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Introduction
"Hello, Neo. Do you know who this is? Morpheus!" Ah, the memories. Even in its silly, banana-yellow attire, the new Nokia 8110 4G just seems to tickle the nostalgia bone the right way. After the wave of retro-enthusiasm, sparked by the Nokia 3310 (2017), HMD decided to sink its teeth into the Nokia resurrection game even further. Out came the peculiar curved slider that recently landed in the office for review.
If nothing else, the Nokia 8110 4G is undoubtedly different and stands out in the never-ending sea of bland "slab" Android smartphones. Physically, it has that undeniable and very distinct 90s appeal. For anybody who grew up back then, this is the proverbial gateway to the Matrix. Mr. Anderson's phone. For many of us, still an object of desire after all these years. Well, preferably one with the spring-loaded mechanism of the Nokia 7110, but you get the idea.
Nokia 8110 4G Specs
- Body: Plastic slider feature phone, 133.5 x 49.3 x 14.9 mm, 117g, IP52 drip protection
- Screen: 2.4-inch, QVGA, curved LCD
- Rear Camera: 2MP, LED flash
- Chipset: Qualcomm 205, dual-core 1.1GHz
- Memory: 512MB RAM, 4GB built-in storage
- OS:KaiOS
- Battery: 1500mAh
- Connectivity: Single SIM (4G) or Dual SIM (Micro-SIM, dual stand-by), FM Radio, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS/AGPS, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Micro USB, 3.5mm headphone jack
- Misc: Slide to answer a call
But looking beyond the nostalgia train, the fact of the matter is the Nokia 8110 4G is a very different and in a lot of ways interesting 2018 device for other reasons, as well. While its appearance screams featurephone, in reality, it sits somewhere in between traditional featurephone and modern smartphone territory. That's, in part, thanks to its pretty stacked list of connectivity options, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS and, most importantly - LTE. The latter is particularly vital for emerging markets, where most of the communication infrastructure is based on LTE and newer standards. With support for these, the Nokia 8110 4G has all it needs to be a basic gateway to the internet, on a budget.
Software is the other major piece in the puzzle. The Nokia 8110 4G uses KaiOS. It might not be popular in the western world, but it has actually been gaining popularity and ramping up users quickly, through devices, like the India-exclusive JioPhone. JIO has practically been giving these out for free to its customers, along with very affordable data plans, which KaiOS is surprisingly well equipped to take advantage off.
KaiOS goes beyond a regular old browser. In fact, the entire OS is kind of a browser, much like Chrome OS. It can trace its roots back to the now-defunct Firefox OS and, as such, can take advantage of most modern web app technology on a native level. All off this, topped off with an interface optimized for non-touch operation with a keypad.
Now KaiOS has its ups and downs in terms of current functionality and ease of use. In fact, the same is true about the Nokia 8110 4G, as a whole. We will delve into some more detail in the following pages. However, rough or not, these new cheap devices, along with the new breed of light web-based OS are clearly gaining traction in emerging markets and filling a quite important technological niche. On those grounds alone, we can admire the effort and try to understand just how far 2018 featurephones have come and identified the challenges that lie ahead.
Unboxing
The Nokia 8110 4G ships in a rather unconventional, "two-decker" plastic box. It's transparent, so you can see the phone sitting on top, straight away. Part of the top half also doubles as a cover for the bottom. Not really ground-breaking, but definitely different.
We do have a full unboxing if you are curious just how the packaging works. Inside the box, you also get a wired pair of earbuds, complete with a microphone. Their exact model appears to be WH-108 and while they do feel a bit cheap, having them included for free is still a nice little treat.
Also in the box - the 1,500 mAh battery. Yes, the Nokia 8110 4G does have a removable pack and these are normally shipped disconnected from the unit.
Last, but not least, a very tiny wall charger, rated for 5V@550 mAh. That should be plenty since the Nokia 8110 4G can only charge at a rate of 520mAh. But more on that in the battery section.
Design and controls
Like we already mentioned, the Nokia 8110 4G is quite a stand-out device. You can expect to get more than a few puzzled and intrigued looks in most smartphone-obsessed western crowds. The yellow variant is particularly eye-catching, but even our nondescript black unit had trouble flying under the radar.
