I guess the title sums things up pretty well. Remember two years ago when I first found out about the N900 and I was like “OMG THIS PHONE IS AWESOME”? And then remember back in November 2009 when I finally got the N900 that I had pre-ordered and I was like “OMG THIS PHONE IS AWESOME”? And then remember how I’ve really liked my phone for the past 19 months? Well that all came to a screeching halt earlier a few weeks ago when the micro USB port (which is used to charge the phone) came loose and I could not charge the battery.

This is a widely-known and oft-complained about fact of N900 life, so I figured it’d be no big deal. Nokia knows how to handle this little defect in their design. So I dash off a quick note through their website and two days later I get a call back. The answer “well your phone is more than a year old, so we won’t do anything for you.” I understand that a warranty can only last so long, but it’s a design flaw, you assholes. It’s your problem, you fix it. I’m pretty ticked off that I’ve spent all this time telling everyone what a great phone the N900 is, that I paid full price for it, and now I have to go pay another $70 to get the damn thing fixed.

Look, I understand that I’m a nobody. A whiny nobody at the moment. But in case you haven’t noticed, Nokia, your smartphone strategy mostly consists of running around going “Oh sweet cellphone Jesus! What do we do? What do we doooooo?” First it was “hey check out this N900. Maemo is so cool!” Then it was “oh forget this N900 that we just told you was awesome. We’ll be coming out with a Meego handset, soon.” Then nothing happened for a while. Then the plan was “Meego? Lame. Check out this Windows Phone 7 that we’re totally going to use.” Then it was “oh hey, check out this N9 which runs Meego except it’s really Maemo 6 just API-compatible with Meego. But don’t worry about buying this because we’ll be abandoning it this fall for Windows Phone 7.” Are you guys stoned?

At least the company that fixed my phone was easy to deal with. Thank you OnSite Cellular Repair of Houston, Texas for your responsiveness. And an extra thank you for replacing the broken left arrow key, apparently for free?