Nokia 6230 – buy the phone and loose your warranty

For Nokia the model Nokia 6230 will be the leader in the line-up till the end of this year. The review on the model tells about a quantity of small defects relating mainly to the software. Within the first month of shipments there were improved all flaws with the creaking panels, now they comply with the standard for this class. However Nokia 6230 turns out to have hardware problems, about which the company didn’t warn the consumers.

Many Nokia 6230 handsets that come to the Russian market have factory defects. One of the screens made of metal bears overheating traces, the white metal turned blue under the heat influence. Such effect is impossible during the assembly at the plant. This could happen if solder without the lead (the process involves high temperatures), but that’s hardly a good explanation, as other screens stay really white.

We’ve consulted with maintenance specialists. Unanimously they said that they hadn’t noticed such defects in this model, on the other hand not many models with mechanical defects were under repair. Specialist from one authorized service center recalled they had come across such flaw before. However they refused to give some official explanation saying that blue traces were typical for the non-professional solder outside the plant. This may happen if the model gets burned-out with a single flaw and then manually finished. In this case manufacturers often attach a respective sticker to the board.

All specialists from authorized service centers claimed these handsets couldn’t be a subject to the warranty repair without Nokia’s approval. Nokia 6230’ service manual depict the given element white, i.e. the factory technology doesn’t imply other colors. Thus there should be an official letter from Nokia to service centers stating that overheat traces could appear at the plant. Those lucky users of Nokia 6230 might face the situation: when a problem happens that need the handset to be dismantled, users risk greatly loosing the official warranty.

We’ve carried out a small investigation highlighting the problem. The handset depicted on the photo was made in the late April and has no entries on repairs in the service lists. Naturally we couldn’t leave the fact as it is and decided to visit several distributors. When we opened models shipped earlier and in May we witnessed the same picture. We checked 9 phones, all of them have blue overheat traces. Six handsets were picked out at random from 500 units. According to the results we suppose the defect is widespread.

At the moment it’s early to make definite conclusions, that’s why we send a query to Nokia’s representation in Russia. The query contains the given text and the following questions:

• Is Nokia aware of the problem stated above?
• If it is, so why it happens and how it can be solved?
• Are such phones the subject to the warranty repair?
• How many handsets shipped suffer the defect?
  

Here’s a resume. Unofficially service specialists offer negative comments, as they say the given problem shouldn’t exist. High temperatures could affect contact groups, and the results might be revealed later on.

PS. Two years ago our site was the first to inform you about the screen defects with Nokia 3310 and several other models. Early publications provoked negative reaction by the company, during several months Nokia didn’t confirm the existence of any problems with screens. Only when the information got widespread in Europe, the company commented on the problem and acknowledged it. Let’s hope the situation won’t be resumed. We’ll wait for Nokia’s reaction on the current problem.

Eldar Murtazin (eldar@mobile-review.com)
Translated by Anna Rychkova

Published — 03 June 2004

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