I knew it was an issue, but did not want to void the warranty I had by pre-emptively doing any soldering. It was on my 'to do list' for a bit too long after the warranty ran out. Since it happened though, I've been trying to find an 'upgrade' (it's been 2 years after all, so I thought there must be much better tech now) and all I've been able to come up with is the N950. Incredible that something released 3 years ago has features other phones still can't match (not to mention an OS that you're not a prisoner of).

Well, honestly, as proud N950 owner, I can assure You, that N900 still does circles around it, when it comes to functionality

/Estel

Estel - the system just let me PM at last, so please check your messages. But I'm surprised you're skeptical about the n950. I thought it was the holy grail of Maemo and that people were willing to exchange their first born son for one? What features do you not like about it (compared to N900)?

It would be definitely off-topic here, not to mention reason for a flamewar Generally, it was covered in other topics around - aegis, trusted zone computing, harmattan (as operating system), smartphone instead of mobile computer, are key words, why it's both pleasant and depressing device, at the same time.

/Estel

Sorry for the off topic - and I had no idea these things were subject to flame wars. I just see 950's on ebay for 2000 Euros and so assumed they must be more than just simple n9's with qwerty for that sort of financial devotion... But I'm with you on the mini-pc vs smartphone thing.

Mine just came with the charger plug... thanks for this, will try to fix it (without screwing it up even more,hopefully)

I would like to thank dr_frost_dk for fixing usb ports of my two n900 before they get broken.

My N900 has its usb port broken - twice. I'm willing to have it fixed again, mostly for using usb drives to connect to. If I decide to try and fix it myself, can someone pm me with the necessary equipment I should have? Such as the size of the soldering iron tip needed

Thanks for all the links and pictures they really helped.

My Backup N900 uUSB started to play up, intermittently charging and bringing up mass storage mode on disconnecting charger.
All went straight forward and the heat from reinforcing the connector has fixed the problem.

I actually found it took me longer to re-assemble the device than repairing the connector.

A few helpful things from my experience:-

Disassembling the screen makes a horrible sound as mentioned many times, don't worry about it (it was a bit worrying even though I expected it).

I find a thin guitar pick useful for separating plastic parts, like the keyboard bezel.

A scalpel is useful for scraping the green from the PCB.

Keep your soldering as tidy as possible, keeping in mind the PCB as to fit back in that small gap.
If your solder "blobs" are too big they will foul the casing on re-assembly.
I carefully removed excess solder with a scalpel and trimmed a tiny piece of the plastic casing to make sure the PCB sat back flush again.

When re-assembling make sure you re-connect the ribbon cable to the screen then hook the slider tray in (took me a couple of goes to work out why the slider wasn't flush).

...with connecting back ribbon cable, being the hardest part, yep? Even after disassembling and assembling dozens of devices, many times it still doesn't fit on first try.

Good work!