I’ve just experienced one of the most disturbing days before the Holy Week this year. I woke up finding out that my phone (Nokia 5800), the one that’s with me for years now was not booting up. There were no vibrations, no lights and no sounds even when I connected it to the charger. I was shocked really because it was only a couple of hours before I slept before I turned it off and it was working perfectly fine. So I decided to use another phone of mine and went to the cellphone shops to have it checked.

At the first cellphone shop I went, I found out that my phone booted up when a new battery was placed on it. But sad to say, it was just a “class A” battery. I went to other shops looking for an original battery, but I think the world is against me because with all the shops that I’ve gone through there was no original battery for my phone that is being sold. So, I just decided to buy a class A battery from the shop I’ve visited. I was happy knowing that my phone is “ok” because of the new batt. When the phone warned that the battery needs to be charged, I charged the battery with my phone “on.”

Since it was supposed to be the first time of the new battery to be charged, I was told that it needed four hours for its initial charging. But since I’ve got to go somewhere I was not able to charge it for four hours, I stopped the charging of the batt. I think it was not charged for more than 2 hours. Then I put it in my bag the usual way I do it even I noticed it that the phone was kinda warm. I really didn’t mind it thinking that it was because of the charging.

I was in an event sitting when I decided to check on my  nokia 5800 phone then when I grab for it, the phone is more than warm–it’s so hot. So what I did was to remove the battery from the phone, then literally forget about my phone’s dilemma. When I went home and after a couple of hours being rested, I checked on my phone and the battery. I noticed that the new battery I bought was elevated in the middle. It was like bloated. The back cover of my phone cannot be used if the batt was placed on my phone.

I went to the shop the next day to tell that there’s something wrong with the battery I bought because it heated up and get bloated. The technician of the shop checked my phone and he said that the problem was with my phone because of the “short circuit” something with the ends on where the battery is  being placed on my phone. But sadly, they don’t do repairs with this kind of problem and told me to the go to the Nokia Center on the mall. Even they said that the problem was with my phone, they still replaced and gave me a new battery but whether it will function or gets bloated they will not changed it anymore because the problem was with not with the battery but with my phone.

So I went to the Nokia Care but found out that it was the day that their technician was out and he’ll be back the next day. How lucky can I be? When it rains, it really pours—by buckets. And since my phone  was not anymore under any warranty, then I have to shell out a few bucks (maybe more) for my phone’s repair. Then I went to meet my friends but after a couple of hours before going home, I went to another cellphone shop and have my phone checked. The technician confirmed again that the prob was the short circuit thingy and they don’t do repairs too and advised me again to have it check at the Nokia Care.

The next day I went to Nokia Care. However, it was only during my lunch time that I can leave and have the phone check. When I went to Nokia Care, the technician said that it was lunch time and told me to just go back after an hour or so. But since I got somewhere else to go that was so important, I just decided to ask for the technician’s advice and luckily he spared me some of his time :D. He said, that their center only repair level 1 and level 2 problems and since my phone’s problem was not within their experience, he said that it needs to be shipped out to their main center. Huh. I was sad and decided to think about having it repaired to them.

I went home and decided to charge again my phone, but it really gets hot after a couple of minutes. Even if I do not charged it and just put my phone on standby after turning it “on,” my phone still gets more than warm bordering to be “hot” so I just turned it off then remove the battery. The next day, I decided to open my phone, disassemble it. I searched on the Internet on how to disassemble it. I can only remove the back covers and the screws and the blue plastic on my xpressmusic. After a couple of minutes, I decided not go with my disassembling ways 😀 then put back the parts I’ve removed. I just put a swab of q-tip with alcohol on the contact points of the battery on my phone and then I charged it, but it still gets hot.

The next day, I decided to reformat and reset my phone. I removed the memory card because I don’t want it to be reformatted. I did the soft reset and hard reset a couple of times. I did the back-up of my phone to my memory card using the phone’ feature. Then after resetting it, I tried restoring my back-up to my phone’s memory but it was only the contacts, calendar and messages were restored but the settings and the files were not. I don’t know why. After a lot of tries, I decided that I will just install again those apps and settings that can’t be restored.

It was sort of miracle, really! 😀 When I charged my phone, it didn’t became too hot just the usual warm temperature when I do the charging before. So that there will be more phone memory, I did not install some apps on my phone’s memory but instead installed it on my memory card. Two days passed, (and I’m still crossing my fingers) my phone is not heating up after a couple of minutes when I turned it on and even when I charge it :D. But the lifespan of my new battery does not last long for 3-4 hours when I used it for html files unlike before.

With this recent experimentation that I did, I’m not sure if it’s really a board problem (since my phone is not heating up up to this moment), or a battery problem, or apps that I’ve installed, or the 8gb memory card I used and the files on it or my constant continuous usage of my phone for 3-4 hours reading html/word files on it and sometimes using it while it is being charged. Right now, I just don’t know what’s really the problem of my phone. Nevertheless, I’m happy to say that my phone is not heating up and was able to use it again.

I guess, what I can tell you, if you are having problems with your battery/phone heating up, you can follow what I’ve done. Who knows it will work for your phone.

1.  Clean the contact points of the battery and the phone.
2. Try to remove the battery from the phone for hours without putting it again–24 hours maybe will be better ;D.
3. Reset (soft and hard), do some reformatting of your phone and memory card (if you want to). You can do this using the “restore to factory settings” on your phone.
4. Try to not put more apps on your phone to have more memory ( I did not install some apps like OVI maps, and those new plugins and new services provided by Nokia on their software update).
5. I turned the 3G off and just used the GSM network as my signal (since I just use wifi more, I don’t use 3G anymore because it uses more battery energy when you use 3G network on standby).
6. Buy an original Nokia battery and do not overcharge.
7. Do not abuse your phone like what I’ve done 😀 (like using it for more than 3 hours—continuously tapping, scrolling on your screen for hours non-stop).
8. If you are not using the phone, remove the battery when you will sleep  (I do this now since I’m still on an experimental stage, I don’t want to wake up with my phone in heat 😀 and it might just explode while I’m sleeping even though it is just on standby mode).
9. If this steps do not work, then let Nokia Care do the repair.

Hope that this experience of mine have helped you. I have been a Nokia user. I’ve used a lot of Nokia phones, Philips, Alcatel and Sony Ericsson. The only Apple I have is my Ipod :D. Maybe, I’ll try using an android phone soon.