Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks

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 8110 4G which succeeded the line-up of 8110 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 8110 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 8110 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 8110 4G over the JioPhone. Although JioPhone has managed to garner 25 million users across the country, the availability of WhatsApp on Nokia 8110 4G might bring a big twist in the competition of feature phones.
