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Nokia 5110 – Back from the Dead (2022)
- blixt 2y agoI was hoping to find a part 2, but since part 1 was written over 2 years ago I guess there's not much chance of that...
- roygbiv2 2y agoYeah, not really a complete story is it.
- Rnewbs 2y agoIt was not, infact, easier than he thought.
- Double_a_92 2y agoYup. This is nothing more than "Hmm, this Nokia has its physical UI on a separate board... maybe I could use that somehow".
- nuker 2y agoYep, all bait, no meat
- alnwlsn 2y ago> "Thanks mostly to the phones age, interfacing with the UI board will be rather trivial" I guess part 2 was left as an exercise for the reader.
- rollcat 2y agoNot that difficult, DIY dumbphones are mostly case, buttons, display, etc. https://web.archive.org/web/20190827183214/http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190827183214/http://alumni.med...
- dotancohen 2y agoAnd a proprietary blob for actually communicating with the tower.
- rollcat 2y agoWhat are the alternatives? SDR? How's that with energy usage? Regional regulations? Not cynical, just actually interested in practical answers and trade-offs.
- hackertux 2y agoLooking for someone who can breathe new life into old phones, like Singer does with some Porsche models.
- rbanffy 2y agoI'd kill for an EV 914. Although I also loved the sound of that little engine.
- Etheryte 2y agoWhile I really like the idea, I think we're still too far out tech wise to make it a reality in a way that it would live up to the dream. EVs of today are really heavy and even with a fairly small range, I fear the weight from the batteries would butcher any kind of driving experience for a car like that. In time though, I hope we get plenty of old cars retrofitted to be EVs as the tech becomes lighter, cheaper and more standardized.
- rbanffy 2y agoThe 914 was always more toy than car anyway, so a short range is not really a deal breaker.
- toast0 2y agoPeople have been making EV VW Beetle since forever. The 914 is just a weird looking Beetle. :P Probably have to accept it would be a short range car for going to work in warm but not hot weather and not a touring car.
- Etheryte 2y agoThe point isn't that it can't be done, EV conversions have been done for decades at this point, but that you'll get a car that's a whale compared to the original.
- jdietrich 2y agohttps://canev.com/products/porsche-914-ev-conversion-kit-with-hyper9-144v-drive-system-battery-pack https://canev.com/products/porsche-914-ev-conversion-kit-wit... https://www.electricclassiccars.co.uk/products/electric-classic-porsche-conversion-kit https://www.electricclassiccars.co.uk/products/electric-clas...
- j_leboulanger 2y agoSound incredible ! I like the word "simply" in this sentence > i will simply be able to recreate the baseboard with the new 4G module, a microcontroller, and some audio processing and power management circuitry and it will be able to seamlessly fit inside the phone. Seems like a bigger project than the author would let us think ! But I hope to see the PCB soon !
- trymas 2y agoEspecially funny as article is from 2022 Nov.
- xattt 2y agoAuthor conjured a primordial black hole by working on an Nokia and was never heard from again.
- zokier 2y agoWell, I wouldn't call it trivial, but it's not completely outlandish idea. There is prior art in this Ringo kit, which does almost 90% of what's required here: https://github.com/CircuitMess/CircuitMess-Ringo https://github.com/CircuitMess/CircuitMess-Ringo
- beretguy 2y agoI still have it, haven't put it together yet. I've heard it doesn't actually work with carriers.
- grubbs 2y agoWonder if this would be possible for my Kindle DX 3G? It has no Wi-Fi but I still hold onto it.
