Nokia 8110 4G review

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 Jio multimedia streaming services, including local TV. The company even offers a pair of video out accessories to connect the JioPhone to a bigger screen and enjoy the content. There are even rumors of native WhatsApp and Facebook apps (it's even featured in some of the screenshots, but it's missing from our store).

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.