Running on a 486 CPU : Nokia's 1998 Smartphone 

“There’s no port for Doom…” Well, yea, but now you’ve summoned the graybeards.

It was 1999 and I vividly remember this launched in India. As a big NOKIA fan myself, holding this phone for the first time felt surreal, it was a luxury back then to own this phone. This phone has fantastic pocket computer futuristic features that were impossible to think of during those days. It was all about NOKIA those days and brings such nostalgia now. Thank you for taking us back to those wonderful days

Man, can't even imagine how cool and futuristic it would have felt to use this at any point in '98-2000!

Your obscure tech videos are so satisfying to watch. I love old Nokia phones and collecting them as much as I can.

Fantastic piece of kit in its day. I owned one for a short while and were blown away by its innovations. Nokia really were top of their game in the 90’s.

This device was the first piece of tech I truly coveted. Even now, 25 years later.. I still want one! Thanks for the great video!

I had one of these when I was around 10 years old. Without a computer to connect it to, or a memory card, I was stuck with what was on the device. I made some monotone masterpieces with the music composer program and also had my first encounter with programming, as I figured out you could write HTML documents and then view them. I recall sitting in a library, studying this massive HTML tome and typing things into the communicator, and some guy asked me what on earth I was doing. Thanks for the video, I'd forgotten about this cute little device :)

Amazing. This old guy was more powerful than my first pc back in the days. A 486 sx 25mhz

I had one of these in ‘98. I loved that thing because it was the first device that did email and text properly. I bought one purely for nostalgia about 2010 and I still have it - and it still works.

I had a 9000i and 9110i, they were ridiculously ahead of their time. I was a UNIX sysadmin at the time, and being able to SSH into my servers from anywhere from my cell phone was just amazing. Also worked as a modem, so I could tether that to my regular PC.

This reminds me of my Casio SF-7200SY digital organizer from the early 2000s. It has a similar display with the cool lighting and a whopping 2MB of internal storage, in a time when even 128KB organizers were not common. Thank you for bringing back nostalgic memories 😊.

ex-nokia person here from finland, i have that phone amongst many others (and still in working condition) interesting to see that people still care :)

I didn't understand A WORD of what was said, but boy, how cool was to see this phone. I was a teenager back then and business men used to go around with these phones while driving Mercedes in Monaco

Wow, interesting approach to make a cellphone. Also, it shows the difficulties of being early adopters of BGA and/or ROHS. Also, amazingly that it runs GEOS, I'm just out of words of the stuff packed in this phone

I’m right there with you on wanting a grayscale lcd like that paired with modern hardware. I recently received a Sharp Wizard organizer that I’d love to see updated with a pi zero or something. In the meantime, I’m working on a similar style of device built around a 4.7” phone-sized epaper panel

It runs FreeDOS?! I would love to see a modern take on grey (green) scale LCDs, I wonder by how much these simple LCDs can save power and extend battery life. And yes, more videos on Nokia communicators are more than welcome

I still have one of these in my old phone archive. I had the time of my life rocking the Nokia 9110i. I had every single app available for this smartphone. I also upgraded to the Nokia 9210 eventually, but the 9110i was my true love!

As a former collector of old Nokia phones, I gotta say that the communicators are definitely the pride of my collection. My 9110 is in immaculate condition, I bought it with the original box and some of its original accessories were still sealed - leading to the conclusion that its original owner barely used it. After seeing the first part of this video, I was right about to send you a message offering you my 9110 for a future update video - thank god you found another working one for part 2! 😜👍

Nokia was always ahead of it's time

Excellent video and yes please, do another one in the 9210, that was my business phone back in the old good times. Thanks.

New model looks awesome

Incredible discovery! I had no idea that the Nokia 9110 Communicator used an AMD 486 CPU and ran DOS. It's definitely inspired me to dust off mine and explore the possibilities! I've actually used mine years ago as a serial console for Sparc servers. The projects mentioned in the video sound intriguing, and I had no idea this little machine had such extensive possibilities. Thanks for sharing this insightful journey - it's reignited my curiosity about the Nokia 9110! 🔍💻

I had both the 9000 and 9110i back in the day. They are on display in a glass cabinet in my living room today :)

Killed it again! You always find the things I’ve never seen before and it’s super neat! Love from the USA!

This was just so above and beyond its time... I held this in my hand and felt like Star Trek had come to life

One of my favorite Nokia from the late 90s Great video as always👍🏼

I would absolutely love to see more videos on different communicator models. Thanks for this. Very uncommon. I wanted one so bad when I was a young teenager.

Bummer, you'd need custom stencils to reball that phone. A glorious piece of 90s mobility.

I tell now after all these years, it was a pleasure to use this phone back in the days, where it functioned exactly how you wanted, no smart crap and no google/apple owning you, I miss those days.

