|
|
|
Nokia N76 - Mass production faults |
|
|
|
Mass production of mobile phones and the never-ending struggle for cost reduction occasionally result in some sort of defects, which keep low profile up to the release date, passed unnoticed by both testers and distributors.
Sometimes, the synergy effect brought about by various factors may seem bizarre, but the fact is, even color scheme can affect reliability. Say, the recent story with the Sony Ericsson S500i, probably, would be the best example of that.
All units coming in green tend to get their keys cracked 2-3 weeks into use, for the plastic can’t stand the strain. Surprisingly, all yellow-colored handsets never had such issues. We posted a message on the Sony Ericsson S500i’s defect in the VIP Lounge, a private section of our forum, where one of the explanations was the design of the keys themselves. But it was just recently when we learned that the green paint reacted with the adhesive used for sticking the buttons onto the casing.
This way, because of the chemical reaction the base of the keys simply dissolved. At the same time, the yellow edition is free of such defects. Thankfully, only a few shipments of these phones have made it to Russia, and you can easily identify them by production date – assembled before week 27 of this year.
This case is covered by the warranty, meaning that you can easily get the keypad changed in any service centre.
All companies having a wide array of models in their portfolios and large-scale production, as the probability theory puts it, are bound to suffer from faulty units more than anyone else. And they actually always do – the highlight of this article, Nokia occasionally runs into issues that were not revealed during the early stages of proof testing. They have much to do with faulty parts supplied to factories, or a crudely programmed production line. The first example coming to my mind is the story with the Nokia 8210 and the Nokia 3310, where the displays malfunctioned so often that the users literally queued up before service centers.
Back then the company didn’t manage to provide the service centers with new displays, which resulted in huge lines of users waiting for their handsets to be repaired (in some regions of Russia it was the matter of months). It is important to realize that the service and customer care front was on a completely different level.
Also, the story with a misadjusted automatic machine that hit the Nokia 6230 hard – its protective covers burned out, turning black, which allowed some service centers to reject maintenance claims.
In this situation our intervention made the company publish a service bulletin and acknowledge this blackening as a non warranty-repair cancelling factor.
Last year, Nokia experienced no global issue with the quality of their handsets. Undoubtedly, every model had some flaws, but the way they were treated greatly depended on personal loyalty to the brand – many refused to spot the Nokia N71’s peeling-off edging, which was in fact a defect of the design.
The number of flaws has varied from handset to handset, but it wouldn’t be right to claim that some device had a hundred percent faulty shipments. However, the Russian market saw an exception in the form of the Nseries models, which couldn’t tap into GPRS within MTS, Beeline, occasionally Megafon networks, though the latter almost didn’t experience such difficulties.
The crux of the matter was the software installed on these handsets, which was tailored to more contemporary networks, rather than some custom variations offered by the Russian carriers. Another victim of this issue was Samsung and its flagship solution, the Samsung D600. Unfortunately the carriers’ unwillingness to upgrade their networks to meet the standards adds an element of chance into the equation.
For example, at the moment all service centers across the country are upgrading firmware of absolutely new and still shining Nokia 6120 because of the same GPRS-Internet issues. It is not a rare occasion when a vendor like Nokia can’t physically provide a logistics network for a separate, albeit big, country, so as to develop bespoke software versions. That’s why all distributors are down to hand all received phones to service centers for free firmware flashing.
|
|
|