Nokia 8110 4G Will Get WhatsApp, Announcement Comes After JioPhone Update

Reliance Industries (RIL) on Thursday unveiled a host of new updates and product launches at their it's 41st annual general meeting (AGM). One of the updates involved the JioPhone receiving WhatsApp and YouTube from July 15. Another was the launch of the new JioPhone 2 which features a horizontal screen viewing, QWERTY keypad, Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp. Notably, the JioPhone runs on the KaiOS mobile operating system. According to Reliance, both these features come in light of the feedback JioPhone customers have provided to the company.

Also read: Reliance Launches High-End JioPhone 2 at Rs 2,999

Soon after the update by Reliance on the JioPhones, HMD Global made an announcement hinting at it’s new ‘banana phone’ (Nokia 8110 4G) getting support for WhatsApp and YouTube as well. The Nokia 8110 4G also runs on KaiOS and hence the update comes now. HMD Global’s Chief Product Head, Juho Sarvikas, retweeted KaiOS technology’s tweet on the JioPhone announcement of support for social media apps and captioned it “Oh look, #Whatsapp on #KaiOS! Looking forward to going (picture of a banana)"

The Nokia 8110 4G was announced back at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Barcelona alongside the Nokia 8 Sirocco, Nokia 7 Plus and Nokia 6 (2018). HMD Global has now come up with a 4G version of the Nokia 8110. With the launch, the company aimed to bring back the age-old trend of 'slider phones'. However far-fetched that idea might have sounded at the time, the new Nokia 8110 does look appealing on many fronts. The phone supports Google apps like Google Assistant, Google Search and Google Maps. It even has a re-worked version of the classic Snake game. However, HMD Global had said that the banana phone does not support WhatsApp.

Only time will tell as to when the Nokia 8110 4G would come to India, however, WhatsApp and YouTube should soon be a part of the banana phone’s repertoire. When it comes to specifications, the Nokia 8110 4G has a 2.45-inch QVGA (240x320 pixels) display. It draws power from a 1.1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 205 SoC, coupled with 512MB of LPDDR3 RAM. The handset has a 2-megapixel rear camera sensor with an LED flash. It has 4GB onboard storage and measures it at 133.45x49.3x14.9mm. On the connectivity front, the phone has 4G VoLTE with hotspot functionality, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.1, GPS/ A-GPS, Micro-USB, FM radio, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Nokia’s banana phone comes with a 1500mAh battery that is said to deliver up to 9.32 hours of talk time on VoLTE and 25 days of standby time on LTE.

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