Starting from the front of the device, the 2.4-inch, TFT display is another remnant of a bygone era. Though, this one that doesn't necessarily bring up warm feelings of nostalgia. To think that at one point or another I have browsed the internet played games and watched movies on a panel of similar size and quality on the Nokia N95.
Anyway, the overall curvature of the body dives off the impression that the panel is curved as well. That's not the case. It's an optical illusion, which takes its toll on the upper few rows of the panel. Since those seem to have a bit more air between them and the front glass. In case you were wondering, the rest of the panel is not fully laminated either. The air gap is something you just have to learn to live with.
On to the main attraction - the numerical keyboard. But before that - the slider that covers it. The biggest let-down here, of course, being the lack of a spring-loaded mechanism. Raun Forsyth, Head of Design at HMD actually addressed the matter when the Nokia 8110 4G was released and gave a few reasons as to why a more advanced slider wasn't employed, although a few such options were, indeed considered.
The main reason - cost. This is also likely the culprit behind the non-touch panel. Plus, the matter of complexity. HDM wanted to keep the phone as cheap, accessible and simple as possible. Plus, the original 8110 didn't really have a spring-loaded slider either.
Regardless of whether it is spring loaded or not, we do feel like HMD could have done a better job crafting this one. It's quite stiff and uncomfortable to operate. Instead of offering a fluent motion, it gets stuck along the entire range of motion. That's likely due to the simple plastic rubbing against plastic. We wish HMD had taken some pointers from devices like the Nokia 8800 Sirocco instead. Now that was a slider which you can enjoy.
The E.161(ITU-T) keyboard is no prize-winner either. The buttons are very stiff, have little to no travel and feel very mushy. Still, with a bit of training, you could manage to type at a reasonable speed. Navigating around the menus, however, is nearly impossible and a constant chore, because the directional pad has all the bad characteristics of the other buttons, but is also impossibly tiny. Pressing up and down is possible with a nail. Pressing the left and right directions, however, almost always results in pressing the back key or the answer one. The inconsistent nature of KaiOS navigation doesn't really help the user experience either. But more on that later.
The sides of the device are mostly empty, except for a power button on the right-hand side. It is of little practical use, considering the slider covers all the controls anyway and it also unlocks the phone. Still, it's there if you need to power down the Nokia 8110 4G.
The bottom only houses a small hole for a microphone. At first glance, this is a horrible location, since the extended slider stands right between your mouth ant the hole. Upon closer inspection, it might actually be for a secondary noise-cancelling unit, since there is another, much more-thoughtfully place microphone hole under the keypad.
The top of the phone has the 3.5mm audio jack as well as the micro USB. Besides charging, it can also be used to transfer data to and from a computer. However, the option does need to be turned on in the phone settings.
The back of the Nokia 8110 4G is one single piece of curved plastic, complete with cut-outs for the camera, flash and the single speaker. Snapping it off, to reveal the removable battery and a couple of slots is also an instant throwback to a simpler time in mobile phone design. Inside, the power pack is nicely protected and so are the one or two SIM slots (of the older micro-SIM variety) and right next to that - the microSD slot. The Nokia 8110 4G does come with a decent 4GB amount of storage (no relation to the name). Still, if you plan on using it as a music player, investing in some extra storage might be a good option.
Materials and durability
We might be going off stereotypes here, but it's our understanding that most feature phone buyers have pretty high durability expectations towards their devices. Historically, this is a pretty justifiable assumption to make, especially given the ongoing fixation with glass construction in the smartphone realm.
We've always defended plastic as a viable material for phone construction, which has a certain list of advantages of its own. For instance, the Nokia 8110 4G feels very solid and well put together. The parts that need structural stability, like the frame and the slider are made thick enough so that the plastic is really strong. The back side is crafted a bit thinner to allow for some flex, but not too much - it's just the perfect amount to be able to take in off and snap it back on, without damaging the clips. HMD did its homework well, borrowing from the extensive historical experience on the matter. We also appreciate the addition of an official IP52 drip protection rating.