You know, only days ago I had discussions about how reflow doesn't work, at least for BGA, as there isn't the proper process control. People still claimed that just cooking old solder would bring back their GPUs. There's simply no way around reballing, unless you can reach the joints from the top, or have a super-reliable process figures out.

i LOVE your videos! Insta-subscribed! I like how the experience is REAL and relatable: at first you give up in frustration, but then you get back to it, like in the Linux Japanese handheld 💖

Old memories coming up about both 9110 and 9210 - my uncle had both of them one after another. Would love to see a video about 9210 too!

Thanks for this video, nostalgia. Once upon a time I could only dream of such a phone and eagerly looked at it in the Nokia brand store. It was a very interesting time when this brand produced really high-quality phones. I used the Nokia E60 for a very long time and was incredibly happy. It was the best time, when manufacturers actually came up with something to interest the buyer, and not like now, when they release it with the thought that it will still find its buyer.

That display is beautiful! Love old Nokia devices. Appreciate the vid!

Thanks for making the beautiful video of this master-piece from Nokia

In early 2010s, we had a phone in England called "Orange San Diego" It had an Intel Atom also, and the phone was absolute dog shit - nothing would run on it, and the battery life was like 5 hours on standby.

I really miss those grey displays too. They remind me of my first phone, childhood and week long battery life

love how good the gui looks in greyscale

Those old Greyscale Backlit LCD displays are a treat! Such nostalgia! Thanks JC! I've been thinking about making a sort of re-imagined Palm PDA along similar lines... I suppose you can create a similar effect now with e-ink though.

Had this back in the day, so cool!

Woahhhhh! I always wanted one of those bad boys. Years ago I worked part time in telecom, had a business customer order a Nokia 9500 Communicator…. Man, I was so happy to set the thing up for him.

I believe this antique peace of mobile should be placed in museum for display .which will inspire others since the technology was much more ahread of its time .The foldable concept

Love those types of LCDs. I just recently bought a vintage 90s CASIO electronic diary with similar LCD, but with mutch lover resolution. Backlight is almost mesmerizing... :)

Honey wake up, new Janus Cycle video

I remember putting together my 486 AMD computer for $3000-$5000 dollars which was a lot for its time and capable of todays tech. This phone had all the technology. Very technologically advanced. Nowadays looks like a satellite phone. If Nokia adds an authentic Canadian Sounblaster OEM sound card I might buy it again for nostalgic purposes. Now back to Intel chips.

Yes, with that many circuit boards, sandwiched that closely together, flex cracks in traces were a major issue, as it would also be with the later 82x0. My 8290 was my last Nokia.

I used to manage a small ISP from one of these little beauties, it gave me the freedom to go anywhere pretty much but still be able to ssh onto my servers, and routers.. For the time they were utterly amazing. Also when everyone else at the time was texting with the number keys it was a total dream on the nokia..

I had it, it was like having a space ship controller. It was awesome. I also had the luck to experience Nokia 9300 9200 and 9500

Yet another interesting tech device video from JC! I think you might just be my favorite small-ish tech content creator.

Oh Lord, I SO wanted a Nokia communicator back in the day!

i love that my nokia 6700 slide is still working till this day. some parts was replaced, yet it still working like it was since day 1. i wish nowadays smartphone would last at least 10 years without being oudated and discontinued support.

i remember this phone very well. It's crazy how back then was crazy futuristic. It was hard to believer you can do that kind of stuff with a phone and 25 years later looks like this.

Never saw your content before, but got it recommended and clicked. Subbed. I'd love to see a video on the follow-up model!

To be a gadget junkie back then is priceless. I miss that. Phonehouse wearhouse and the like. Nokia and Ericsson 🥰

Das waren so geile Geräte. Ich habe beide gehabt. Das 9210 mit Farbdisplay ist 2001 auf den Markt gekommen. Ich habe es im Februar 2004 gebraucht gekauft und bis zum Januar 2006 benutzt. Es wurde durch den MDA1 (mit Windows CE) ersetzt. Den ungenutzten Nokia-Communicator-9210 habe ich dann im Okt 2010 noch für 50€ verkauft.

Thank you RU-vid algorithm for putting this channel in my feed.

Oh yeah, Nokia 9110, my first cell phone! It was incredibly capable piece of technology and I can't believe Nokia got so complacent with "basic phones" that they didn't go big and pursue a smartphone revolution of their own. Also I need to back up my phone one day. I have the cable somewhere, will probably need to fiddle around with my old PCs and software. OR if it has a card slot like you say, this should get so much easier. Edit: Oh and I didn't play Infocom games on my 9110. I wish I knew that was possible! I instead tried playing them on my Palm m100 series. Worked, but, well, ehhhh.

