Nokia N8 turns off but not on

Nokia has admitted that its flagship N8 smartphone has a flaw which causes it to switch off... permanently.

Niklas Savander, sales chief at Nokia  said a "small number" of the handsets, which went on sale last month power off and can not be restarted.

According to Nokia the fault in the power management is caused by the way which the engine component - which includes most of the technology in the phone, excluding covers and batteries - in the Nokia N8 was being installed.

"If you look at the total number of N8s we have shipped, it is a small number," Savander said in a video on the company website. He added that those affected were covered by the manufacturer's warranty.

Nokia isn't having much luck with technology. A note under the video tells users: "Apologies for the poor quality in the audio. Our wireless mics appeared to fail on us, so we had to use the camera’s mic."

The N8, which was brought out to rival Apple's offerings and is the first smartphone to use the  lastest version of Nokia's Symbian software, hasn't had an easy time.

It was originally set to launch back in June, but in April Nokia said this wasn't going to be possible because software renewal would take longer than expected due to quality problems. It gave an end of September timeline but the N8 was finally in the shops October.

Nokia hasn't exactly had a successful year. It reported low financial figures and a lack of smartphones and problems with software were seen as the main reasons for the sacking of Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and replacing him with Stephen Elop, formerly Microsoft.

See the video below