Even so, however, we have some serious concerns with the overall durability of the Nokia 8110 4G. Most of these have to do with aesthetics. As hard as the plastics are, the particular ones, used by HMD here are very prone to scratches and scuffs. After only a couple of days of pocket use, the back of the phone started showing visible glossy spots, where the mat finish had worn off. Also, scratches can be made even with nails.
The glossy ring, that surrounds the display enclosure on left, right and top sides seems particularly vulnerable to scratches. While these won't really affect the usability of the device, it quickly looses its presentable appearance and becomes a mess of scratches and spots.
Worse still, the glass, covering the display, appears to be a simple glass material and is also easily scratched. We don't know about you, but living with a scuffed up body is one thing, trying to deal with a scratched-up, reflective display - a whole other. Cases are also not really an option for the Nokia 8110 4G, or at least we don't know of any. If you want to keep it looking fresh, your best bet might be a soft pouch, with all the retro chic that comes with it.
Display
The Nokia 8110 4G is equipped with a quite retro 2.4-inch, 240 x 320 pixel display. That sounds like a pretty low resolution and quite frankly, it is. Still, at this diagonal, it looks sharp, enough. We'll put it this way - if you manage to get text small enough to start noticing the lack of resolution, you've already gotten way beyond the point of usable font-size or UI.
Properly testing such a small panel and especially one sitting relatively far from the actual front glass turned out to be a bigger hassle than we originally anticipated. We'v decided to skip on any precise brightness, contrast and sunlight legibility figures. We will note that, as best as we managed to measure, you can expect peek brightness levels of about 380 nits. Not ideal, but also not too bad, considering the panel size. Unfortunately, there is no automatic brightness adjustment.
The particular TFT unit HMD chose also suffers from some color shift. From a vertical alignment, the left and right angles aren't so bad. Tilting it back, to look at it from the bottom is not horrible either. However, only a few degrees of displacement in the other direction and colors practically disappear.
Battery
The Nokia 8110 4G has a 1,500 mah battery at its disposal - pretty measly by today's standards. However, it is also running a very weak Snapdragon 205 chipset, a tiny TFT display and fewer sensors than a modern smartphone. Plus, it has a pretty aggressive battery management policy, which practically shuts down any background data connectivity, by default.
This is probably a good call since KaiOS isn't really big on background services and tasks. For the most part, it's a single-tasking OS. Hence, once you turn the screen off, you really don't need any of those pesky wireless radios sucking up electricity. Hence, the up to 600 hours advertised stand-by rating for the device.
After some effort, we did manage to put the battery through our standard battery test routine. Although it should be noted that since getting a proper brightness reading from the display turned out to be impossible, we had to approximate to the typical 200 nits as best we could.
Since the Nokia 8110 4G doesn't really fall among regular smartphones, we won't be posting an overall endurance rating for it. This is mostly due to the widely varying nature of the standby time. The advertised, up to 600 hours, presumes a disabled Wi-Fi radio, which does take its toll quite noticeably when turned on since the battery pack is so small. In terms of 3G call testing, we managed to squeeze 10 hours and 43 minutes on a single charge. And offline video playback and the browser test managed to deplete the battery fully in 12 hours and 25 minutes and 10 hours, respectively.
Charging speeds on the Nokia 8110 4G are glacial. The bundled 550mAh wall adapter managed to bring the battery up from 0% to 63% in an hour. A full charge takes around 3 hours and 10 minutes. While that wouldn't be exceptionally bad for a modern smartphone, with a 3,000+ pack to fill up, it just seems unreasonable to wait that long on a 1,500 mAh one.
In case you were wondering, the low output of the stock charger is not to blame here. We tried hooking the Nokia 8110 4G up to a 5v@2.4A USB, as well as a QC3 one and a VoltIQ, just in case that made any difference. Regardless, it always drew 520mA from the wall. No more, no less. This is one area we feel HMD could invest some effort in and potentially bring customers a lot of added value, for a small cost overhead.