Back then I thought this was peak phone design then touch screen came along.

I always appreciate how you give things a go, even though sometimes it's hard to watch! (Like one of your first videos I watched, you'd glued something back together but waited until it had dried to remove the excess glue and it didn't quite all come off... something like that. That bothered me at the time haha.) But I'd prefer everyone learn with some mistakes than avoid fixing things, fixing stuff is important. And I've made plenty of mistakes too, even with regular through-hole soldering - such as while removing those modern super-miniature through-hole components with stubborn bad solder holding-on for dear life. I always knew the "computer" side of this was separate from the phone, with some communication such as for sending an address book number to the phone side. Didn't know it was a 486! It's pretty cool how quickly those became small enough for use in a phone. And used directly too, not like today where, yes, a modern ARM chip is faster than an old Pentium 4 but is also a totally different design.

I loved these phones but they were always so out of reach for those of us who weren't 'businessmen'. I did manage to scratch that itch though with the E90 - I had briefly but it was too big for my pocket and I ultimately got rid of it. Great video - I enjoyed it.

Wow, I was always so covetous of these things back in the day. So much futuristic! Thanks for showing us the journey and reminding me never to try to fiddle with reflowing BGA chips.

I have a 9000 and a 9110 that work superficially (you can use the communicator part and navigate the phone menus with a test-SIM that my dad also provided), my dad used to repair these then-new Nokia and Ericsson devices and I got a bunch of the broken phones to use as toys. You can imagine how cool that was in the mid 90's to have one of these as a kid.

I remember a friend lending me this phone for a couple of days. It was amazing!

I love these old phones that open up to reveal tiny laptops ♥

Ohhh man, I had a 9290 back in the day and it was amazing. Being able to play Doom on my phone before it was cool to play Doom on a toaster was pretty mind blowing.

I used one of these in the late 90s. It was the perfect work tool for me. I used dial up internet to pull down my email - this was long before Blackberry made this normal. I threw it away a few years ago.

oh wow thanks for uploading this, I had one of these I think it was a 9210i running symbian, I remember editing tracks on my PC to use as ringtones, a breath of fresh air from midi files or those polymorphic things. I played video files on it as well can't remember the format could have been quicktime or something like that, was quicktime a thing I'm not sure, oh also did some work on it now and again (In an 80s quayside bar)

Great nostalgia, blast from the past! I used to have this exact phone as my daily driver for my business as a PC Technician. I used to use it for reading and email and even fax dealers when ordering replacement PC parts right at the customer's office or home. I got a lot of 'WOW!" reactions from them...

Fantastic device, had one in 1999, the fax facilities was good, needed better internet capabilities, was hoping for a developer to improve or create a better IRC client, over telnet it was just too busy, but it was state of the art communication. The monochrome green keeps it focused and purposed. A legend.

Amazing LCD yes! It makes me feel very nostalgic and remember the good ol' days :)

that crazy john sim card just unlocked a memory I didn't know I had about when I moved to Australia in 2008 - we didn't end up staying for very long which I regret as I loved it but wow, deep memory unlocked lol Cool vid btw.

Nice Video, well done😊. I love this devices, back in the days. I had them both. There was an Development Environment for this devices. Visual Studio with C++ and Nokia-Libraries. I don't remember me exactly.

I've seen stuff like these in my dreams before and thought I was just imagining things. Didn't realize they were real!

Holy macaroni! A 486 in a phone? That's amazing! I love the fact that there is plenty of these CPU's in industrial machines, CNC mills, laser cutters etc. But in a mobile? That's just amazing. Last retro PC I built was a 486 on an AMD DX5-133. Good to have a hot air machine for fixes. One of the best purchases I've ever made. I use it more often than an oscilloscope. I did ruin my share of components with it though. For every successful reflow there's one that doesn't go well. That's just how things are. Retro hardware is so delicate, it often falls apart if you as much as sneeze as it.

I am frequently forgetting this is a tech video. You have a voice, to rival Jeremy Irons.

Yes! finally the communicator! Would love to see more videos on this series 9210i, 9300, 9500. My dream is a modern smartphone in this form factor.

This is amazing. I still have a later Nokia 9300 which was running Symbian OS. I loved it

I wish we had companies that still made cool computers like this ... these days all types of computers look the same across companies ... more or less...

Neat, have one of those kicking about in some box, front display ribbon cable went but worked beyond that.

I used both 9110 and 9210 in those days. I was a telecom engineer back then and using telnet to remotely configure the routers in our network. Those were revolutionary devices that made me able to add mobility to my work.

Great video. Massive respect. Also subbed.

