The King of Pointland

Nokia 8390

I imagine some poor soul like me Googling on "Nokia 8390 Restore Factory Settings" or "Nokia 8390 Selected memory empty," and finding this page. Now you know you're not alone.

I've been getting a "System Busy" error all day when I try to make a call. I can't receive calls, either. So I called Cingular, and the woman on the phone told me to "Restore factory settings." Before doing so, I explicitly asked her "Will this erase my phone book?" She told me it wouldn't, and so I went through with the process. And guess what, it did erase my phone book.

I remained calm and asked to talk to her supervisor. While I was on hold I told myself not to a) yell or b) curse. Once the supervisor answered I calmly explained to her what had happened, and she told me that wasn't supposed to happen. I responded that that may be so, but it in fact did happen. She was very courteous and remained on the phone while I downloaded Nokia's manual, found the page for "Restore factory settings," and wouldn't you know it, it says, "Caution: Restoring factory settings does not erase your phone book. However, it does erase all customized settings you may have entered." At that point I was glad I had been polite and calm the entire time, because it turns out it wasn't their fault.

I've tried adding some numbers and doing a reset several times. Each time, I lose my numbers. I get an error: "Selected memory empty." Perhaps there's a firmware bug.

The customer service agent had checked for known problems in my area and found none. After putting me on hold and talking to technical support, she learned that there was a problem with the local "switch" and they were working on it. It would have been nice to know this from the get go.

"But, but, David, did you back up your numbers?" Some time ago, I did, using the IR port. I'll restore those. But if you gave me your phone number in the last, oh, two years, I've probably lost it. If you were hoping I'd forget your number, you win! Otherwise, you might want to email it to me.