Loudspeaker
The Nokia 8110 4G only has a single rear-mounted speaker at its disposal. When we say rear, we literally mean its grill is situated around the center of the back, right underneath the removable panel. Some of the sounds seem to be channeled through the earpiece grill as well. But, we might be mistaken on that one, since it's kind of hard to say exactly where the loud, annoying shrieks are originating from.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing |
Overall score | |
| 62.8 | 67.5 | 72.1 | Average | |
| 64.8 | 70.1 | 72.0 | Average | |
| 64.2 | 67.2 | 76.9 | Good | |
| 66.7 | 70.6 | 75.0 | Good | |
| 63.7 | 69.1 | 82.5 | Good | |
| 65.4 | 69.1 | 84.2 | Good | |
| 70.7 | 70.4 | 78.0 | Very Good | |
| 68.1 | 69.6 | 82.2 | Very Good | |
| 65.1 | 70.7 | 86.8 | Very Good | |
| 65.1 | 70.7 | 86.8 | Very Good | |
| 68.4 | 72.3 | 86.2 | Very Good | |
| 79.7 | 76.7 | 84.2 | Excellent |
Yes, the tiny speaker is extremely loud, but also very poor in quality. Almost every sound gets distorted. The only thing it really excels at is blasting high-pitched noises as a ringtone, to get your attention. Multimedia usage is a real let-down.
Audio quality
The Nokia 8110 4G delivered audio of average clarity and sub-par loudness when hooked to an active external amplifier.
Plugging in a pair of headphones left us with a moderate increase in stereo crosstalk and some extra intermodulation distortion, but the overall clarity remained good. Volume was once again disappointing, but we guess we shouldn't complain too much about a phone where playing the WAV sample file was considered a success.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.13, -0.10 | -89.4 | 88.4 | 0.0086 | 0.131 | -90.8 | |
| +0.14, -0.11 | -90.5 | 89.1 | 0.034 | 0.138 | -58.0 | |
| +0.01, -0.10 | -84.3 | 83.7 | 0.0060 | 0.020 | -88.9 | |
| +0.02, -0.17 | -85.3 | 84.2 | 0.415 | 0.078 | -60.4 | |
| +0.10, -0.20 | -37.5 | 80.4 | 0.0018 | 4.735 | -93.3 | |
| +0.05, -0.03 | -94.3 | 90.2 | 0.0027 | 0.019 | -58.6 | |
| +0.02, -0.05 | -90.3 | 90.2 | 0.0015 | 0.015 | -93.1 | |
| +0.02, -0.06 | -93.3 | 93.2 | 0.0034 | 0.056 | -82.5 |
Nokia 8110 4G frequency response
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
KaiOS
Full disclosure here, going into the Nokia 8110 4G review, we found two primary sources of excitement. One, of course, was the possibility to own Neo's legendary phone, so many years later. The other - KaiOS - a relatively young operating system, sitting in the interesting niche between featurephone and smartphone territory. Since the Nokia 8110 4G is fairly well equipped to communicate with modern networks and devices, through LTE, VoLTE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc. All it needs then, is a good set of basic apps to potentially allow for a decent entry-level online experience.
KaiOS has its roots in the now effectively dead Firefox OS. Both are thus almost entirely based on modern web technologies. Essentially, you can think of KaiOS as a nicely skinned browser environment, optimized to work on low-end hardware and, in this case, in particular - physical keyboard controls. Something like Chrome OS, only significantly scaled-down.
Once we learned this, we were even more hopeful for the usability of the Nokia 8110 4G. In fact, I was even so confident that I challenged myself to use the banana phone as a daily driver for a whole week. Given the Firefox OS pedigree, I was secretly hoping that I would be able to side-load apps from the once relatively rich Firefox OS store. Unfortunately, that was a no-go. Even with the full OS SDK installed, we quickly realized, the KaiOS team apparently took what was effectively open-source code from Firefox OS and closed it up quite a bit.
