Nokia’s latest nostalgia-bait feature phone is the 8110 “Banana Phone”

Enlarge / Neo gets a call on the original Nokia 8110. (credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

The year is 1999. Computer programmer Thomas Anderson sits at his cubicle, contemplating the latest dressing down from his boss. His thoughts are interrupted when a delivery arrives. He rips open the FedEx package to reveal a loose, unboxed phone. The phone rings the second it is out of the package, and Anderson, shocked, stares at it a moment. He presses a button and the phone springs opens with a satisfying “click” noise. Anderson raises the phone to his ear: “Hello?”

“Hello Neo, do you know who this is?”

That phone was the Nokia 8110, which in the 1999 film The Matrix, allows Morpheus’ to remotely guide Neo through the office chase scene. After resurrecting the Nokia 3310 “Brick Phone” at last year’s Mobile World Congress, this year HMD’s updated nostalgia-bait feature phone is the Nokia 8110, AKA the “Banana Phone.”