Something went wrong today! My N900 was running fairly low on battery (but not to the point of complaining) and suddenly when I looked it it was off.

I had just been on a ride at a theme park. It didn't get wet at all and was acting completely normally until this point. But what worried me was that this particular ride is apparently accelerated by electromagnets -- could this have fried the phone? There were no warnings visible about taking electronics on board.

I tried to switch it on -- the LED did its black to white fade and then cut out and the phone vibrated for a moment as usual. But then I waited and nothing happened -- the screen stayed black and no other activity. After a while I tried to hold the power button again and this time it did its switch off dance -- white LED fading to black.

Held it again -- light faded in and then went out again. No activity... held the button again and the light fades out. I needed to use my phone so I did this a few times hoping it'd suddenly work but no dice. Eventually it wouldn't do anything any more. Oh, I guess it was just really low on battery, I thought.

Once I got home I plugged it in and left it alone for an hour or so. When I returned to it it was doing its orange fading in animation on the LED, showing it was charging. Holding the power button made the same thing as before happen. The screen still didn't light up. This time I noticed that if I pulled the hold lever the charging animation would appear again. Pulling it again would make the charging animation stop. This is the same behaviour as when the phone is actually on.

So was my screen just broken? I was at home and so when powered on the phone would usually connect to my home network. When it does that I can shell into it. Tried to shell into it and there was no response -- it hadn't connected to the network at all. I also tried to phone it from another phone and it goes straight to answerphone. Obviously it isn't properly switched on at all.

I left it alone to charge all the way and when I got back a while ago the LED is green -- it's fully charged. But I get the same behaviour as before. I can "switch it on", whereupon the green light turns out when I "unlock" it, then comes back on when I "lock" it again. When unlocked I can "switch it off" with the power button, whereupon the locking and unlocking behaviour disappears. When I do "switch it off", the switching off fade happens and then before the white LED disappears it makes a "bing" sound. The light goes out, then it vibrates a bit, then the charging animation or fully charged light reappears. Still nothing on the screen throughout.

Is my phone screwed? Is there anything I can try?

There's a little bit of stuff on there I'd rather not lose... memory card but obviously I can take that out, and then a little bit in /home/user -- everything in /home/user/MyDocs can go. Also some stuff in /etc I'd ideally keep but not the end of the world if it's gone.

Sorry about being rather wordy but I wanted to explain exactly how the phone is acting.

Please help!

Have you removed the battery yet?

Yes, I've tried leaving it out for a minute or so. No change. Or is there anything I should do /while/ it's out?

have you tried connecting it to your pc while it was "switched on"?

Not really.

And I truly doubt that the electro-magnets caused any problems; but you are seeing some rather odd behavior. I truly hate to say this, but have you connected your phone to your machine and thought about possibly reflashing and getting it all back from a backup?

If that's not an option, I hope some other smarter N900 owners can chime in and assist you further.

Best of luck.

Try to reflash it?

If that fails send it into nokia care.

well if i were you i whould leave the battery for more than 1 minute (just for sure) about 5 minutes

I had some really strange behavior from mine a while back, some the same some a little different, and finally the screen and phone became totally unresponsive. No one seemed to know what was wrong, I sent it into Nokia main repair and they just replaced it saying it was beyond repair and did it all under warranty. The turn around was really quick, never did find out what was wrong, it just stopped working over night as I slept.

Have you tried a TV out cable ? Here in the UK they weren't shipped with the phone for some reason, but they work as they do on an a S60 phone.

I'd try a reflash, if you have a complete backup it takes about ten minutes (depending what and how many applications you had installed).

Did you not get a tv out cable odd i got one and everyone else who i know who got the device got one too. On topic leaving the battery out for over 3 mins was recommended to me on other devices before now.