I hate it when this happens.
The low-battery logo you see at right comes from the screen of the Nokia Lumia 900 that I reviewed last week. That–and the AT&T logo it occasionally gets stuck on as the phone attempts to boot–represent the only signs of life this review model has shown since the weekend.
What I thought was an isolated charging problem–I was foolishly extrapolating from a gripe in TechnoBuffalo’s review about the phone not charging when powered off–seems to be a more serious issue, well beyond my ability to fix.
(No, I can’t pop out the battery; it’s sealed inside the 900’s case. The force-rebooting techniques suggested by Nokia PR haven’t worked either.)
In case you were convinced that all loaner hardware has been carefully inspected, massaged and polished to rule out any chance of failure, consider this as contrary proof. And it’s not even the first time this year I’ve had a loaner device go sideways; the Galaxy Nexus provided by Verizon drained its battery at a frightening rate with WiFi active and somehow saved a few photos without the usual timestamp.
Nokia says they’ll replace the defective phone, but in the bargain I have to count on them to wipe my info from the device. Not that I don’t trust them to do that–but I’m a lot more comfortable when review hardware heads home without any of my personal data on board.
This also means that if you come to my CEA Web chat–noon to 1 p.m. Eastern on this Friday April 13–with questions about the Nokia 900 or Windows Phone 7, I may have to wing some of my answers. But please stop by anyway.
Rob Pegoraro 
So this is 2 reviews I’ve come across where the hardware basically had catastrophic failures, yours and this one: http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2012/04/why-i-dont-have-a-nokia-lumia-900-review-for-you/
I really wasn’t planning to get one anyway, but this sort of confirms the decision to stick with Motorola.
Good point – I’d meant to include a note about Dwight Silverman’s review-hardware meltdown. At least he discovered that upfront, before linking the phone with a bunch of social-media accounts.
As far a protecting your personal data on the Nokia Lumina (a/k/a brick) – it could always befall a tragic encounter with a steamroller on the way to the post office to be returned….