Banana Phone
Created: 2020-11-19 (12:00:00) — Modified: 2025-06-14 (08:33:22)Status: completed
2020
I swapped to a new phone late last year. I’ve removed my sim card from the Oppo phone I was using and inserted it now into this new Nokia. My new phone doesn’t have a touch-screen, but a numeric keypad. It’s slightly curved. And it’s bright banana yellow.
The Nokia 8110 received mixed-to-poor reviews on its release a couple years ago. Advertised as a dumb-phone with smartphone bits like the google assistant and whatsapp, people seem to have on the whole found it slow and frustrating to use. Typing messages on the numeric keypad takes an arduously long time. The internet browser is finicky and slow. Youtube is slow. Snake is slow. Maps are slow. The app store is empty. Who is developing apps for this thing?
The negative reviews are all true. As a smart-dumb-phone it’s a failure. But for someone trying to correct their digital habits it’s perfect. On my Oppo it was too easy to waste time checking messenger programs, browsing, or watching youtube. In banana mode on the other hand, there is ittle choice but to use the phone less. The first week after switching, I’d pick the phone up out of habit and then have to put it back down when I realised there was nothing I could do on it. Yes, the smart things are there but they’re too broken to elicit the instant dopamine hit. The phone is slow enough to disrupt my impulsive patterns.
Full disclosure, though. I didn’t really use specific apps like uber and I didn’t depend on whatsapp and messenger, so I’ve probably had an easier time than most in disconnecting. Switching to a dumbphone banana mode in 2020 means giving up a lot of conveniences or at least having to find workarounds. The banana at least can cast a wifi hotspot. You could always keep a smartphone around for times where you need an uber or the gps.
Bad news: the banana comes preinstalled with bloat games and a twitter app. There is no option to just uninstall them. Good news: the banana can be easily hacked to remove these apps. There is a whole website dedicated to just this called banana hackers, a fascinating space in and of itself.
About a month in, the novelty of using the phone has worn off but thankfully none of the frustrations of using it have been unbearable. I miss being able to use emojis but I don’t miss habitually losing all my free time on the internet. It’s hard to say if I’m actually using my time more productively but then there’s only so much you can blame modern technology for.
Bonus: if you buy the bright yellow version of the phone, you’ll be too embarrassed to use it in public, ensuring that you will keep your screen time to a minimum.
2024
Five years after the fact, I returned to the banana phone, having at some point replaced it with but then sat on and broken another smartphone. I don’t miss the smartphone, which very quickly recolonised my free time but which was clotted with bloatware and operated at a level just above catanoia. I still don’t think the Nokia 8110 was ever a good phone but in the world we now inhabit there are no good phones. There is no good technology, just the technology we hate a little less.
Having now switched back, though, I am faced with what may be the true end of the road for the banana phone. 3G sevices are scheduled to end in Australia. 4G may be a capability beyond this plucky yellow device. I routinely receive messages from my carrier warning me the end is near. Time will only tell if this dumbphone can make the transition into the new telecommunications-era.
Endmatter
Tags: @completed @material-things @reflections
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