Bizarre Nokia N93 USB Connection Bug (and solution)

Yes, quite definitely, I'm spending a lot of time recently solving problems I wouldn't have without my Nokia N93. Is that what cool technology should be all about? Yes, I guess.

All of a sudden, my phone did not want to sync up with my Macintosh. Yesterday it worked beautifully, now

• I plug my N93 into my Mac with the trusty USB cable
• The N93 ask - as usual - which mode to use
• I select "data transfer mode"
• The N93 tells me that it needs to go offline to do that, I click okay
• The N93 shows me nice cogwheels to show it's connecting, but nothing happens.

After various attempts and checks (system profiler, checking file systems in the shell, plugging in another USB device (worked)) and half an hour of entirely wasted time the reason for the problem was:

My phone had only about 40% of its power charge remaining.

After plugging it in it worked flawlessly.

Now, I really like the idea of protecting the user from problems that might arise when the phone runs out of power during synchronisation. Many good digital cameras do that.

But a text like "low power, please charge" or so would have helped.

Nokia definitely needs to come up with a fixed firmware...