After placing an online order last week a brand new Nokia Lumia Icon was delivered on Friday, February 28th.
By the next morning I was on the phone with tech support working on what appeared to be a failed earpiece forcing the use of the loud speaker to make calls. The symptoms started after plugging in a working Nokia headset from another Nokia phone.
After working through the obvious culprits the tech decided that a new phone was going to be the answer however it would have to be picked up from a corporate store as there was no method for new replacements to be sent from support.
Problem: we're about 80 - 100 miles down the coast from a corporate store that would have new Icons according to Verizon and the exchange process would rely on accessing the trouble ticket notes to verify the exchange recommendation which from past experience never takes less than an hour if not more in a busy store.
Well after doing homework on the Nokia Lumia series a possible hardware problem came to light regarding the headset jack itself.
If the phone is turned off then a non-metallic 3.5mm null male plug (Who has these? Well.., if you have the ability to machine small parts the drawings are out there so now I do) is plugged in, wiggled around and removed then you may correct the hardware issue without risk of damaging the receptacle. In my case after turning the phone on the earpiece was working again.
The problem is repeatable by plugging a headset, speakers, etc. then removing the accessory whereupon the earpiece becomes disabled.
Again, plug in the non-metallic widget, wiggle, remove, problem fixed.
Now I'm not going to advocate using the toothpick solution found on some Nokia forums because that might void a warranty but if you're suffering this issue you may want to figure out a way to get the 3.5 mm receptacle switch to snap back out before traveling across the planet to a corporate store.
And Verizon? Please, if you can ship a brand new phone from an online order, could you please send a new replacement phone if hours after activation the new phone you just shipped shows up with a terminal problem since it isn't likely I'll be getting to a corporate store in the next week or so?
Hope this helps somebody that may suffer the same issue and if nothing else becomes a documented record of the issue to refer back to for both Verizon and its customer base.
According to Nokia it is a known issue for some percentage of their phones even if Verizon Tech Support does not have a bulletin on the subject.
Skip the wired headphones and purchase a pair of blue tooth headphones. I realize that the FM radio won't work since the wired headphones acts as the antenna.
What wireless headphones do you recommend? More specifically, wireless earbuds for exercising?
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