Nokia 8110: First impression

Why did I buy the new Nokia 8110, a remake of an old Nokia feature phone from the Matrix?

Simple: To use it less.

I was addicted to my smart phone. I kept opening it up whenever I had the opportunity. When we were out on a walk and I got bored, I picked up my phone. If there was a spare second, I picked up my phone. I kept diving in there to read news, articles and email.

A few years ago I tried to swap my smart phone with a small, really dumb feature phone and it didn't work. I came up with a few requirements based on the experience.

I wanted a feature phone that supported:

• 4G and tethering
  (that way I could still use it for work and connect to the Internet using other, better devices)
• nano sim cards
  (so I could move the card back and forth between my iPhone and Nokia phone and not wreck the phone with a sim size converter)
• Telegram and podcasts

The Nokia 8110 has almost all of these. It's mostly the app offerings that are lacking.

Voice UI: an unexpected bonus

That dumb feature phone has Google Assistant. That means I can dictate messages and ask questions. It works surprisingly well.

There are two catches so far: There's poor integration with apps. Asking it to show directions doesn't open the Google Map app, and it would be nice if voice was like an alternative keyboard in any app where you can type. Something that's similar to how it works on Android and iOS.

Secondly: My phone is set to Norwegian, but it only supports English so far. Google is about to release Google Assistant for Norwegian, and I'm hoping it will become accessible on this phone (not betting onit). I'm really not going to send messages to my friends in English just because that's what my phone can handle.

My experience so far

I'm itching! I pick up my yellow brick phone, slide it open just to realize I can't do anything with it, and put it away again. It will pass. I beg that it will pass.

Sharing the Internet connection was very simple, although I did have to go looking inside settings to turn it on. But when it's on, it's on. (Much unlike my iPhone where it keeps deactivating if the internet sharing option isn't visible. It's very annoying).

It couldn't connect to my Bluetooth keyboard, so I couldn't cheat the system that way either.

The browser acts like it has support for notifications, but I think the browser has to be open for it to work. It might also have some issues with heavy web sites. Even though it has 5G/LTE connection, the browser spent many seconds to load some web pages. Simple pages loaded much faster.

The result is that while web.telegram.org works, it's really slow and I don't get any notifications.

I also long for a podcast app. I often listen to podcasts while I do other stuff, and since this is basically a continuation of Firefox OS, I may be able to force this podcast app to work.

Conclusion

So far it's just what I want. I'm typing this on a laptop that's tethering with the Nokia 8110 and it works like a charm.

I'll have to use it some more to see if it works as a daily driver, but so far I'm optimistic.

So long SnapChat, and thanks for all the fish.