I had the 9110i and I LOVED it! The way you talked into it, from the backside made it so much more comfortable. However longer calls could be a problem due to the battery getting hot while touching your face directly. Replaced it eventually with a 9500, that I was not as happy with, and then later two E90s Wich I did like.

Back when this released, I was 7-8 years old. Still, I remember the times my father allowed me to play Snake on his 5110 and I remember I always wanted one of these because I was already into PCs at this point and loved the idea. Much more so than the current smartphone design I might add.

I had one of these and I loved it.

I worked with BGA for many years, and I can tell you, you don't need the stencil to recover your cell phone. The advantage of remaking spheres on old things is that they use huge, easy to manipulate spheres. I mean, it may seem small, but today's computers use MUCH smaller spheres that are almost impossible to manipulate with tweezers and that stick to your thumbprint. Use adhesive aluminum tape to isolate the rest of the components from heat, as heat can cause problems with nearby chips.. Buy spheres, you can measure the spheres that were in it using a caliper, or try your luck with balls between .60 and .80. You need to desolder the chip, and clean both the chip and the board using a copper mesh, clean until you can run your finger through it without feeling any imperfections. Take a good pair of tweezers, apply a very small amount of flux to the chip (thin film) take a ball with the tweezers, position it, and apply heat until it melts just enough to not move when it cools. As there are few balls, you can do this artisanal process until you have soldered all the balls, then apply a thin layer to the PCB, and solder the chip.

My dad have this exact same phone Omg!, its sadly been broken but man its so nostalgic seeing those UI

Wow i used to love Nokia amd was the best device back then. Your videos are fascinating man .

Please do make a video on the 9210! This was another great video as always

Those old LCDs just reminds me back to good times. Also I love that grafics, since its in KillLaKill (Anime) everywhere :D

This brings back memories! I still own my 9110i, it used to be my main phone up until 2006. I tried both of the sucessors (9210 and 9500) but they sucked because of poor design decisions for the user interface. The 9110’s user interface was clearly built with one menu key and the arrow keys in mind, and it was very straightforward. The 9210 started to mimic a PC interface with fold out menus and other things that would actually need a pointing device. It was disgusting for me, so I kept using the 9110. Even after I replaced it as my main phone it served as a backup work phone until 2015 when the battery finally died.

I worked my way to a few of these before moving to the 9210. Loved it. I worked for Psion during the '90s during 16-bit platform era, and going to GEOS was quite a bit of a downgrade. There were no alternatives however. It was also the first hands-free speaker phone, you could send and receive fax, and don't forget this was a baller's phone: if you had one of those you made it to the top. While I certainly did not made it - it felt great people thought I did. Oh well... different times.

A friend of my father had one. I was fascinated by it, but it was huge in comparison to other phones, especially because everyone wanted something tiny like the 8210

Not having Doom in this platform sounds like an amazing challenge!

This is interesting! I didn't know that the 9000 and 9110 ran on x86 CPUs 😅 Anyway, great vids man, they really further improved my knowledge on old Nokias as well as other vintage stuff Hope I could add a communicator phone to my collection someday 😃

Hi, nice video ! The Siemens 32MB MMC Card remind me my sweet memory with the first Siemens MP3 Phone, the SL-45 (Or Siemens 6688 in other country) ! The Nokia Communicator is the only kind device of those day that really work “like PC” , I use 9300, and E90 for few years, sweet memory !

I worked in an electronic store back in 1998-2002 and I clearly remember the Nokia range of Communicators, they were sensational back then, lot of businesses bought them mainly to send e-mails and use the office applications. But when 9210 appeared with the color screen , the old ones looked like stone age in comparison. We sold several hundred units of the 9210, I loved the size of it, truly the first smart phone!

I have this phone, bought it for 5 euros 10 years ago in the flea market, it is awesome.I used the infrared Port to send images.

Now this is a blast from the past! I had a 9110 back in 1999 and literally ran my business from it. I loved that phone back then as it had a full word and excel suite on it. Used to have my stock sheets on hand and the ability to then FAX a document or quote direct to a client. If they accepted it, and I had stock with me, I would head through and drop stock off there and then. Signed sealed and delivered! When I got home, I could hook up the phone to my PC, download the documents and everything was done! It was really an awesome unit! Ericsson then brought out their R380 which was smaller and had more features... Man those were good times in tech!

I had this, also the addon for the 2110(i)/PT11 (or how it is called outside germany) and later some of the 9110i and 9210i... still have one, still working, bought a battery from CN some years ago but didn't do very much with it. Owning one is the goal ;-) This is so sad that Nokia didn't survive ... produced the best and innovativest phones ever

Hell yeah. I remember browsing eBay for these in the early 2000s. My dream was to own a phone with a keyboard, web browser and email. Amazing to see how far we’ve come.