Nokia 110 Hotspot

[Elly Ker]

Idecided I wanted to leave my smartphone at home. It was a constant distraction that seemed to feed an addictive urge to itself. I wondered what the world would look like without having a smartphone as my constant companion.

In order to be able to do this, I needed to find a 'dumbphone', so that I would still be able to connect with friends, family and work while out. A dumbphone (also called 'feature phone') is the type of phone people used in the early days of cell phone technology. These robust devices have extended battery life and enable calling and texting. Some dumbphones have additional basic features, like a flash light, a notes app and maybe one or two games, Snake being a popular option. I began my research and looked for a feature phone that met these requirements:

The phone needed to be 4G compliant, because I was concerned about 2G and 3G networks becoming obsolete. This narrowed it down to just a handful of choices. I have had good experiences with Nokia devices in the past - the excellent battery life in particular - and went with the Nokia 8110. This phone is a reissue of the iconic 'banana phone' used in The Matrix. It is sold in black or bright yellow.

It felt good to leave my smartphone at home when heading out the first morning. This was similar to the liberating feeling I experienced when I first decided to keep my smartphone out of the bedroom. It always feels good to remove something you depend on in life, and discover you are fine without it.

The 4G hotspot feature worked well. Having a feature phone with hotspot capability was a deliberate compromise. I wanted freedom from smartphone addiction, but did not see the need for a hardline minimalist approach. When you are travelling, for example, it just is easier to be able to access the Internet on the go. When taking my kids to their weekend sporting or club activities, I would sometimes have several hours to kill on some cold field or in a noisy gym, and I wanted to be able to use the time to work or listen to podcasts. In these situations I would bring an additional screen out, connect to the Internet via the Nokia's hotspot, and disconnect again when finished.

The Nokia 8110's operating system is called KaiOS. KaiOS is a light-weight operating system designed for low budget devices, based on a now obsolete open source project called Firefox OS. It can run certain smartphone apps (browser app, messaging apps) on feature phones that have a screen with graphics capabilities. I read their documentation and liked that they aim to enable access to mobile technology and the Internet for more people by writing software for low-budget devices. I found the operating system intuitive to use.

It took a while to get used to texting with physical buttons. I missed the touch screen at first. The Nokia 8110 uses a grid of 3 x 4 buttons, with all the numbers, symbols and letters of the alphabet arranged across them. You have to press a button one or more times until the screen shows the letter or symbol you want. Once the desired letter or symbol appears, you pause for half a second, wait for the device to reset, and then you can move on to the next letter. This sounds more difficult than it is: there was a time when texting in this way was the norm. A better approach is to turn T9 predictive texting on, which makes relevant word options magically appear after the first two or three letters of a word have been typed. You do (sort of) get used to texting like this.

I am bilingual. Switching languages in T9 texting is clumsy at best, but a major stumbling block was that the phone's dictionaries could not be edited. There were some key words missing, which meant having to switch from T9 predictive texting to single-letter input texting mid-sentence - frankly, a pain. This is the main reason why I eventually had to switch to changes phones.

There were rumours that Google was interested in KaiOS. If true, this would be a step back in my attempts to de-Google my life and resist Big Tech's influence on me. I worried I might have to continue my search for a dumbphone if that did happen.2

I now use a Light Phone 2 as my phone. It has some of the same features as the Nokia 8110, but has a more modern feel, and, crucial, better texting. It is much more expensive. I'll devote a future post to the LP2.

My youngest child now needs to be able to phone or text me. Rather than buying a smartphone right away, I bought a simple Nokia 110 dumbphone and a prepaid SIM card. This is cheap and solves the problem of getting in touch.

I still leave my smartphone at home. It feels great. You do get a dystopian perspective on the world at times. When waiting for the train, you might find you're the only person on the platform who is looking up and around, with hundreds of people around you fixated on the palm of their hand, necks bent, faces looking down. This is not hyperbole, and it is an eerie sight.

The same reader pointed out that from KaiOS 2.5.2 onward, dictionaries can be edited. I am not able to find clear documentation on this. With KaisOS's own help page seemingly out-of-date, and no information about predictive text on Nokia's online manual for the 8110, it all feels vague. There are (older) discussions of mixed user experiences of the editable dictionary on Reddit.