- wkat4242 2y agoYou have no 3G networks anymore? Here in Spain we still get the full set, 2G through 5G :)
- qiqitori 2y agoThe Quectel BG95 is a similar modem chip. If you want to add low-bandwidth connectivity in a project you can just get a BG95 or this Simcom as a devkit and e.g. a 1NCE SIM card, hook up the UART pins to your microcontroller and you're off to go. (You may need a logic level converter in between)
- walterbell 2y agoTwo annotated board-repair photos for Nokia 6110 / 5110: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YF5WDLLK2nA/RhE6QSReO7I/AAAAAAAABEs/IApfn-83Eqw/s1600/Nokia+6110%285110%29-B.JPG https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YF5WDLLK2nA/RhE6QSReO7I/AAAAAAAAB... https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YF5WDLLK2nA/RhE44SReO6I/AAAAAAAABEk/CmUSv3NGHX4/s1600/Nokia+6110%285110%29_B.JPG https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YF5WDLLK2nA/RhE44SReO6I/AAAAAAAAB... Disassembly video (2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdhlOlx2gxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdhlOlx2gxY Schematics: https://www.nodevice.com/service-manuals/telephone/nokia/6110/1221 https://www.nodevice.com/service-manuals/telephone/nokia/611...
- wslh 2y agoI recenly bought a Nokia 6300, not as a main mobile phone but because it includes Tethering, it is very light, changeable battery, practical as a mobile hotspot. It also has WhatsApp though.
- rjsw 2y ago> It also has WhatsApp though. Not for much longer. I also got a Nokia 6300 to use for tethering and it works well for that.
- wwoessi 2y agoI would pay for a Nokia 5110 that is exactly like then except for the 4g call/sms part
- paxys 2y agoWell good news for you – Nokia still sells plenty of these kinds of phones (just not in the USA). It’ll be pretty easy to import them from a developing market, on eBay or elsewhere. E.g. see https://www.amazon.in/s?k=nokia https://www.amazon.in/s?k=nokia
- jdietrich 2y agoHMD do sell a few Nokia-branded phones in the US; most of their international range is available on Amazon US. https://www.hmd.com/en_us/nokia-225-4g?sku=16QENL11A04 https://www.hmd.com/en_us/nokia-225-4g?sku=16QENL11A04
- dagoss 2y agoI've had four HMD phones, two feature and two Android smart phones. The hardware usually feels really good, but all of them have had poor phone quality (even on different carriers). People would tell me if sound like I was underwater or far away from the phone while not using speaker), sometimes it would just drop the audio and I couldn't hear the other person, etc. I guess I still have nostalgia for some of the late Nokia phones, like the n900 and e72. My current Android HMD has been fine, but still has call issues (people often don't hear me for like 5-8 seconds when I call them; speak from just randomly stops working during calls).
- rjsw 2y agoI have had three HMD phones now, all have had very good call quality when used in Europe.
- hackertux 2y agoI think what parent meant is that he would be willing to pay good money to anyone who could clone the 5110 to use 4g and keep the same screen.
- rob74 2y ago> While the Memes generally refer to the 3210 or the 3310, the classic 5110 is no less a condender for most robust general use mobile phone available. The reason for that (I think) is not that the 5110 is less robust, but that the 3210 and 3310 were much more widespread - they came onto the market when mobile phones really started to become widespread, while the 5110 (their predecessor), with its stub antenna and bulkier size, looks a bit like the last representative of the previous era...
- ljf 2y agoTotally! When I got my Nokia 5146 (still basically a 5110) - you had to pay I think £50 for the phone, plus the contract of £15 a month. A month or two later you could get the 3210 for free, plus a better contract from orange, that took advantage of the MMS options - plus had the programmable ringtones which was soooooo much cooler than the 5110. I was lucky to jump from the 5110 to the 8210, and then to a 8250 which I adored and used on an off through to 2007 - when I moved to the E61 then e71 - which both still hold a very special place in my heart!
- dfox 2y ago3210 did not support MMS, but EMS with some semi-proprietary extensions. Sending images and ringtones over EMS was generally not interoperable between different vendors. MMS is much later technology where the user data go over HTTP, which implies at least WAP support and GPRS to be really practical.
- ljf 2y agoYou are totally correct - I was thinking of 'picture messages' which this could send. I was only a little jealous of the 3210 as i thought it was quite ugly really, but the 3310 seemed a heap better, especially with the blue led (which is what sold me on the 8250).
