Nokia 8810 4G to Compete With JioPhone as HMD Global Teases WhatsApp Support

When Reliance Jio introduced its JioPhone in the market, the upfront competitor of the JioPhone was the ‘Banana phone’ by HMD Global owned Nokia. The Nokia 8810 4G which succeeded the line-up of 8810 phones was termed to be a phone filled with ‘nostalgia’ gives its vintage slider design. However, the looks of this phone were deceiving since the phone came with the latest 4G VoLTE capabilities and functionalities like Google Search, Google Assistant and Maps. Jio announced that it would start pushing WhatsApp and YouTube support for JioPhone beginning August 15.

To counter this move by the Mukesh Ambani led telco, HMD Global has also issued new update saying that now the 8810 4G even would come with support for WhatsApp. It is notable that these feature phones which run on KaiOS have long missed the support for WhatsApp. Perhaps the missing support for the favourite chatting app was one of the reasons people resorted to buying low-end smartphones instead of taking a look at phones like JioPhone or the Nokia 8810 4G. However, with now support for WhatsApp on the way, this scenario might change.

Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product Officer at HMD Global, sent out a tweet on Thursday. The Tweet said “Oh look, WhatsApp on KaiOS! Looking forward to going [banana]s!.” This tweet highlights that HMD Global might be eyeing the launch of WhatsApp on KaiOS, which would bring the feature to the Nokia ‘banana phone’. If true, this will surely give an edge to the Nokia 8810 4G over the JioPhone. Although JioPhone has managed to garner 25 million users across the country, the availability of WhatsApp on Nokia 8810 4G might bring a big twist in the competition of feature phones.

Since we are on the topic of discussing the Nokia 8810 4G, it is notable that the dual-SIM (Micro+Nano) Nokia 8110 4G runs KaiOS-based Smart Feature OS and it comes with a 2.45-inch QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) display. The phone is powered by a 1.1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 205 SoC, paired with 512MB of LPDDR3 RAM. There is also a 2MP rear camera with LED flash.

The dimensions of the device are 33.45×49.3×14.9mm. The phone also packs 4GB of internal storage, and for connectivity options, it includes 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. The battery is a 1500mAh one which is slated to deliver to 9.32 hours of talk time on VoLTE and 25 days of standby time on LTE.