When you use your phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot, you can share your phone's internet connection with other devices via Wi-Fi. To use your phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot, you need to set up your phone for internet.

I have a Nokia 3.1a (from Walmart), and it appears to be basically running stock android. Overall it seems to work well other than two annoyances. Can't go back to 3 buttons, stuck with gesture interface. And the annoyance that this thread is for. The mobile hotspot feature works as long as the screen is turned on.

As fun as it is setting the screen to time out after 30 minutes, I would love it, if it would stay on while the screen was off. I thought maybe the wifi chip was turning off. Google has hidden the "wifi on during sleep" setting, so using ADB I can confirm that wifi_sleep_policy is 2 (always on).

And, It looks like I found the solution. It appears that when the screen is off, Wifi was scanning. Since Wifi can't be turned on when the mobile hotspot is turned on at the same time, it would stop transmitting the hotspot signal.

It finds the hotspot and when I try to connect (after writing in password) "Connection to ***** has timed out, connection failed" It saves the connection and shows as saved but when tries to connect multiple times it says "wrong password" even it haven't been changed. After messing out the whole hotspot disappears from the wifi menu on my tablet, then it appears back when I reset network settings on iphone.

I have the same problem with my ipad pro 2018 hotspot. The interesting thing is, the hotspot works with another ipad wifi connecting to it and functioning, but an older android phone has the same problem as yours.

Restart the iPhone or iPad that provides Personal Hotspot and the other device that needs to connect to Personal Hotspot. Make sure that you have the latest version of iOS. On the iPhone or iPad that provides Personal Hotspot, go to Settings > General > Reset, then tap Reset Network Settings.

Actually "only" my laptop is not detecting "only" my mobile phone hotspot "HTC one E8" while all other systems are detecting my mobile hotspot, and also my laptop is detecting all other hotspots and running internet through them.

I have the exact same problem. My phone's hotspot gets detected by other phones, tablets, PCs etc. Also my phone's hotspot gets detected in other operating systems (e.g. Ubuntu Live CD, Remix OS) on my HP laptop but not on windows 10 OS(which I prefer to use everyday). By the way hotspots from other mobile phones get detected without any problem in the my current problematic windows 10. Moreover this problem didn't exist just after a few days of fresh windows 10 installation.

Ah, it's that time of the year again. A smartphone purchase time. Why? Because my current device isshowing signs of impending doom. Let me elaborate. In 2021, I got meself a Nokia X10. I deliberately chose a cheaper phone for my secondaryneeds, like travel, work, testing, stuff like that. And it served me reasonably well until just a fewweeks back when it started exhibiting problematic behavior.

The battery would suddenly drain. Usually after either using mobile data for a while or sharing themobile connection (hotspot). Instead of doing the usual week plus of slow discharge, the battery woulddrain within several hours. Either the battery is dying, or the hardware has gone faulty, and there'sover-consumption by this or that part, like say the mobile antenna transmitting at peak power nonstop.Whatever the cause, the phone needs replacement. But before we do that, I wanna summarize the last twoyears. Let's.

When you buy a phone, you say byebye to some cash (typically). And then, when the device dies, youcan do some simple maffs. Divide the total cost by the number of months of usage, and you get anestimate on how expensive or cheap the device really was.

Before the Nokia, I had a Moto G6. It was also an el-cheapo, and it died withinjust two years of purchase. I needed a replacement, and because of nostalgia (over Nokia), I went forthis X10 phone. Two years later, we're in the same situation again. Four years, roughly 500 dollarsworth of equipment. That translates to about 120 dollars per year, or a very neat 10 dollars/month.

In other words, if you get a device that costs 700 dollars but lasts 6 years, you get the same valuefor money, more or less. Indeed, I've always claimed that more expensive hardware is actually LESSexpensive in the long run, and this motto has served me well with laptops and desktops. But I've beenreluctant to apply the same formula for smartphones, because I don't use them much. For me, a phone isa phone. It ain't a portal of enlightenment. Sure, they have their purpose, they can even be fun anduseful. But would I spent 1,000 dollars on a phone? Well, I've never done that. The most was around600-ish or so.

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