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What to do when your Nokia Lumia 800 will not turn on?

129 Comments

Nokia Lumia 800: delightful smartphone but with a few irritations. If you have one, I recommend that you do not let the battery fully discharge – a challenge since the battery life is not the greatest – since if you do, you may have problems turning the phone on again.

I am not sure what proportion of Lumias are affected, but what happens is this. The battery runs out and the phone turns itself off as you would expect. You plug it into the charger, but even after several hours it appears to remain uncharged and will not turn on. The problem is discussed in this thread: Lumia 800 won’t power on or charge.

This has happened with my review Lumia. In my case, the phone vibrated when plugged into the charger and the charging screen appeared, with a red line showing an empty battery, and there it stayed.

So what is the fix? I have had the problem a couple of times, and each time it eventually fixed itself, though it is hard to pinpoint the exact fix. Things people have tried:

  • Unplugging and reconnecting the charger to the phone
  • Attaching the phone to a PC, then to a charger
  • Reset the charging cycle by holding down the power button, while charging, for 8 seconds or so
  • Warming the device to create a small charge in the battery, then starting to charge it

One theory is the battery discharges so deeply that there is not enough power to detect the charger, therefore it never charges. Kind-of too smart for its own good.

If the phone had a removable battery, I would suggest removing and replacing it, an old trick to revive a frozen phone. Should your Lumia not be covered by a warranty, you could try disassembly in order to do this.

The best hope is that a further firmware update will fix the problem.

129 thoughts on “What to do when your Nokia Lumia 800 will not turn on?”

  2. Mine has not turned on for almost two weeks now..tried allllll the tricks and nothing works 🙁
    Have the phone almost 7mths now sigh

  4. Mine is dead too, and I believe it will stay dead.

    Sometimes I do get display – but NOT when it’s warm – no, when it’s cold. When I put it in the fridge for a while it will start well. When after it’s getting the screen will go black again.

    With that cooling method I managed to backup, and update to the very latest firmware in the hope that everything is greener with that. If you have that hope, then sadly, even with the latest firmware I get the same trouble.

  5. What worked for me is that I left it in the charge for a couple of hours then when I held the power button for 10 seconds (while not plugged in) then it worked. Good luck, I wont buy Nokia anymore, I am ok with it so far but this is my last nokia 😉

  6. Nokia lumia 800

    Worst phone I ever bought!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have always been a avid Nokia fan since cell phones were introduced in South Africa. I have alwayes upgraded from Nokia to Nokia phones, and never ever considered another phone, not even when the Black Berry craze hit. But this will be be my last Nokia for sure.

    1. Phone doest want to switch on after charging for hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    2. Screen dies as soon as you make a call!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    3. Had the phone at two vodafone shops……still not working

    This is just a piece of crap really.

  7. Had to heat phone on fire and charge at the same time. eventually booted up but still it took numerous times disconnecting phone and plugging back in again before it started.

  8. How amazing. All of us with similar problems with our Lumia devices, and Nokia is simply not there monitoring the channels. Sure, it is expensive to act, but definitely the badwill we all create around this mess with “dead devices” will lead to extinction of their mobile division, in the end. Our negative messages about the phone definitely becomes exponential, an unstoppable force, so keep on posting.

    I’ve got one dead 700 and now also a dead 800. I’ve tried everything. My path is to post 100 negative messages about Lumia devices. During 2013, tell at least 300 people about that one should never buy a Nokia device. That will hurt a LOT more than replacing my 800, but I have no hope.

    1. Apparently it is policy not to comment on non-Nokia sites. Had a conversation on Twitter about this.

      The official advice is to get a Nokia engineer to work on it.

      Tim

  9. I have the same problem and Nokia Care Center told me that I have to change the machine and it’ll cost 80% of my phone’s price. I’ve tried the Blackberry charger, Samsung charger but it just didn’t work. This happened after I updated to Windows 7.8

  10. I am very disappointed in LUMIA 800, bye NOKIA you should come up with a solution before you loose more customers, this is my last nokia

  11. Hi,

    Just had this problem on a Nokia 5530 MusicExpress: Coming back to it after normal recharging, the phone had ‘died’ and then wouldn’t turn on…
    Bought a new battery – the old one was holding charge for only 5 days or so and I thought it might be the problem – but still no joy…
    So did the “holding down the power on button while attached to the charger”… little buzzes every 5 seconds or so, but nothing major until about 20 seconds… then it came back to life albeit very groggily… it had lost track of date and time, but all other functions appear normal.
    NEAT TRICK!
    It is currently apparently normal and showing the charging animation… will check back again in a couple of hours…
    This is my second 5530 in 3 years – the current one is a replacement for one that developed a serious speaker problem about 2 years back.
    4 hours later, the phone has recovered it’s diary/events and seems to be running fine…
    Watch this space….
    CK

  12. my luma 800 has been dead for 4 hours now.. get it tuned on i thought but only coming up nokia and staying like this..help tips?

  13. Im happy to see that im not the only one with this stupid F&*king problem. I bought my 800 approximately a year back.. First 6 months were a breeze, what a phone! awesome features but poor battery life. I bragged about it to everyone that used an android or iphone. My battery died 2 days ago and have tried charging it with multiple chargers to no avail. Vibrates with no result. Hooked it up to the pc and it detected as a device for like 5 seconds after which it went dead again. Iv tried various chargers, blackberry, samsung etc. No display yet. Iv been reading the forums all morning and have tried the various button combinations to reset the phone but no success so far. Im this close to taking a sledgehammer to it but i need my contacts and pictures. Someone suggested heating the phone up so i kept it out in the sun hooked up via an extension cable but sleeping beauty wont wake.

  14. my phone ran out of charge and so i put it on charge, it wouldn’t turn on, so my dad had a go sorting it, as i was trying to dig out the warranty, my dad was fiddling with my phone and found that if you take the cable out of the phone, hold down the on button and then plugged it back it whilst holding down the on button will turn the phone on, this worked with mine, i hope it will work for yours(;

  15. My phone died 2 days ago and would not turn on after many attempts with all that was suggested. It only vibrates but still not coming on. I need my contacts is there anyway i could get this?

  16. Yesterday my Lumia 800 just turned off and that’s it. RIP Nokia. I was the customer for the last 15 years – no more.

  18. My Nokia Lumia is not working from yesterday..i have tried everything..Anyone..pls help?

  19. Since last 2 days my lumia 720 is dead.
    1) Wall charger is not at all working.
    2) It started when I connect it with laptop but it goes from “nokia” to low battery red icon and again get turned off.
    Issue is battery is not getting enough of charge to boot up completely, please suggest me how to boost the battery.

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