A copycat is a person or thing who copies another’s behaviour, dress, or ideas. You only need to take one look at the Bontel 8110 to tell that it is one. It is a shameless rip-off of Nokia’s 8110 4GNokia’s 8110 4G slider phone.

Ever wondered why a person who imitates another is called a copycat and not a copymonkey? We all know monkeys do a lot of imitation. I have dug around a bit and it does not seem that anyone knows any longer why cats got the honour. But this article says the first recorded use of term was in 1887.

Anyway, let’s have a look at the Bontel 8110 feature phone and compare it with Nokia’s design.

The Bontel 8110:

bontel 8110 splash

Nokia 8110 4G:

nokia 8110 4G
The copycat

It is a blatant copy job; right? Here is the Bontel with the slider out:

bontel 8110 front

Thought it end all ends at the external hardware while the Nokia 8110 4G is a smart feature phone with 4G internet capabilities, an app store, and social media app support, Bontel’s copy job is a bare-bones feature phone for voice and SMS. And it will only set you back for something around N5,000.

The Bontel 8110 does not even support GPRS internet, talk less of 3G or 4G. It isn’t much of a threat to the Nokia 8110 4G. Though the Nokia phone really does not need competition. I am still not sure why a smart feature phone with its capabilities should be selling for over N20,000 in the market.

That is one expensive feature phone. You will find more capable smartphones in the market for about the same price or slightly less.

Back to the topic though, is there a chance that Bontel got permission from HMD Global to use the Nokia 8110’s design? Who are we going to ask now?

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