Hands on with Nokia’s 8110 banana phone reboot

Hands on with Nokia’s 8110 banana phone reboot

All the way back in 1999, Nokia’s slider phones were very cool indeed, thanks to a starring role in The Matrix. In the real world, it was a true banana phone, with an instantly recognisable curvy shape, and that distinctive slider for answering calls with. Now, it’s back – in suitably yellow colours. After putting one through its paces ahead of its MWC reveal, we think this could be the phone to be seen with come festival season.

NOKIA 8110 DESIGN: CURVY STUFF

Slide the reimagined 8110 into your jeans the wrong way round and you’ll be guaranteed some odd looks, on account of the curvy shape. The sliding keyboard cover protects the buttons underneath, popping open and snapping shut with a satisfying action. It’s not spring-loaded like it was when Neo was trying to escape the Matrix, but then what were you expecting for the princely sum of €79/US$97?

NOKIA 8110 DESIGN: BOLD AND BRIGHT

This 8110 is New Nokia truly embracing the design style that old Nokia became famous for. It’s available in black, but why would you bother? It looks fantastic in this bright yellow hue. Drop it in a muddy festival field and you’ll have no trouble spotting it.

NOKIA 8110 BUILD: PLASTIC FANTASTIC

The whole thing is made from a sturdy polycarbonate plastic, and has light-up buttons for late-night texting. It sits comfortably in your hand, and doesn’t feel cheap, either. It’s novel, it’s kitsch, and it’s unmistakable – which is pretty much exactly why you’d pick one up.

NOKIA 8110 SCREEN: SMALL STUFF

There’s not much to write home about here: a basic LCD display gets the job done, with blocky icons and pixellated text. Brightness isn’t much cop, although we only saw it indoors so can’t say how easy to read it’ll be outside. It is at least a colour screen, which is more than you got on the original phone, but there’s no touch control here – just good old fashioned buttons.

NOKIA 8110 CAMERA: LIMITED PIXELS

The 2MP camera around back is a similar story. It’s essentially the same as the one found on last year’s 3310; it was beyond basic in that phone, only able to capture rough approximations of images that lacked any real detail or definition – and we’re not expecting a dramatic improvement this time around.

NOKIA 8110 CAMERA: RETRO SPECS

This is a retro-inspired phone, with hardware to match, so your photos will have a similar retro charm to them. At least that’s what we’ll tell people when we try uploading snaps taken with this thing to Instagram (on a more modern phone, of course – there’s no feature phone app here).

NOKIA 8110 SOFTWARE: PRETTY BASIC

The OS is basic, with a grid of icons letting you jump between calls, texts, a photo gallery, music player, and a few other apps you can download over a 4G connection. They should be much more responsive here than on the 2G 3310, which took forever to download apps and games. The web browser should be quicker here too, although we didn’t get to try it out.

NOKIA 8110 BATTERY: HOPEFULLY GOOD

The saving grace for the 8110’s lack of grunt is battery life. If the 3310 is any indication, you shouldn’t struggle to get a few days of use between charges – although that 4G connection could sap a lot of juice. We’ll have to wait until a full review to see if it will actually survive an entire weekend of tenting at a music festival.

NOKIA 8110 VERDICT: CASH-IN

Did you think that last year’s 3310 reboot was a cynical cash grab designed to play off people’s nostalgia? The 8110 isn’t going to make you feel much different. It’s more of the same, in a new shell that adds a slider to the mix. But then this was never going to replace your all-singing, all-dancing smartphone.

NOKIA 8110 VERDICT: SECOND PHONE

The new 8110 4G is a second phone, pure and simple. One for emergencies, holidays, or just a bit of fun at the weekend. It’ll get you through from Friday night to Monday morning without having to hunt down a mains socket, and it’ll put a smile on your face whenever you answer a call or tap out a text using the number keys. That doesn’t sound like a bad thing to us.