Some Nokia N8 Phones Plagued with Power Issues

The Espoo, Finland-based phone maker said that some customers are reporting that their N8 phone turned off unexpectedly and did not turn back on, or refused to power on at all in the first place.

"It's a very small number of phones, we don't have exact numbers", said Tapani Kaskinen, a spokesman for Nokia.

The company has isolated the problem to the way the phones are assembled during production and have taken precautionary measures to solve the problem. The fault lay in how the engine component in the N8 was being installed.

Nokia sales chief Niklas Savander released a video interview to address the problem directly, saying he was "concerned" about the flaw and that the company was taking measures to resolve the issue, saying it affected very few number of phones.

"If you look at the total number it is a small number", Savander said.

The hardware issue is covered by the phone's warranty, and if the original handset cannot be fixed then customers can get a new one, Kaskinen said.

The N8, which is the company's first handset to run the Symbian 3 platform, was released in October after an initial delay last spring due to software quality issues.

The N8 is regarded as the Nokia's attempt to regain prominence in the crucial smartphone market, where it has ceded ground to competitors like Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's BlackBerry and a slew of Android phones.

Nokia's weakness in smartphone and software development were regarded as reasons that the company replaced former CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with an executive from Microsoft, Stephen Elop.

But with a small amount of N8 phones plagued with power issues, Nokia's attempt to return to the top of the mobile market is proving slightly bumpier than the company had hoped.