- 2Gkashmiri 2y ago3230 Was a joy to use the joystick hehe
- haunter 2y agoJust a wishful plan, nothing happened as it seems (post is 2 years old)
- grujicd 2y agoMy old Nokia 6310i from 2003 was in use until a year or two ago with my mother in law. And with the original battery lasting for days! Then finally on/off button broke. While nowadays phones not only have a glass in the front, which is understandable, but in the back too. So fragile. What would grandpa Nokia say to his ancestors?
- lifestyleguru 2y agoI had this phone, sometimes from boredom I was tossing and catching it and it occasionally fell on the ground. Try doing this with these miserable fragile iPhones and Galaxies. Unfortunately one day it cracked while falling and I regret so much throwing it, the 6310i would have been working until today.
- IndrekR 2y ago5110 was fantastic. I did not realize this before, but about 10 years ago needed a replacement phone quickly and had an old 5110 in storage. Charged up, powered up, switched on and in less than 10 seconds could make a call. Fantastic booting speed, very fast phone. Found a video where the boot-up speed/usage are shown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d40KwKvCGZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d40KwKvCGZo
- klauswunderlich 2y agoNokia 5110 but with Android and full QUERTY keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7VOflsuVS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7VOflsuVS4
- apetresc 2y agoI'm not too well-versed in hardware - is it really that easy to swap out a 2G modem with a 4G modem and have it "just work" without touching the drivers? Even if the baseband/modem chips miraculously do conform perfectly to some I/O protocol at the hardware level despite being multiple generations apart, wouldn't the difference in timings break whatever firmware the Nokia 5110 has, which was expecting only a single very specific hardware configuration? Or is the author planning to also hack the drivers?
- grishka 2y agoThese phones didn't have the modern smartphone architecture where there are separate CPU cores for the user OS and the modem. It's one single CPU core that does both the UI and all the low-level stuff required for communication with the tower. They were going to replace the board that contains that CPU and all the radio circuitry with one they were going to design from scratch around that 4G module.
- Double_a_92 2y agoI think the idea here is to basically create a new phone, but use the original case, buttons and display.
- hackertux 2y agoI just wish I could buy a phone that has the same look and feel (sound, screen, etc.) as the 5110, is compatible with modern networks, and has a modern battery.
- guerrilla 2y agoNo, of course not. That's why this article is two years old without an update.
- numpad0 2y agoNo, it's like reusing keyboard and monitor for a new PC. This phone uses those parts fully separated from the computer part that the author argues it should be possible to remake just the host computer part to recreate the experience. 4G doesn't even have a proper voice call support, and substitutes that with a carrier grade Discord type thing called VoLTE(oversimplification). Zero chance old firmware could work.
- fuzztester 2y agoaround the same time that the original 5110 was getting popular, I bought my first mobile phone, a used Motorola Amio. It was quite big, with big buttons, and looked somewhat like a walkie talkie. I liked it and used it for about a year, before I got another make of phone. I searched and found some images that look something like it: https://www.google.com/search?q=motorola+amio+phone https://www.google.com/search?q=motorola+amio+phone
- ljf 2y agoI remember that Motorola, I was opening a student bank account and they offered a free 3 year student railcard (to buy discount tickets), a camera or that motorola - I was just about to get it when the lack of Snake and also the pretty poor contract it came on made me jump for the Railcard. But still felt wild at the time that they were 'giving away' a mobile phone.
- fuzztester 2y agoha, nice story. I can relate to it. but the US practice of a contract thing for phones seems to me to be a scam, kind of like a lock-in scheme. in fact i am sure that it is that. because then they have you by the balls, financially, for their gain and your loss, and you can bet your ass that they will exploit that position, if not now, then in the future. It is highway robbery, IMO. I wonder why people in the US do not understand this. Or is it related to what I have heard, but not sure whether it is true, that a lot of people in the US do not have much savings, and so live paycheck to paycheck? and is it also related to the constant desire for consumption, which I've also read about? Fuck, that's pretty bad, if so. I can understand that there can be many historical reasons why a lot of people are now in that state, due to past and current oppression, non-level playing field, etc. I am not judging, just commenting and asking. In at least some other countries, including India, mobile providers or mobile phone sellers trying to lock in people to such schemes, would be laughed out of court, so to speak, by the vast majority of consumers, IMO, although I have have heard of some such schemes that do exist, and some people probably do go for them, for short term reasons, due to being cash-strapped.