Bearing that in mind, we also know of the increasingly popular JioPhone. It is taking India by storm, since the local Jio carrier is essentially giving it away on a refundable deposit basis. The current version seems almost identical in hardware to the Nokia 8110 4G. However, Jio has been putting a lot of development effort of its own into the phone, including a dedicated Jio store, hosting apps like: JioMusic, JioCinema, HelloJio, JioGames, JioTv, JioShare, JioVideocall, and JioXpress (for news). Some of these provide access to
Long story short, the Nokia 8110 4G gets none of that and is, instead, stuck with a vanilla or international, if you will, version of KaiOS. This is a significant downgrade in functionality, to say the least. There is a native app store with the following apps, currently in it: Twitter and Weather. That's it. The rest are simple games, like Gems, Birdy, 2048, Ice Breaker, Guardians and Planet.ET. These complement the legendary Snake, already pre-loaded on the phone as well as three demo version by Gameloft, that mysteriously popped-up only once we installed a SIM card in the unit.
Things might change for the better in the future, but the current third-party app variety kind of limits the usability of the phone as a smartphone replacement. It doesn't really help either that KaiOS is a very single-threaded OS, so to say, with little to no background task functionality. For general communication purposes over the phone or via SMS, that's no big deal, and there is push notification support, that instant messengers could potentially leverage. Other than that, however, what you see is what you get. No multitasking to speak of.
KaiOS store
This, in turn, means that you will have to learn the menu structure pretty thoroughly, so you can jump from place to place to toggle things on and off during use. That's a nasty chore in itself, especially for somebody already used to the concept of quick toggles and overlays. However, KaiOS makes the experience even worse with its highly unoptimised and inconsistent navigation scheme.
For instance, you know how on older S40 and similar featurephone devices, pressing the red phone key took you back to the home screen instantly? The Nokia 8110 4G lacks any such shortcut. The "end call" key, in question typically acts like a back key. Which would be fine, except in some menus and apps, it does not function as expected. You can easily stumble across a text field, which goes away entirely when you push back, instead of just finishing the text input sequence. There are also parts of the UI and certain apps that can't be exited through this key.
KaiOS: Messages • Email • Video call
Also, remember the convenient number-based shortcuts that most phones with a numerical keyboard had? The ones that allowed you to jump straight to the 5-th or any other option within a menu, by simply pressing that number key, instead of having to scroll to it? Well, the Nokia 8110 4G lacks those and believe us when we say, they are a sore omission.
OK, these complaints are probably enough to deter most users from putting to much hope in the functionality of KaiOS, in its current state on a non-Jio device, like we did. Still, it is a young OS and one that could improve in the future. Especially given its mostly circumstantial strength in user numbers. Plus, there are certain things to enjoy about the simplistic Nokia 8110 4G OS.
In no particular order: there is a notification centre, conveniently accessible with a left button click from the desktop. A right-click opens a quick shortcut interface, with toggles for most connectivity options, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile data, as well as sound, brightness controls and a flashlight.
The menu itself features large and easily recognizable icons and all the basic functions, like the call and contacts apps, messages are very easy just to pick up and use. Other basic apps that work great include a local music player, with support for playlists, artists, albums and ID3 tags, in general. A gallery, with sorting and grouping options, a video player. That can handle h.264 files (although not h.263). A very simple, yet functional email client. Also: FM radio app, clock, calendar, note, calculator, voice recorder and unit converter.
KaiOS: Facebook • Twitter • YouTube
The more advanced software features, the Nokia 8110 4G can currently pull off come courtesy of Google. They didn't go as far as providing a full, flushed out app suite, or anything like that. However, there are Google search, YouTube and Google Maps apps. Sure, the first two seem to be nothing more than wrapped web pages. YouTube has been customized a bit, to make its video playback and full-screen controls a bit easier to use without a touchscreen.
The Google Maps app appears to be custom-made since none of its regular web UIs would be usable on such a small device. It works fairly well, but don't expect turn-by-turn navigation. Even though the Nokia 8110 4G has GPS on board, the maps app can only plan routes for you.
A potential game-changer here is the Google Assistant. Naturally, it is missing most of its smarts and for the most part, simply acts as a voice to text engine for web searching. That is still a very convenient alternative to have to the numerical keyboard. Besides that, the app can also call and text people from your contacts, give you a weather forecast and search for videos directly in the YouTube app.
KaiOS: Google Assistant • Google Maps
The potential shines through, but again, the JioPhone seems to make much better use of the Google Assistant. So much so, that it has a huge dedicated voice input button in the centre of its keyboard. Jio has apparently made all its KaiOS apps compatible with voice input. Their version of the Assistant can also recognise quite a few Indian dialects, probably making voice the main method of operation for many remedial users of the device.
