentially, it’s safe to say that the 5800 XM’s record-breaking sales have turned into a record-breaking level of failures as well. Nevertheless, no phone maker is immune to this. Speaking of the 5800 XpressMusic’s world-wide release, on January 27th Nokia announced that they shipped to distributors one million units, and given that it takes a while to change all faulty earpiece modules, it’s very na?ve to expect that they could rectify with this defect by then. Therefore there are all reasons to believe that before that day all 5800 XpressMusic phones sold or shipped to retailers contained faulty earpieces. The question remains, though, whether all of them will eventually start malfunctioning or not, but that’s not the main point. The crux of the matter is that no phone was defect-free.

A
Those of you who have already encountered this issue and had your 5800 XM repaired, the only thing I can recommend is to take your phone back to any service center and get them to replace the earpiece again. And if you are about to buy a 5800 XpressMusic, but wouldn’t like to visit Nokia’s service center at least once, then pay close attention to the phone’s production date – it seems that all units manufactured in February are defect-free. Unfortunately, there is no way to learn about a new phone's production date from its box or manual - to do that you will need to contact a service center and tell them your IMEI code, and this is the only way to do that at this point in time. However the good news is that given how popular this phone is, it's safe to say that by mid March local retailers won't have any flawed units left in stock. So another option would be to wait until April before buying the 5800 XpressMusic.

Everyone should decide for him/herself whether the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic's pros outweigh its cons, including the added possibility of the earpiece defect. My opinion that this phone is the best offering in its class hasn't changed at all. While this phone's earpiece is its weakest spot, it's simply one of the things you need to be aware of and have the whole story on your hands, rather than rumors and guesses. However I shall warn you that any attempt to disassemble the phone and fix the earpiece on your own may nullify your warranty, on top of that, there is a very slim chance you'll manage to bring it back to life."