- grishka 2y agoIt's such an odd problem from my perspective as someone who doesn't live in a western country! We still have 2G on all carriers and seemingly no plans to shut it down. So, if you want to use an old (GSM) phone, it's a non-issue, you just pop your modern SIM card into it and it just works :)
- shitloadofbooks 2y agoMy country (Australia) in the past month shut down 3G and 2G was shut down in 2017. The 3G shutdown was ...problematic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIJavqEzEIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIJavqEzEIw
- Roark66 2y agoIn my country (Poland) a bunch of networks recently switched off 3G and a lot of 4G services in favour of LTE only... A pretty good mobile service I enjoyed at my country home for over a decade had suddenly turned to crap... (at least I have faster Internet access now, but I can't strap a directional antenna to a mobile phone).
- voytec 2y ago> bunch of networks recently switched off 3G and a lot of 4G services in favour of LTE only You mean 2G and 3G in favor of 3.95G LTE, AKA 4G.
- Aeglaecia 2y agothis was on the back burner for so long , very glad to see someone get it done. the amount of e waste caused by dropping 2g and 3g is insane.
- josephernest 2y agoPro tip: don't buy the new versions "Nokia 3210 2024" and similar models. I did, two times, with slightly different models, and they are of exceptionally poor quality: dead after one year, very buggy firmware. The customer support is an AI with no real answer. They recommended to install an app "from the Google Play app store" which is nonsense for a dumbphone. They are very cheap noname phones, branded with the name Nokia, but I am sure no Nokia R&D team was involved in these products.
- jcul 2y agoYeah I bought a Nokia 2660. After probably a month or so the hinge brackets broke from normal use. Nokia refused to refund / repair it saying that only a drop could have caused it. I replaced it with an AGM M8 which is a great dumbphone.
- ninjin 2y agoThank you both for the warnings. I have been looking for a "dumb" phone and arrived at the Nokia and now I am eyeing up the AGM M8 FLIP Security+ [1] instead. [1]: https://www.agmmobile.com/products/agm-m8-security https://www.agmmobile.com/products/agm-m8-security
- 0_____0 2y agoI'm noticing that the pricing is completely different on my desktop and mobile - I'm seeing the M8 Flip Security+ for $79 on mobile and $116 after sale cuts on desktop. I don't think it's a currency issue, I think it's a "my VPNs are set to exit IPs in different countries" thing. High in CA (with currency set to Global US$), low with Swedish IP.
- ninjin 2y agoTry AliExpress, the prices there look unbeatable and are from AGM official stores at that.
- stuaxo 2y ago
- m4tthumphrey 2y agoThe 5110 was also my first phone and still probably my favourite ever. I racked up a £300 bill on month 1 and had to essentially do my paper round for free to pay it off. Good times!
- yapyap 2y agolol so he made this part 1 Nov 28 2022 and then disappeared
- michalhosna 2y ago> The Nokia 5110 is a 2G telephone, meaning it uses the original 2G mobile network to communicate. This network has long been decommissioned in most western countries, including Australia. In Europe, 3G is shutting down, but 2G as a fallback seems to be staying for years to come. > However, 2G networks were still available as of 2023 in most parts of the world, while notably excluding the majority of carriers in North America, East Asia, and Australasia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G AFAIK, in the US, T-Mobile still has a 2G network.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoIt is being deprecated now. Comparison map: https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/comments/1eppo3p/tmobile_usa_2g_will_soon_start_to_shut_down_on/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/comments/1eppo3p/tmobile... https://imgur.com/a/Zg6XYch https://imgur.com/a/Zg6XYch https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/t-mobile-network-evolution https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/t-mobile-network-e... >Capacity and coverage of T-Mobile's 2G (GSM) network is expected to change starting as early as September 1, 2024.
