2021-07-03 - Nokia 8110 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Ow bummer... I've written some nice story about an old second hand Nokia 8110 i've purchased to use as a 4g modem for internet tethering. (Instead of using my company's smartphone). However, i managed to overwrite the file i've just written with the the gophermap of this phlog... Ugh... I will write some more about the 8110 later here i suppose... Oh Unix and your ruthless obedience to do whatever i incorrectly tell you to do... 2021-07-16 - Lets try again... ------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, two weeks later now, lets try this again, without messing things up :) Since i didn't want to use my company's smartphone for its internet connection, (which i did incidentally) i've purchased an old second hand Nokia 8110 to act as a simple (and dumb) 4g modem. This 8110 dumbphone is capable of tethering a 4g connection to my laptop over USB or WIFI. In combination with a cheap 1gb-a-month data bundle on simcard, i'm able to browse the internet. As my internet needs are rather modest nowadays - since i typically only browse using lynx anyway - this is ideal for me. The Nokia 8110 runs KaiOS, and unfortunately comes preinstalled with a small bundle of bloatware, which cannot be easily removed; Examples are some Google apps (ugh), Twitter and some games that i don't want. Apparently with some tools, the phone can be temporarly rooted so that the bloatware's "uninstall" option becomes enabled. However, i haven't looked into that yet. (but i should) It would have been nice if Nokia/HMD kept the phone clear of this bloatware, but being a dumbphone, the apps haven't really bothered me much, since i simply havent started them.... The phone is only used as a modem, so i keep using my trusty old second (or third) hand Nokia 108 as my main phone. One thing i missed on the Nokia8110, is the ability to monitor and limit data usage. On android this option is quite handy, however, the Nokia doesn't do this. Therefore, i've installed vnstat on my machine to keep track of the data usage of my laptop. As i'm now working with vnstat for a couple of weeks, i have to say the program does it's job quite well. It even gives estimates on the expected data use, based the usage of the past days. All in all, i'm quite happy with the Nokia 8110. If i would have happened to run into a Nokia 220, i would have probably preferred that phone, as it also has 4g capabilities, but it lacks the "fancypants matrix-style" sliding front. As i don't like this moving part on the 8110, the 220 would have suited me better perhaps... But hey, i happened to stumble onto this old and used 8110 for a cheap price, and it functions very well as a 4g modem. I'm really happy that i can use an actual dumbphone for this now, and that my company phone can stay where it belongs; in a drawer at the company, waiting till the weekend is over.