Sorting out an endless reboot cycle after rogue application install
Troubleshooting, Miscellaneous Series 60Q. I'd been trying out trial versions of some utilities on my new Nokia S60 smartphone and after installing the last one, suddenly the smartphone rebooted itself. Or rather it tried to. Now when I power it on, all I get is the work 'Nokia' in big letters and then it starts again, over and over. I realise that the problem is self-inflicted here and it serves me right for fiddling too much, but what can I do to get my smartphone back to factory defaults and start syncing my data back onto it?
A. All Series 60 version 2 smartphones (from the Nokia 6600 onwards) have a special 'reformat' function built into their ROM, but you have to know exactly how to activate it and need to be fairly dexterous. Hold down the following three buttons: Green (call answer), '*' and '3'. While continuing to hold these buttons, press the power button and switch on the phone. Keep holding the three buttons down, counting to ten slowly and then release them. The device will restart again within a few seconds, and when it comes back up it should present the same location/time/date dialogs as when you first got it. All your data on the internal disk will be gone, but then so also will the rogue files and applications. Restore from your last good backup or re-sync with Outlook as necessary.