Hopefully, this kind of integration trickles down to the general KaiOS version at some point. Otherwise, in its current state, the KaiOS on the Nokia 8110 4G is hardly as feature-rich of functional, from a third-party app and service perspective than other, often cheaper Nokia featurephone devices. Most handsets, based on the Series 30+ platform, even those that only have the native MediaTek MAUI Runtime Environment and lack J2ME, currently have access to more application. This makes recommending the Nokia 8110 4G over them in this regard, kind of difficult.
Performance
There's really not much benchmarking we can do on the Nokia 8110 4G. Plus, even if we could, most metrics wouldn't really make sense on a featurephone. That being said, we can provide some observations, after actually using the phone.
KaiOS games
First off, the Qualcomm MSM8905 Snapdragon 205 only has a pair of 1.1 GHz Cortex-A7 at its disposal. And as optimized as KaiOS may be, you need to adjust your expectations accordingly. For most basic, every-day tasks, like calls, texting, email or Googling the occasional address or working hours of a business, the Nokia 8110 4G does just fine.
You can, however, choke the web-app platform with a number of tasks. Most notably, switching quickly between apps, leads to some notable navigation stutters and slow-downs in rendering the UI. You can't realistically expect desktop levels of Javascript support and performance out of the built-in browser either. Some websites just refuse to work altogether. Like the Skype web messenger, we were hoping to use, in place of a native app. Visiting some of these can easily choke the little Nokia as well.
On the flip side, video playback seems to work surprisingly well. Our battery test video is roughly 640 x 352 px in resolution, in h.264 and it played just fine in the video app. We can only imagine all the YouTube videos get delivered at 360p. Even so, we didn't find a single clip on the platform that managed to trip up the Nokia 8110 4G.
Gaming, however, is not really something you want to delve too deep into. The pre-loaded snake game works great. And so do most of the free downloadable titles on the store. These, however, are extremely simple. The three Gameloft paid titles, as we mentioned earlier, all barely run. After trying out the demo version, we really didn't feel compelled to buy any one of them.
Camera
Having to deal with budget devices on the very low-end of the smartphone price spectrum on a regular basis, we really like to think that the industry has finally reached a point where "potato cameras" are a thing of the past. Even a sub-$100 Android device nowadays does a decent enough job for social media purposes, most of the time.
If we decide to technically regard the $100+ Nokia 8110 4G as a smarthpone, we might just have to reconsider our position. The banana phone has a camera - singular, with a whopping 2MP count and fixed focus.
Nokia 8110 4G camera samples
Technically, it does capture photos. Which you could potentially transfer off the device, quite easily, thanks to its many connectivity options. Or even, upload them directly online. In that regard, they might be considered useful.
Nokia 8110 4G camera samples
Since we don't really want to bash the Nokia 8110 4G too hard, we'll just let you make up your mind on the general quality of the shots. The shortcomings are pretty apparent. On a positive note, we will mention that we've definitely seen less fine detail from a 2MP camera.
Just in case you were wondering, there is no HDR mode, or any other fancy camera improvements, for that matter. In fact, the camera app UI is as simple as they come. There is no resolution selector for still and no auto flash mode either.
Video recording is available. Clips are captured with a pretty standard MPEG-4 AVC stream and rather surprisingly - stereo AAC audio. The container, however, is the archaic 3gp. Maximum resolution is equally old-school and roughly follows the Sony D-1 standard (NTSC 3:2). That is 720pixels horizontal and 480 pixels vertical.
We don't really have any good comments on quality to provide here. Nor can we physically alight the shots for the sample posters. That goes for the picture compare tool as well. We are uploading a short clip to YouTube though. Bear in mind, we did have to rotate it before uploading, since the Nokia 8110 lacks any gyroscope to determine its orientation and simply shoots in vertical all the time. We had to do the same with the photos.
Frankly, the only positive we find with this video setup, is that you can, at least, fit plenty of footage on the internal memory. Oh, and the frame rate was pretty steady around the 30 fps mark.
