Earlier today I noticed that my week-old Nokia Lumia 800 was switched off. I hadn’t charged it overnight and it had quite possibly run out of power, so I plugged it into the mains charger.
An hour later, it was still dead, and refusing to turn on.
First I panicked. Then I swore. Then I went to Google and found a Nokia support discussion forum post that advised pressing the volume down, power and camera buttons together to reset the phone… I guess that’s the ctrl-alt-del or sleep/wake-home of the Windows Phone world and it seemed to do the trick (at the time I had the phone connected to a PC).
Even though it showed a battery dead display (picture of a battery with a small amount of red inside it) when it turned on, it seems that the phone hadn’t completely run out of juice (or, if it had, then it was charging when it was plugged into the mains charger but needed a reset to take it out of a deep sleep) as it was at 70% when I disconnected it 10-15 minutes later.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this but hopefully it’s not a sign of impending battery issues.
[Update 31 January 2012: Be careful – volume down, power and camera is a hard reset and can result in lost data. Today, despite charging overnight, all night, and being fine when I went to bed, the Lumia was dead this morning. I used a soft reset instead (both volume buttons and power) to bring it back to life. There are more details, and diagrams, in this post at UK Mobile Review].
Just experienced the same issue with my Lumia (after finishing a call with the battery 51% charged). Luckily I had read and remembered your post last week and knew the key combination for a reset. Thanks, Mark!
Glad it helped you. Seems to be a common issue – suspect it’s related to last week’s firmware update…
You just saved me a trip to the phone shop (and the loss of my photos which I hadn’t backed up yet) – thanks :)
in case anyone’s interested:
OS Version 7.10.7740.16
Firmware revision: 1600.2479.7740.11451
Hardware revision: 112.1402.2.3
radio software: 1.6.00.24
radio hardware: 8255
bootloader: 7.35.0.0
chip SOC: 0.74.2.1
I have had the same problem but the above combo is not working !
Just had this problem today and your ‘reset’ action has worked, thanks!
Perfect thank you. My nokia lumia 800 shut down for some reason today. This got it back up and running and didnt even erase any data. Had all my contacts, emails, music and photos there when it turned on.
Thank you Mark. I was panicking too when this happened to my phone just 15 minutes ago. It died all of a sudden in the midst of playing music. Boy, I was relived when I tried your trick to turn it back on! This has to be reported to Nokia and they need to fix it quick before losing all of us hardcore fans.
ive just had the same problem, battery was a bit low, i received a call then the phone died. like everyone else i panicked. then googled the problem and found this page. i done the reset and the phone buzzed but still didnt turn on. i tried it a few times but nothing. i then held down the volume buttons on there own and the phone started. relief. im going to keep an eye on this as i only got my phone yesterday. but the bottom line is, do the reset, then hold down the volume buttons on there own together, or one at a time.
It happpend to me yesterday, seems this mobile phone sucks. Too many people having this issue…my lumia 800 was on the table with a 70% of battery still in..suddeny it started to switch on and off by it self, i was just watching cause i didn’t knw what the hell…and suddenly i decided to switch it off in case of any troubles. It said goodbye but after a minute was on again!! than i shit down again and from that moment it never turn on again, with all the tries i’ve read in websites…combinations buttons, original charger, warm it up etc……it’s Dead!
Marco – a bit harsh to say the phone sucks because of this. Annoying, yes, but at least there is a way around it. And my iPhone has been known to crash on my mid-call before… that’s pretty poor for a phone too! Seems that smartphones are less reliable than dumb phones because they have so much code in them. Software is rarely perfect. Mind you, it would be good to see Nokia do something about this (and the “call ending” bug) soon.