- cardanome 2y ago2G is still strong in Germany as some industrial applications rely on it. It is not going to be deprecated any time soon. Maybe once they run out of spare parts. Germany's mobile network is worse than most third world countries. Working on a train? No internet for you! Going a few meters outside a settlement? Might not even be able to do calls.
- morsch 2y agoSuch an exaggeration. >92% of the area is served with 5G. Calls are available in 98%-99% of the area (though sometimes just from one of the operators). Some trains were built in a way that blocks reception, though those have had repeaters or wifi for a while. I know plenty of people who work from the train every day. Sources: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2024/20240613_MoFu.html https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung... https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2024/20240314_MoFu.html https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrain-Repeater https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrain-Repeater https://www.heise.de/en/news/Mobile-communications-for-rail-customers-Network-coverage-further-expanded-9962559.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Mobile-communications-for-rail-...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- shahzaibmushtaq 2y agoHMD (Human Mobile Devices)[0] has exclusive rights to produce phones under the Nokia brand. Now, HMD has decided to drop the Nokia name from the new phones because it's not helping them. Nokia has lost its glory, and HMD took the right step to use its name. People who have old Nokia phones should keep them as it is like a lost meaningful art. [0] https://www.hmd.com https://www.hmd.com
- palata 2y agoWhat I learned with this article is the English idiom: "Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched." Which in my language translates to: "You should not sell the bear’s skin before killing it." Not that it appears in the article, but rather because the author wrote the blog post before doing the thing. Which results in a blog post essentially saying "here is the cool thing I plan to do", which was apparently never done. Anyway, I'm happy to know about counting chickens now :-).
- p0w3n3d 2y agoWe have the same in Polish as well
- grishka 2y agoWhich language is it? In mine it's almost the same, "don't divide the skin of a non-killed bear".
- anonu 2y agoI am going to guess Russian.
- juanramos 2y agoSpanish I'd say
- habaryu 2y agoIt's in French. Not sure if it's exclusive to French but it's commonly used.
- jhncls 2y agoIn French, the bear is killed. In Spanish, he is chased. In Dutch, he is shot. The Spanish look adventurous, and the French straight-forward.
- 0_____0 2y agoIt's possible the author didn't expect to have a few thousand Hacker Nerds looking at their blog post already, with all the critique and pressure that entails.
- dclowd9901 2y agoI was excited to learn the new word "eniminable", but I think you meant "inimitable", OP.
- zoomablemind 2y agoShould be marked as [2022]. Indeed, the announced Part 2 has not been linked so far...
- JimmyWilliams1 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sourcepluck 2y agoAre there any not outrageously expensive, tough, battery-goes-for-weeks, does calls and SMS and wifi hotspot and maybe even F-Droid but a small screen, and maybe has at least LTE so that it is safe to be used for years, type devices? I've looked once or twice, and found two categories: one was expensive phones leaning in to the "super slick minimalist" thing, which looked like they could be good devices and cover what I'm looking for, but again, 300 dollars or more type range. The other was remakes of the "old classics", which were cheap, and claimed to cover roughly what I was hoping for, but are actually horrible quality, as another commenter said. Maybe there's no solution, and those expensive ones are the only good option. Exceptions, or surprises, please throw them at me!
- asdem1 2y agoIt won't go for weeks, but days, and it takes some sideloading and finagling to get certain apk's to work, but I use a Sonim XP3+. Runs Android Go, big battery that lasts a while, I can use Signal Messenger on it (though not super well), and it's tank-like in its construction. If you want to take that up a notch in terms of build quality, Kyocera sells a similar phone, the Dura XV Extreme+, which is roughly $250. r/dumbphones is a decent resource. Unsuprisingly, it's not a large community, but it's a good place to get people's anecdotes about specific models.
