Help Peculiar Problem

[crawler]

Hey there guys!

I've been the past week (since Sunday) trawling the web for my answer and finally today (Friday) I decided to join this forum to actually ask my question. So apologies if this answer is obvious.

I was handed a second hand Nexus One this weekend from a friend after putting my old SE C905 in the washing machine. Having had an Desire HD a couple of months ago I was happy to accept an HTC donation.

However, the phone seems to boot up fine without a SIM... works great. (Android 2.2.1).

After putting the SIM in and the phone connecting to my network on 3G it reboots, vibrates 4(?) 7 times and stays on X and is unresponsive until you remove the battery. It then refuses to boot for about 20 minutes (with or without SIM).

Can anyone tell me what's happening here? Is this a hardware/software glitch or is there some anti-theft mechanism kicking in?

Your advice is much appreciated!

*edit*

I've searched by vibration count and it was speculated that this is a hardware error. Is this correct?​

 

[crawler]

This thread suggests freezing the phone in the freezer and then giving it a go... I figured while waiting for my micro usb cable to arrive I'll give it a shot (without the battery inserted).

It worked for approximately 5-10 minutes... I recieved loads of texts/emails/voicemails ... then the handset got warm and it's gone back to restart to X (7 vibrates).

I will report back when I have the cable!

 

[crawler]

I am delighted to say that after reporting this problem to HTC, the phone was collected the next day by UPS, returned 4 days later by UPS, costing me a sum total of: nothing. Very happy with HTC for this.