[Mike_Myers_N8]

If all goes as planned, I should be there in early September, and will be returning to the USA in February.

[faiz_khan]

very true nokia has become nothing when compared to other brands they are far ahead from nokia i regret i shifted to nokia from android

[faiz_khan]

what support nokia sending updates which get installed in c memory u cant avail flash player music player in belle have eqalizer but u cant set manually beside little of interface nokia give nothing good atleast increase clock speed do somthing about processer n plz make few mor good hd games

[lollyking21]

I swear this is the last nokia phone i'll ever use, i'll get an android phone and dump this n8 asap. The nokia company is totally lost and off the charts.

[Mike_Myers_N8]

Actually, the N8 was/is an excellent phone - maybe one of the best phone designs ever. They guys who developed it must be cringing at what Nokia has done to it since they left or got fired or whatever....

It's all very sad - and the people who took over Nokia did it all deliberately. From my point of view, they not only destroyed my own phone, they destroyed the company - in a few years, there may no longer be a Nokia, and if there is, it might become a part of Microsoft. ....my prediction.

[Evertvz]

About a month ago, I downloaded the Nokia Belle software for the phone and installed it. The first few days it worked fine, but then the phone started to freeze a couple of times (4-5times in a week) and was very slow in response. While ending a call, my phone freezed again and shut down completely (with my battery power more than 50% remaining). I left it for a couple of hours on the afternoon and tried to restart the phone, as per discussion on Nokia’s forums. I tried three different methods with no luck. I also tried to charge the phone, but there was no indication that the handset was charging.

I took my phone in for fault determination at Nokia Care Centre in South Africa (Woodmead), seeing that Nokia have a 2-year warranty on the phone. I was surprised by a quote to get the phone fixed, only ±R750 to replace the battery apparently.

I would like to know, if possible, if Nokia can explain the sudden problems with a battery, seeing that the phone’s battery lasted for at least 5-6 days before charging it again and that there were no signs that the battery endurance deteriorated in a short timeframe. I asked the Nokia Care Woodmead representative if the battery was about to crash or fail, would there be deteriorations over time and he did acknowledge this.

I have read a lot of other instances (on the Nokia discussion threads) where Nokia customers have experienced similar instances with the Nokia N8’s freezing and dying without any proper cause. Is there anything that I am able to do to get my phoned fixed as this is the first time in 14 years that I experienced any issues like this with any Nokia handset. I have had numerous Nokia handsets (from the Nokia 5110 to the E71) where I never had any battery / power problems. My phone is also in an exceptional condition without any "wear and tear".

What am I suppose to do and what are the chances that the Nokia Belle software is the main reason behind the fault or that it is actually a fabrication fault as widely reported on the forums with the handsets being manufactured in Malaysia and China.

[Mike_Myers_N8]

I don't remember reading anything about faulty batteries, but since you say this happened with the battery half full, the battery doesn't sound like the problem.

On an ordinary phone, I'd have said to remove the battery, count to 30, replace the battery, and re-start the phone. Since the N8 doesn't permit this, you have to press the power button and hold it, until the phone vibrates three times, after which it will restart as if you had removed and replaced the battery.

That might have corrected the problem of the phone not seeming to charge after you connected the charger.

If the phone was working fine before you installed Belle, and that's when your problems started (after a few days), then it's reasonable to assume that Belle might be the cause of the trouble.

As for what to do, I don't really have any suggestions. In my case, I finally gave up and switched, first to an iphone, and when I didn't like that, to a Google Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Unless Nokia has figured out how to allow users to remove Belle and go back to Anna, I don't really have any useful suggestions - but a "factory reset" might help.

[saradhi]

I have upgrade my N8 with belle refresh, initially even i faced similar problems. After reinstallation of belle refresh, it absolutely perfect and smoother then past. the minor appearence updates are really good. just try it

[livewire]

n8 belle, cant edit picts and videos, buy apps that shouldve been part of the OS, home screens widgets suck, no font and icon manager, phone freezes and restarts, phone security issues, cant lock specific parts (contact nd messages only) drop down menu cant manage media player through that(next track, pause, stop) without going to the media player. I hate my n8 and what nokia has done to it, i paid R5200,00 for this phone, most not so smart phones can manage what my n8 cant do, this sux, bout to sell this thing and maybe get me a blackberry or iphone, frustrated. Mothusi maine

[deepaknaidu]

hi..
I hav done all this things but still im unable to edit pic or change a wallpaper,pls tell m how to resolve this issue,

Moderator's note: Personal information are not allowed on this Forum. (email address removed)

[adrianhughes]

hi mate,

have you checked via Nokia Suite on yoru PC if there are any firmware updates available for your device? if there are any, please update to the latest version offered. failing that, you can try re-installing your current firmware thru Nokia Suite on PC. if that doesn't work either, then you can try performing a three-finger hard reset, but bear in mind that this reset wipes all personal data, so please make a backup to PC and/or online storage first.

