Nokia Repair, well that was quite decent. Confirmed failure after warranty?

Collected my phone yesterday at the Wheelock Nokia service center. The service was rather good on my personal opinion, besides the long string of complaints and comments the service center is notorious for. I mean, come to think about it, dealing with customers at the service is not an easy job, having to put up with downtime for the customers who area already fuming mad about their phones, only to put up with long waiting queues and slow service just makes it worst, well that’s what most people say of it. So in the benefit of the doubt to only people who are only good at complaining, here is a commendation for you Nokia.

I sent my phone in last Friday after it’s screen went blank after taking it out for an evening jog. Nothing fancy, just using it for the plain usual music. Same as what I did for my marathons and half-marathons, only that the screen was like not powered/no data went I took it out to make a call thereafter.

Having said that, my phone is almost about a year old already, so I wonder the warranty was still on. So I have to call them. My only gripe was trying to contact them with regards to warranty issues before dropping down. Apparently, based on their web contact they had their fax and phone lines switched- Calling their fixed line gave the fax buzz, while calling their fax line resulted in a ring tone but with no answer even after 5 consecutive calls. I went to search for more updated contact info on the web only to be bombard by complaints and dissatisfaction you get from the Nokia “Care-less” center, turns out Google is not a good place to get info on Nokia repairs.

So I went down to Wheelock anyway. My N95 8GB warranty without any warranty card is set to expire next October month by using the launch date as a reference. I was tended to on a weekday evening and sent my phone in in 10 minutes after getting my number. Collection was fast too, within 1 1/2 days I got a call that my phone is ready for collection. Collection was slower, as about an 18 minutes wait, but it was still bearable though. The counter and service staff were friendly and courteous, despite having to put up with so many customers for the day. They said they changed the screen and make my phone slider tighter, making it more firm now.

I think if I were to use my phone as a phone, it will bound to fail right after the 1 year warranty period, it’s like there is a time bomb in there waiting to go off. I think just like how IKEA stress test furniture for premature failure, bringing your phone for a jog/run accelerates the impending failure of your phone, just as how manufacturers rate failure rate and the corresponding warranty period. So I guess it was a blessing in disguise to get it repaired now so it can last till it’s next possible service.

Now to reinstall all my S60 3rd ed programs, it’s quite a pain to get anything installed on a Symbian phone now, maybe I might switch back to Windows mobile for my next phone.