- Syonyk 2y agoYeah, look at the Sonim XP3+/XP5+ (depending if you want a flip phone or candybar). Rugged, Android-Go powered "Call/SMS/MMS" devices, week and a half on battery if you leave it on constantly, hotspot, and you can, if you insist, sideload apps. Just, don't expect any modern Android app to be usable on a 240x320 screen with keyboard input only. If you use a Bluetooth mouse, it's marginally less-awful, but still, don't expect much to work. I did get KDE Connect working - that allows you to send text messages with a real computer keyboard. It's not as nicely integrated as the Apple iMessage ecosystem, but it does allow for sending texts without having to T9 the whole thing. Alternately, the better option is to just move longer conversations to email or an actual phone call. One of these shouldn't run you much over about $150 (in the US), and they work fine on the super cheap MVNO operators out there. My writeup from about a year ago: https://www.sevarg.net/2023/12/30/more-flip-phone-sonim-xp3-plus/ https://www.sevarg.net/2023/12/30/more-flip-phone-sonim-xp3-...
- upofadown 2y agoI think that you would still end up with the inferior battery life of 4G. That was the killer feature of those phones. Our technology seems to have degraded in that regard over the years.
- aziaziazi 2y ago4G drain faster our batteries but we also now download multiple orders of magnitude more data than we used to with the 5110 (I count voice call as "data"). Videos and advertisements being the usual suspects… Battery would probably last a lot more if I only play snakes and use the phone app.
- upofadown 2y agoTwice as long in practice. But that still only gets you 2 days or so.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoBring back the 9210!
- wkat4242 2y agoIt was really not a great phone. It was a really quirky combo of an organiser and a phone that didn't have much of a coupling between them. The keyboard was heavy to press and useless to type more than a line or two. It was really the worst of both worlds.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoBut it looked cool at the time ;)
- NoboruWataya 2y agoGiven the lack of a Part 2, I'm guessing some of the optimism in the article about how easy it would be was misplaced. I know very little about this stuff but presumably he would need to write some code for the SIM7600SA that would allow it to interface seamlessly with the UI board, which sounds far from trivial (unless maybe the UI board is very well documented)?
- amoorthy 2y agoSorry for tangent but any recommendations for small smart phone (i.e. <6" screen)? I like my iPhone 12 mini with its 5" screen (though it is glitchier than one would hope) but now all phones seem to be 6"+ which is hard to fit into a pocket or even manipulate with one hand. I know the Samsung ZFlip 6 and Motorola Razr+ are small, though rather pricey at $800-1000. Any opinions from folks on reliability/usability etc of these? I am embarrassed to say I have some Apple lock-in with earbuds and even basic conveniences like "find-my" working for my children's watches so not sure if these are worth staying with Apple for, even if I dislike their latest devices.
- pfych 2y agoIt's a shame that even if OP did complete this project the phone would likely not work in Australia where their based post 3G shutdown! The government mandates that telcos block all phones that cannot make VoLTE emergency calls, and instead of figuring out how to do this, the telcos maintain a whitelist of phones. This has led to a large amount of even modern 4G & 5G phones getting bricked[^1]. [^1]: https://medium.com/@jamesdwho/australias-3g-shutdown-why-your-4g-5g-phone-is-now-blocked-5900cd5361e2 https://medium.com/@jamesdwho/australias-3g-shutdown-why-you...
- 404mm 2y agoI know the 5110 is one of the unbreakable OG’s but I’d much rather see 6210/6310 brought back to life. That phone looks cool even for 2024 and the ergonomic design is still usable. 5110 was so bulky!
- windex 2y agoI have one of those beautiful n900 phones lying around. It's even today one of the sturdiest phones Ive used. I need to find a battery
- rtchau 2y agoSome say this brave adventurer met his end when the 5110 fought back against the insult to its sacred internals. Others say bestowing the power of 4G on a device as formidable as the 5110 opened a portal to realms hitherto unknown, to which our hero travelled, and we'll meet him again someday. But my guess? He's still out there, trying to make the dream of a 4G-enabled 5110 a reality. And I still have hope for a "Part 2".