Failing the above, you will need to take your phone to Nokia Care for inspection: http://nokia.com/support

[Mike_Myers_N8]

Hi everyone - forgot all about this discussion 'till I got a reminder in the email. 

I still have my two N8 phones, one Anna, and one Belle.  Most of the time I use my Samsung Galaxy Nexus, but the N8 is still a useful tool when traveling in India, thanks to Nokia Maps with the local (Tamil) voice navigation.  I very much still enjoy the phone itself, but have long since given up on Belle.

For the Belle phone, I've deleted almost everything, leaving just two home screens with the basic things I find useful for traveling.  Everything else is gone.  I know there's one new update that is now available, but I don't dare try to install it - for all my confidence in Nokia right now, I'd probably end up with a dead phone.  The only way I might try to do that, is to go to a Nokia service center next Septerrmber when I return to India, and let them do it - if the phone bombs on them, they'll have to get it fixed.  (I just got back from India two days ago....)

I got to help a friend with the Lumia I recommended to him half a year back - he's not too pleased with me for my reommendation.  Everything we tried to do, ran into a road block.  I couldn't even copy his contacts over to his PC (and only recently learned that Microsoft won'tallow this). 

No phone is perfect, but it seems to me that Nokia is trying as hard as they can to self destruct.  It's a shame, as the N8 was a truly great phone (along with the N95 and so many other wonderful phones they made.....

I had my N8 "sold" for $200 in India, but I chickened out, as I really didn't want to get rid of it.  As much as I dislike the problems I'm having with it, it's still a great travel companion in India.  The guy who was going to buy it only wanted to spend $150 or so, but with me not really anxious to sell it, he found that I had no desire to bargain (and probably would have been upset with my self had I gone ahead and collected the $200 for it as we sort of had agreed on, or so I thought).

I'm not sure what to tell people nowadays about their N8.  The final N8 update is available OTA, but as I said, I'm worried about killing the phone.  Maybe someone here can advise me on how likely this is (or isn't). 

In my world, the iphone is nice, but Apple's control of the durn thing is anything but nice, all of which makes the N8 a better phone (at least for me).  On the other hand, Android phones are so diverse, that a phone like the Nexus (running pure Android) is exactly what I've always wanted, even if I didn't know it at the time.  It certainly helps that there is such a wonderful collection of Apps available now (and if you buy them, rather than getting the free versions, you don't get all the advertising garbage I refuse to deal with).

[ArminG]

Sorry for necro'in this old post, but I noticed this:

I couldn't even copy his contacts over to his PC (and only recently learned that Microsoft won'tallow this

When I moved from N8 Anna (as I also was smart enough not to update to Belle) to a Windows Phone, I had a lot of issues getting my contacts transferred as well, but that turned out to me mostly an user-error not a Microsoft or Nokia issue.

There are three ways to go from Symbian3 to Windows Phone:

1) If you are using a Nokia Windows Phone 8, the Nokia Bluetooth transfer tool on the Lumia. It works perfectly in transfering contacts from Symbian3 to Windows Phone. No need to store on PC. (And if you are using a non-Nokia, the regular Bluetooth OBEX transfer also works, though contact by contact is of course slow.)

2) If you do need to store them on PC, you can use outlook. The issue here is not but the Nokia Suite of the Symbian3 phones refusing to work peroperly with some Outlook installations. But after some time I did managed to export them to my local Outlook contact database. From there you can do anything, including exporting to any other format you want or directly syncing to the Live account of your Windows Phone using the Outlook connector..

3) You can also export - using again the Nokia Suite - to some other tools on the PC. There you can export to CSV and on persons.live.com (and when using the new Outlook.com interface also regular mail login using the People Hub) you can import a CSV file. This latter option is great if you are using older tools like the Outlook Express, or non-Microsoft tools.

And if you ever want to export the contacts from the cloud the reverse is of course also possible:

I) Sync to Outlook through the Outlook Connector.

II) Export from persons.live.com to a CSV file.

III) Sync to Live Essentials on the PC.

IV) Usage of 3rd party tools that allow cloudless synchronisation with Outlook.

etc etc.

[Mike_Myers_N8]

I think we aren't talking about the same thing. All the contacts right now are on his Windows phone. I want to get them off the Windows phone and onto his computer.

I would be perfectly happy if we could simply get them copied over to www.phonecopy.com which would then let us do whatever we want with them.

Also, his new PC is now his normal PC - but Microsoft still thinks it's a "guest PC".