Alternatives
Choosing alternatives to the Nokia 8110 4G is a rather daunting task, for more than a few reasons. At current MSPR, it is a bit pricey for a feature phone, at around $100, or EUR 85 on most Western markets. You can get it for a bit less elsewhere.
If you are after a featurephone with a numpad, there are arguably better value options out there, like the Nokia 216. You might be sacrificing a slight bit of internal hardware, but like we mentioned earlier, the Series 30 OS has a much richer app collection. Plus, there is the matter of cost.
Nokia 216 • Nokia 3310 4G
However, it should also be noted that the Nokia 216 lacks LTE. The 2018 4G variant of the Nokia 3310 has that covered, in case you can't get away with 3G, where you live. Plus, you won't really be loosing any hipster points over the Nokia 8110 4G. The Alcatel Go Flip might also be worth looking at. As well as any featurephone your carrier might have on offer. These often get tailor-made and are subsidized, so you might just find a good deal.
On the flip side, if you're not shopping for a less tech-inclined relative, who absolutely insists on a numerical pad and budget is the only concern, there is arguably more value to be had at the low end of the Android market. Not to mention a lot more functionality.
Hunting for sub EUR 100 Android phones in the past has solidified one pretty simple general guideline - do your best to get an octa-core chipset. Keeping that in mind, the Meizu M6T looks like a prime candidate. It's a recent model, with a spacious display and even a dual camera setup. Still, in some markets, it might be a little over budget, so the regular Meizu M6 is also a good choice.
Meizu M6 • alcatel Pop 4S • Meizu M5 Note • Xiaomi Redmi 6A • Nokia 1
Then there is the Alcatel Pop 4S. Navigating the confusing Alcatel lineup is no easy task, but if you do your research correctly, you could end up with a 5.5-inch, FullHD panel, even if on a slightly older 2016 device. Shopping on a budget means finding the right balance of compromises. And if you are not necessarily the kind of person to always go after the latest Android releases, there is also the Meizu M5 Note. Another FullHD device, with a pretty potent Helio P10 chipset, comparatively speaking and a beefy 4,000 mAh battery.
And if you value current trends and OS updates more than performance, there is also the option to deviate from the 8-core rule, for the right kind of device, like the Xiaomi Redmi 6A with its 18:9 display. Last, but definitely not least, there is HMD's own entry-level Nokia 1 - a quad-core device, but also a very recent one and rocking Android 8.1 Oreo (Go edition). The GO part means an optimized lite app package, without really missing out on any current goodies within Google's Android ecosystem.
Verdict
The above list of competitors naturally leads us to the conclusion here. Namely, that the Nokia 8110 4G is hard to recommend as a value option. Sure, it's different and KaiOS has some untapped future potential - one that could lead to a new and interesting class of smarter faeturephones at some point. However, in its current state, it's a bit limiting, even for a featurephone. Cheaper and more functional alternatives do exist.
Pros
- Sturdy construction
- Plenty of up-to-date connectivity options, including VoLTE, GPS, and Wi-Fi
- Removable battery
- Efficient use of the small battery pack
Cons
- Surfaces are easily scratched. This goes for the display as well
- Buttons are mushy and unresponsive. Navigation keys are particularly bad and too small to use
- Slider is stiff and not easy to use
- Charging is painfully slow
- KaiOS has potential, but is very rough around the edges. Navigation is bad and functionality is diminished, compared to what Jio is doing with the platform and compared to some other featurephones
- The UI doesn't always run smoothly
- The camera experience is pretty bad
On the flip side of things, there is the current Nokia 8110 4G pricing, which seems to largely play on the nostalgia factor more than anything else. Prices seem to vary greatly from market to market and especially with some third-party sellers, looking to ride the nostalgia train. But even at its cheapest, the Nokia 8110 4G seems to creep within entry-level smartphone territory.
And, frankly, we have a hard time recommending it over the Nokia 1 (or even the Nokia 2, if you find a good deal) or one of the other budget Android options we mentioned earlier. For now, the Nokia 8110 4G seems like a viable purchase only for its coolness factor and hipster points, if you're into that kind of thing. And definitely not as a daily driver.
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