Nokia 9110 Communicator, a foldable phone from 1998 — How does it work?

Testing one of the first Smartphones in the world

It was the late 1990s, a time when a typical phone like the Nokia 5110 had a black-and-white screen with an 84x48 resolution, and phone call rates were about 50 cents per minute. Phones did not have a touch screen or any ability to install 3rd-party apps, and opening the list of contacts or playing a Snake game on a tiny 1.5" screen was the maximum that most of the phones could do. And at that time, Nokia released the “Communicator” — a foldable device that looked like an ordinary phone but could easily be transformed into an almost fully-fledged personal computer. In this article, I will test a Nokia 9110i, the second version of the Nokia Communicator series released in 1998, and we will see what this phone can do.

As usual, before we begin, a small note: I’m convinced that any review of any device can be done only after testing a real thing. Reading specs or Wikipedia articles will not give a true sense of how the hardware works. Is the phone heavy to carry in the pocket? Is it convenient to use a keyboard? How good is the screen? It’s hard to answer these questions only by reading the specs. So, I bought this smartphone on eBay on my own, just because I was curious about how it works. I have no sponsors and buy…