Nokia 8210 will always be the wonder of cellphone manufacturing since it was one of the smallest phones to come to the market. I loved the original, but I also like the refreshed version that Nokia Mobile announced in July 2022.

Our Abdulla spent a week playing with it and here is the first impression of the device. The Nokia 8210 4G is designed for simplicity, accessibility and ease of use according to Mr. Nokia. Also, since it is running on the Nokia S30+ operating system, you’ll be finding a full Snake game inside. The video is a quick review, but definitely not a full review of the device, and that will follow later.

I like the design of the phone although it does look to be a bit swollen ( its waistline measures at 13.8 mm). However, the slightly larger body helps improve the ergonomy, as well as the matt finish which makes it nice to the touch. This weighs the scale at just over 100 grams, meaning its about twice as light as your average smartphone. Abdulla had his hands on the sand version but you can get it in red (which I prefer) and blue. The keypad is spread nicely and the buttons are easy to touch. The large space between keys makes the phone great for playing games and makes it the ultimate Snake phone.

The screen is a fairly large 2.8” display, which is easy to read and comes with plenty of accessibility options to make the font larger for example, or make the layout even simpler to use. At the top, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a Flashlight, while the bottom houses the micro USB port for charging. On the back theres a single Loud speaker and a VGA Camera. This is an incredibly basic camera with a tiny resolution, so don’t expect to capture memorable pictures with this one sadly.

The back plate is removable, revealing a 1450 mAh battery inside. For a feature phone, this is a pretty good capacity and Nokia says you can get about 20 days of standby with dual SIM cards inside, although anything over 10 days shouldn’t be unrealistic. Under the battery are your dual SIM card slots and a Micro SD card slot to expand on the memory. You can use a card of up to 32 gigabytes, an important addition considering the device only comes with 128 megabytes of on board storage.

Just like the Nokia 5710 Xpress Audio, the Nokia 8210 4G also comes running on Nokia’s S30+ operating system, and the software experience is pretty much identical. You get a home screen which shows you all your important notifications, and the ability to quickly get into whichever app you want using shortcut keys or your d-pad keys. These are all customizable, so you can choose which key goes into which app based on your requirements. The Menu is a 3 by 3 grid of icons, but if you want something different you can change it into a list view, or a single icon per screen view for something even more simple.

The built in apps are: – Call history – Contacts – Gallery – Music player – Opera mini web browser – Messaging app – Camera – Facebook web – Snake – FM Radio, which also works wirelessly btw – Video player – Calender – Voice recorder – Alarm Clock – And a File manager

There are a couple of pre-installed games and utility apps such as a calculator, a convertor and a torch as an example. The 8210 4G can store up to 2000 contacts, which you can transfer from your android device using Bluetooth. It also has Bluetooth 5.0 so you can connect your wireless earbuds to it without consuming too much of its battery. It also supports 4G for both SIM cards, and LTE voice calls which actually sound fantastic on this device.

There are two things I’d love to see improved with this and future Nokia Originals. The first is the addition of a USB-C charging port and the second would be bringing some apps like Deezer or Whatsapp to the s30+ platform. The latter improvement might make feature phones smarter thus not a classic dumb phone, but hey, basic communication and streaming apps on a 4G capable phone should be a must. The addition of WiFi would also be nice since the phone could be used as a WiFi hotspot.

How do you like the new 8210? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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