All About the Nokia 110 4G

The Story

If you're not interested in the story, feel free to scroll down to the good and the bad about the phone below.

I've become tired of smart phones. Notification this, update that. Bloatware. Gradually becoming slower and less usable with every update. Annoying menus. Screen switching off in the middle of a call "for my convenience". Bleh, I could go on, but you get the picture.

So I started thinking what if I just abandoned my Android? And bought an old fashioned "dumbphone" as they're now known. I have this amazing invention called a PC which I use for my "apps", emails, internet browsing and so on.

On the other hand, smart phones do have a lot of modern convenience. Like maps. Or being able to play a decent game or browse the web when waiting around.

Besides, back when the legendary 3310 came out, I just didn't have the funds at the time to get one. I had some much larger brick of a phone. So it might be fun to enjoy the experience of having a Nokia phone myself.

I thought about this for a while, and came to the conclusion: stuff it. I survived without all the modern stuff before, and if worst comes to worst, I could always just switch back to my Android phone.

So, I did some research and ended up buying myself a Nokia 110 4G for £30. It's pretty much a 3310 in every way bar it's appearance. It has actual buttons, a tiny screen, snake, and so on.

When it arrived, I moved my SIM and SD Card from my android to it, then put the battery in and switched it on. What sort of setup process was I in for? On an Android you have to sign in and choose a whole buncha stuff. On this I set the time, selected english, enabled power saving mode and I was done. Nice, that's a good start and exactly what I wanted. Simple.

Anyways, I've spent the last couple of days exploring the phones icons and menus, adding contacts and so on. Here's the good and bad.

Good

• You can do calls and text with it
• It has no touch screen. You use these things called buttons to do stuff
• The phone is much smaller and lighter than my Android
• If I lose it, there's nothing too important on there and I've only lost £30 worth of phone
• Adding contacts is super easy. Type a name and number and hit save. Done
• Call quality is suprisingly good! Clearer than my Android phone. I'm not even kidding
• It DOES have speaker phone
• It has Snake! Yay!
• It has a radio! And you don't have to have headphones in to use it
• You can transfer photos, videos and possibly other stuff between it and your PC with Bluetooth
• It can take photos and record video (see the Bad section too lol)! You'll probably want an SD Card if you plan on doing that a lot
• It DOES have predictive text! Access the menu when writing a text and select dictionary
• The buttons require a reasonable amount of force to press. I haven't had any issues with pocket dialing yet

Bad

• On the first day, when I kept opening one of my text messages, it kept saying "please try again later". This was after me exploring literally everything on the phone, so maybe I used up its memory. A reboot fixed it
• Even with an SD Card, the phone can only store 500 texts apparently. Not the end of the world, but a bit of a shame
• All of the "preloaded" games apart from Snake are "trial versions" and you have to pay credit to unlock them, AND ONLY FOR 30 DAYS AT A TIME! Come on man xD
• The camera and video recording is absolutely terrible. Luckily, I don't really care
• The screen is SMALL. It's clear and readable (for me) however. But you might struggle if you have issues with your vision

Verdict

This phone is what I want from a phone. Calls, texts. No hassle. Something to do when I'm waiting for a bus (Snake). And nothing more.

Right now I have no regrets about switching, and intend this to be my phone for the forseeable future.

I'll return to this blog entry in a month or so and talk about whether I'm still happy with it.

Anyways, I better go. I'm sure I can beat my high score on Snake...