No wonder people like Android so much - it leaves the USER in charge of things, not somebody's company policy as to what people should or should not be allowed to do. Nokia makes great hardware - maybe they too will eventually create an Android device, including their camera expertise.

[ArminG]

I'm sorry, in the past I'd agree with you but in this case - with all respect - it seems you just seem to lack some knowledge on the platform. I know you became frustrated with Nokia, and moved to Android and based on your preferences that may be the best option, but you seem to underestimate the capabilities of Windows Phone here.

First, how can the contacts be just on the phone? Normally you'd sign in with a Live ID / Microsoft account once, and that means the contacts are automatically synced with the cloud. And if you are paranoid, like I would be, just do a sync once explicitly and it is backed up in seconds. From there you can sync with lots of other tools - both Microsoft and 3d party. Or you just save directly all contacts to a CSV file. But if the main purpose is a backup, it is already safely backed up automatically.

And if you truely want to do without the cloud, there is a 3rd party tools for that as well, as discussed on the Windows Phone part of the Nokia foru a few times..

More generic however: why do you want them on the computer? Getting them on the computer is a means to something else. What is that means? I found another post, where you wanted to backup these contacts before upgrading. Well, if that is what you want, in that case you don't need to do anything because they are already in the cloud, and even if it goes terribly wrong, after restoring all contacts are resynced down. And since you have internet (else you'd not be able to upgrade) there should be no issue there as well.

And BTW also Zune backs them up before updating, just as Nokia Suite did a backup.

(And the quest partnership is a user-error as well. Sorry, but you can change that in the settings of Zune. It prevents your e.g. friends PC from automatically syncing and messing with your phone if all you wanted is share some files.)

[Mike_Myers_N8]

You are right; I don't know much about the platform. It's not my phone, and the owner of the phone has no idea how his ccontacts got there - he asked assistants at the hospital where he works to set it up for him, months ago, and he doesn't know any of the accounts or passwords, or anything else the software asked me for when I tried to help him.

He doesn't use the cloud. He couldn't care less about the cloud. He has no intention of dealing with the cloud. He just wants a backup copy of his contacts, so if he breaks or loses the phone, or switches to a different phone, he "has" all his stuff. He prefers (as I do) to have it all in a file on his PC.

You are correct - I wanted a backup of all his contacts before I did anything on/with/to his phone. He'd be quite upset at me if he had to type in all that information by hand.

I couldn't do anything. That's why I got frustrated. He can't do anything with his new computer because Windows thinks it's a "guest computer" if I remember.

I tried to back things up using www.phonecontacts.com which has worked with everything in the past, even an iphone. It gave an error message because it said, Windows won't allow it to copy the contacts.

If I remember correctly, when I found out I couldn't use Nokia Suite, I did download Zune. It didn't work, probably because of what I said about it thinking this was a "guest computer".


I'll stop complaining, as you seem to be the right person to ask for help. All I want to do is update his phone to the newest software, and I refuse to try to do anything until I have a copy of his contacts on his PC (or, as a backup safety measure, on www.phonecopy.com which is what I've gotten used to).

I won't be back there until September, so unless he gives away the phone and gets something that's easy for HIM to use, I will be trying this again in half a year. I told him that I would try to get a step by step set of instructions on how to get his phone to connect to his new laptop.

(The "cloud", and a Windows account, and all the rest are completely meaningless to him. He has all his email and work contacts on his Microsoft Exchange Account that he uses at work. Most people in India are aware that "the cloud" is not something you want to rely on when it's sometimes quite difficult to get any kind of connection. It's not like in the USA where all this stuff works so easiy.)


If you could please help me with two things, I would be very thankful. First, how to copy his phone contacts to www.phonecopy.com so they're all stored in a simple, easy to work with format/place. Once that is done, what to do on his new Windows 7 laptop and his Windows phone, so his phone will sync properly with that computer. Once that is all done, he's finished for now.)


(You're right about my own frustrations with this situation, and you are also right about this being due to ignorance about the platform. I had three hours do do all this, and did the best I could. It wasn't good enough. That's a lack of capability on my part - agreed. But there is no excuse for Microsoft/Nokia banning the phone from doing a phone sync with a program such as PhoneCopy.com.)

[Mike_Myers_N8]

This whole mess is my own fault. He had an iphone. He wanted something very simple, easier to use than the iphone. From what I had read, I told him to get the inexpensive new Windows phone. I knew at the time that he wanted nothing to do with the cloud, or fancy accounts, including one for Windows. It sounds silly to say it now, but he just wanted "a phone". It was supposed to have an adequate camera, and the ability to send SMS or email messages. He wouldn't have this phone but for my advice.

If I would have set it up for him, I'd have printed out all the accounts, passwords, etc., and I wouldn't be having these problems now. I wasn't there, and nobody remembers who did the phone setup, let alone the settings that were selected.

