Infuriatingly, my Nokia Lumia 800 decided to turn itself into an expensive brick this afternoon whilst playing a podcast. No number of curses, sacred chants, or combination of button pressing could persuade the Lumia to come back to life, so it’s gone off to be fixed by Nokia, thanks to the two-year warranty that they provide for purchases in Europe.

Before taking the step to bring the Lumia to a Nokia Care Centre (luckily one is about 3 km from my house), I did what any Internet-literate person would do and consulted the web to see what advice others might offer about a bricked Lumia. The first impression that I formed is that Lumia 800s like to turn themselves into cold electronics on a pretty frequent basis, with the most common potential cause being a problem that’s seemingly associated with battery exhaustion. The second is that once the Lumia decides that it wants to check out, there is very little a normal human being can do to make it come back to life. If you’re very lucky, plugging the device in to charge it might work. Or maybe placing it in such a way that the sun might warm its bones. Or perhaps by holding down the volume down, camera, and power on buttons at the same time, or maybe another combination. All lead to a point where you want to throw the blessed device at the wall.

While the Lumia 800 is away in Nokia’s tender care, O2 and Vodafone will introduce the Lumia 920 to Ireland on February 1. I’ve been looking at the 920 with an eye to moving over to Windows 8 and have also considered the HTC 8X. However, I like the Nokia Drive software and their cameras and that’s probably enough to keep me in the Nokia camp. The sticking points are the sheer size of the 920. It’s never seemed appealing to hold a large slab to your ear to make a call and that’s the strong impression many current smartphones give (look at anyone attempting to make a call on a Samsung Galaxy Note). The Lumia 800 is an example of elegant restrained design compared to some of the oversized slabs, as long as it stays running…

Even after some hardware problems, I’m still happy that I made the move from iPhone to Windows Phone about a year ago. The hardware is appealing, the software seems to be more modern than iOS, and email just works – and doesn’t hijack or interfere with calendar meetings either.

I guess I’ll wait to see what Nokia do with the 800 before making any decision to replace the phone. Maybe I can find some oversized pockets to help ease the decision.

Follow Tony @12Knocksinna