In an admirably thorough and even-handed way, Mobile-review.com has investigated the 5800's earpiece problem to find its cause, and they've also got a lengthy official response from Nokia detailing what went wrong and how they've fixed it. In short, the cause was humidity gradually getting inside flawed earpieces. Nokia changed earpiece suppliers in late January so that 5800s made in February 2009 and later should be okay. Anyone with an older 5800 can get their old earpiece replaced with the new version at an authorised service centre. If you're unsure when your 5800 was made, the service centre should be able to tell you over the phone using your IMEI number.
Read on in the full article.
I know the article's headline is a bit sensationalist but the article itself seems very balanced and fair. MR have gone out of their way to try and find the specific problem themselves, as well as providing a space for Nokia to respond in detail.
Nokia's response implies that the design of the earpiece was okay, but the actual mass-produced earpieces were defective. Perhaps Nokia's testing centre concentrates too much on design prototypes, and not enough on the finished retail product?
Another angle on this story is as a vindication for gradual region-by-region launches, so if an unexpected problem does crop up there's time to fix it before it affects everyone. Certainly the situation would have been a lot worse if they'd launched the 5800 worldwide before Christmas...
The article's conclusion is ultimately unfounded/over-reaching.
"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 naive 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."
There is no way to know whether the problem affected all of the initial 1 million units or not. Reasons this cannot be known could include 1) Nokia has more than one provider of these earpieces - however, based on the article this is _probably_ not the case 2) assuming that there was only supplier, they could still have several production facilities and some of them may not have had the problem 3) even if there is only one production facility, it is likely that producing a million of these could require either several production lines, several production runs, several rounds of supply of rawmaterials/subcomponents to manufacture the earpieces, or adjustments/fine tuning of the production line during the manufacturing, any one or several in combination possibly leading to some of the units having the problem and others note (i.e. these could be what is referred to as "Monday units" whereas others even from the same plant could be without problems).
Again, the article is good and it is certainly conceivable that all of the initial million had this problem. However, the evidence in the article does not imho justify such a strong statement/conclusion.
Dear Nokia,
I'd be more inclined to believe your "these things happen" justification if I hadn't heard today's news that all NAM 5800s are being recalled for having faulty 3G reception. What's the probability of lightning striking twice? The truth is that QA, at least for the 5800, is non-existent. You rushed this phone to the market without having properly tested it.
From what i've seen, Nokia doesn't seem to have anywhere near the business interest it should in North America (aka "NAM". Yes, i know. An ironic term!). A huge market, if they treated it seriously. Hardly any presence in NAM, and now they attempt their first real foray into the high street smartphone arena, they hose it up royally.
Not good.
Yes the 100% conclusion is a bit misleading. It may be that 100% have the potential to go wrong.... but it will only happen if the correct set of circumstances are met.
In other words I think only a subset will go wrong / show the defect.
I've had 2 5800's and both are fine even. One after 4+ months and the other after 5 weeks.
UKJeeper wrote:From what i've seen, Nokia doesn't seem to have anywhere near the business interest it should in North America (aka "NAM". Yes, i know. An ironic term!). A huge market, if they treated it seriously. Hardly any presence in NAM, and now they attempt their first real foray, they hose it up royally. Not good.
rvirga wrote:Dear Nokia,
I'd be more inclined to believe your "these things happen" justification if I hadn't heard today's news that all NAM 5800s are being recalled for having faulty 3G reception. What's the probability of lightning striking twice? The truth is that QA, at least for the 5800, is non-existent. You rushed this phone to the market without having properly tested it.
I'll be trying to get some more information on this. The one thing I would say is there isn;t an accurate picture on what happened yet. The reports of what is working and what is not have been mixed. Given we're talking about two stores it seems to have been blown out of all proportion in my opinion.
And NAM isn't a huge market numerically, though it has clear importance in terms of Internet mind share.
Now first let�s get this clear I love nokia as long I can remember, being a teen watching James bond movies saying wow look at that phone.
Fast ward 2007 i-phone i-phone? Yes i-phone some people stay no mms small cam copy and paste blah blah Nokia have been making phones for how long? and one would think a company doing something for so long would be riding the thumb over rule by now really apple has one phone that stands out like a red flag on the green, some might say well I have the n95 or the n95 8gb or the n96 wait go back n85 now go forward n86 is it me or Nokia just can�t get anything right sure sales are in the millions but for how long the reason the sales are so hi because Nokia made good products now everyone are making good products you would think this would be the time to get back into the James bond thing, with the re-call of the 5800 in the US I lost my fate in Nokia this is a problem that should of happened to apple still wet behind the ears I know a lot of you disagree with me but if you look pass the N-word and you can see clearly Nokia is loosing it�s ground or maybe cause I live in the US I don�t see what the rest of the world see, I own a n95 8gb and I have the n85 and I hate the N85 so much I can cry why is Nokia still making Phones like this i understand the n95 was a big seller but how much can you make the same phone over? just writing about this is making me mad I had to send off my 5800 and you would think the flag ship store would give you a new phone after 32hrs but when you have a store full with broke phones for sale you can�t just exchange so Nokia kill yourself or stay away from the USA
Well, my 5800 is small and compact, inexpensive, available on any network and seriously effective as a useful phone. These are the things that are important to me and these are the things that stop me from buying other so called premium devices. Well done Nokia, millions sold and this is just the start, they will build on this. I think Nokia offer a variety of different devices and don't have their focus on a single one and therefore will have something for most people in most markets.
This, in my opinion, is a better business model than an eggs in one basket solution.
Given we're talking about two stores it seems to have been blown out of all proportion in my opinion.
Two stores may not seem a big deal, until you look at the context. The context being that, prior to the recall, the only places where you could buy a 5800 NAM were those two stores 😊.