I now need to fix things for him, the simplest way possible. He knows NOTHING about any of this - he didn't even know why his photos were all out of focus (because he didn't know to wait for the camera to focus before pressing the button all the way).

[ArminG]

I see.

I get your point with PhoneCopy. However before getting to the help part: Microsoft actually allows 3rd party tools, but only when going through their APIs through the cloud. PhoneCopy probably does not do that.
I must say though, that I had been been using Nokia phones for way over 10 years before getting frustrated with their Symbian3 Anna/Belle support and service team in the US and move to a non-Nokia Windows Phone. But as much as I loved Nokia, each and every time I had pain when trying to backup or copy contacts. The old Nokia tools always would fail to work with new phones, and the new tools would not read the file format made with the old tools or work with the old phone. So I always had to use 3rd party services like PhoneCopy or buy PC apps. I even bought once a IRDA adapter to get contacts off.
 

My point being, I see services as PhoneCopy as a nessesairy evil, not a good. When I moved from my N8 to my Windows Phone I was delighted it worked out of the box.
 
So, as much as you may not want to hear this,  the best your friend can do is try and get his LiveID and password back.

If he manages to get that back, backing up contacts is a 30 second enterprise. Just log in oneline (either new Outlook.com interface or http://contacts.live.com/), and you can export (or import) to (from) a CSV file. If you are not going to be there for a few months anyway he may want to try that...
 
I use this export/import it all the time, as besides Windows Phone I also play around with many other tools and gadgets (including the Android Galaxy Nexus S you are using )

Now if this was a Windows Phone 8, you'd be able to use OBEX Bluetooth as well. That'd be frustrating as you'd have to select contacts one by one, but it would provide an backup alternative. However 7.5 does not have OBEX.

( BTW as much as I got frustrated with Nokia, they still make great design. And I still have a trusted E7 I want to replace. Hence I also took a look at the 920 last week, and found out that it has a bluetooth contact transfer towards the phone. That is a feature separate from OBEX, and the 710 should also have it.
In the past these would be always unstable and not work (tried it when moving from a N73 to N8 in 2010), but now it does work. The E7 (non Anna, due to Anna E7 bugs) and Lumia 920 worked flawless in transfer of agenda and contacts. I'm still not ready to replace the E7, but at least Nokia is regaining my trust ...

But of course you want to export, and this tool only imports ... )

As a last resort on 7.5 you can copy the contacts to email or SMS. There are some apps to help here, although it will involve labour.... On 8 this is not needed, as you can share as VCard already as buildin option.

On your other issue. The sync-relationship is a feature, so you can connect to a friends computer without being afraid it will start autosyncing his/her data onto your pc and visa versa. It will allow manual sync only in that mode.

You can change this in the settings. There is an option "change sync relationship" somewhere which will show a wizzard.

( Now there is one nasty bug in Zune, that some people hit. If one of the media library locations is invalid (non-accessible, removed, on USB stick, etc) you cannot change the sync relationship. If the wizzard fails, go into your settings->software->collection screen and make sure that all the paths in your libraries locations are valid/accessible. If not fix these and restart the Wizzard. )

Third when doing an upgrade, Zune will do a backup of your phone including the Live account, which then will resync contacts:

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp7/basics/restore-a-backup-to-my-phone

(But of course you propably rather have a backup beforehand too.)

Hope this helps.

[ArminG]

And to add to myself.

After you have solved your friends problem, so assuming we are back in a state with a working (new) live account, getting a PC and the Windows Phone to sync is easy.

There are multiple ways, but I use this for my parents:

- Install Live Essentials (free from Microsoft) on Windows 7 or 8 PC and have that sync to the same live ID as the phone

Of course if you just want to backup, I'd recommend just exporting a CSV and skip the whole PC install stuff, but if you also want to read the same mail, use the same contacts, etc on PC I'd use this.

Instead of Live Mail from Live Essentials, you can also use Outlook with the Outlook Connector (part of the same Live Essentials download), or if you have Windows 8/RT use the new build in email/persons/calendar apps.


Of course all goes through the cloud, but it is completely transparent. You don't notice it. Even with spotty connections (I travel a lot and roam half of the month), it will resync each time it gets the chance. E.g. when checking my email at a starbucks or business location, all is synced in seconds. So you just change on the phone, and it magically changes on the laptop as soon as it got to do a sync and visa versa.

I know you understand cloud concepts, but just to illustrate it also works for those - like my parents - it is truly a black box as well. They just bought a Surface RT and were - pleasantly - surprised that all their contacts were 'automatically' there, without the help of their son who was 5000 miles away

I know there are tons of features I still miss from my N8 that will likely not make it into Nokia Windows Phones for years to come, but contacts is one of those things I think are much better now.