Nokia 8110 4G (Single Sim) - Black

The review below is full of moans and complaints, detailing reasons why this phone is terrible to use. However, I want to state at this stage that despite all of this, I absolutely love it and I am happy that I dumped my smartphone for this. Please read on if freedom from smartphone zombification is your motivation. If you want a phone packed full of features - don't bother reading on.Having lived through the birth of mobile phones and the times when you saw nothing but Nokia, it didn't seem too daunting to me to use a feature phone with a qwerty keyboard. I switched back because I am frustrated with the time wasted by the lure and addictive nature of smartphone features.You can still waste your valuable time on this phone if you like, as there is a browser, email, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and even a paired down version of Google assistant and YouTube available, but you will find it so challenging to use them that you will likely give up quickly. I didn't even bother logging in to Twitter or Facebook, or setting up email, but I use WhatsApp as my main form of communication. I have found it is so much simpler to use the voice message function than to type (bye-bye Swype).Typing is a real challenge. Predictive text (T9) is there, but not as good as it was in the good old days. It doesn't insert capital letters and you can't add words to your dictionary, so if you've a friend called Aoibheann, you had better get used to calling her 'A', or perhaps even 'a'. If you are like me and you have a penchant for capital letters at the beginning of a sentence, you will find yourself switching between input options. This in itself is a challenge. You have to cycle through the following options: Press # to switch between ABC, Abc, abc, 123, Predictive. Often, you press once too many times, or else the phone randomly skips one option and you have to cycle around again. All so you can write 'Hi', rather that 'hi'. I'm starting to get over my capital letter fixation.The browser is cumbersome and it is painfully slow. Images and videos are smaller than a postage stamp. You can't copy and paste text, so you have to manually (slowly) type. The camera is terrible by today's standards. The music player only seems to manage MP3, not WMA or WAV. There is no music streaming option - so you're either going to have to convert your file formats before transferring to the phone, or you will just add the MP3 version of George Michael's 'Faith' album that is somehow still on your computer and listen to 'I want your sex' on repeat.There is an app store of sorts, which is even less populated than the windows phone app store. There is an internet radio app, but it has no volume control. To adjust it, you have to close the app, go back to the main settings, or the main music app, adjust the volume and relaunch the internet radio app to see if you got it right. There is no podcast app, so you will have to download single episodes directly form the provider's website (which will most likely go into an 'unknown' album).Now for the positives. 1) All of the above.The frustrating nature of using this phone is the equivalent of putting that disgusting anti nail bite lotion on your stubby finger nails. It's horrible, but it works. You soon get over the compelling urge to dive on your phone every time a bit of anxiety creeps into your life. You start to re-engage with the world around you. You begin to notice all of the zombified smartphone users in the world and you become thankful that you are no longer one of them. You will realise that your desire for a $1500 folding phone is an absolutely nonsensical concept.Believe it or not, you can survive without being constantly connected. Believe it or not, you can survive without taking lots of pictures that you never look at until Google spoon feeds them up to you 5 years later. Believe it or not, you learn not to care about notches, screen ratios or Gorilla glass. Try it. You'll be glad you did. Soon you will realise that the world will not stop if your phone doesn't buzz in your pocket every 30 seconds, demanding your instant attention. If you must check your email, do it on your computer (you can use this phone as a WiFi hotspot). You will recover hours of your day. You might even find that your piles go away as you spend less time in the toilet. You won't be sitting on the potty reading calamitous news, or the latest Facebook post about the benefits of eating low carb, chick pea friendly falafels.They can distract our attention - but they'll never take our FREEDOM!

As of 21st May 2019 my Nokia 8110 4g's are both in the drawer and I have been obliged to buy another 'smart' phone, so I am working my way through three menu selections just to get to my phone book, which is how life is with a 'smart' phone:- unnecessarily complicated.I bought one Nokia 8110 4g because, reading the specification, it would do all I needed it to do. Unfortunately, it never did. So, at £60 the Nokia 8110 4g was half the price of a smartphone; and believing it possible that I had been sold a malfunctioning item, I bought another (for another £60) and it turned-out to be just the same.Specifically, there is no software to enable the 8110 4g to function with data exchange when connected to a PC. Neither is there any on-line support from the manufacturer and there are few forums offering help, or, more specifically, assurances that you are not alone in having a 'dodgy' handset. The in-car blue-tooth connectivity drops-out after perhaps ten minutes and is troublesome to re-engage. The battery capacity dropped from 2-days to just a few hours within two-months of purchase. The WiFi hotspot never worked at all. These defects were present on both handsets that I bought. There was no direct support from Nokia, the manufacturer. I, and many others I expect, have been 'conned' into buying an impractical, non-functional, gimmick.With my battery life now down to just a few hours, my phone will not keep working for one working day. Perhaps there is something wrong with the phone and I could get help under the 'warranty.' Unfortunately, Nokia technical support have not helped me get what I needed form this phone; a phone which, at least on paper, should have met my needs perfectly. The Nokia 8110 4g now looks to me like a cut-price execution of a good idea, with a poor battery and poor technical support this is the end of the road for the 'new' Nokia brand. I now need a replacement phone for use at work and Nokia is not going to be on my new list of preferred brands, in fact, I will be avoiding it.Revised review of 21st April.I have had no trouble at all making and receiving calls with this phone. Surfing the 'net and handling E-mails works pretty smoothly and reliably too, within the limitations of the push-button keypad.However, I have got nowhere with the WiFi Hotspot issue. Neither the manufacturer, nor my service provider have been able to help.The battery life of my 'phone was originally good for two days of standby and, perhaps, 15 minutes of calls each day. The battery life is deteriorating fast and now, after just a few months, it can not cope from 7 am to 10 pm of my usage.Revised review of 27th March 2019This phone has a WiFi Hot Spot facility; and, whereas the phone works fine when surfing the net on it's own, my phone will not function to provide a HotSpot for my laptop. Neither EE, nor Nokia have been able to help me sort this out. The laptop logs-on to the phone, but there is no internet service on the laptop.Neither can my phone be accessed as a device from my PC using a USB cable. I have tried various cables and the PC does charge the phone's battery, but the PC does not 'see' the phone as a device and it cannot access it in any way. Yes, I am running a fully-updated edition of Windows 10.This smartphone is smart enough for me. Texting may take a little longer, using numerical keys rather than a qwerty screen, but it does type the text you intended-to and does not respond hysterically to rain drops hitting the screen. It can handle E-mail, internet searches and the Calendar function synchronises with my Google Diary. The battery seems to last a couple of days and the mobile reception seems good. The actual ringer and speech volumes seem louder than most and need to be turned-down a little bit.A shortcut button (top right) above the 'select' button has shortcuts to WiFi; Volume; Screen Brightness; Cellular Data; Torch; Calculator; Bluetooth; Camera and Airplane Mode, all of which may be easily turned on or off in an instant.If it beeps in my pocket, then I press the Notices button, to the left, opposite the Shortcuts button, and the list of the most recent events is immediately displayed and may be examined, one-by-one, using the Select button, in the middle. The screen is not a touch screen, but it is a full-colour 35mm x 50mm viewing screen.