Spy Review

The Nokia 3310 Mobile Phone is a humble little device, being one of the most popular Nokia models inthe early 2000s. It featured ‘advanced’ messaging, vibra feature, picture messaging and changable covers. These are all features that we now take for granted with our all-singing, all-dancing mobile phones of today. We now have phones with full colour displays, bluetooth wireless data transfer, wireless handsfree kits, Java applications, GPRS, WAP, MP3 players, and more! The Nokia 3310 phones are very robust, and they are still commonly in use today. You can typically pick up one of these Nokia 3310s for less than £20 on ebay, and still in great condition.

The hardware for the Nokia 3310 is well understood by the mobile phone community, and this knowledge has been exploited to create the Nokia 3310 Spy Phone. Mobile phone engineers have been able to modify the mobile phone’s internal software so that the spy phone can appear to be switched off even though it is still switched on. Additionally, the software allows the phone to answer automatically when you dial the number of the sim card within the spy phone.

The spy phone looks like a normal Nokia 3310, but when the ’spy mode’ is activated, the display of the phone is blank, and the lights of the phone do not light up. The phone is also put into silent mode, which means you can call the spy phone without it making any noise or activating the vibra motor.

When you call a spy phone, it makes no visible or audible indication that it is in operation, and you can comfortable listen to any conversations or discussions in progress around the spy phone. The spy mode is trivial to activate, usually requiring the pressing of a couple of buttons in order to activate it.

So how sensitive is the microphone? The microphone has been designed for a mobile phone, so you would expect that it would filter out the sounds in the background, and it does, to an extent. Thankfully, conversations within 5 to 10 metres of the spy phone are completely audible (although clearly reduced if there is much background noise).

The microphone is seated in the bottom of the phone (look for a small hole next to the charging socket), so you can easily point this in the direction of the conversations for extra clarity.

What’s the battery life like? Since the battery is rechargable, you can easily top up the battery in a car or from the mains using the appropiate Nokia charger. The original Nokia 3310 batteries are quoted as giving around 2.5 to 4 hours (150 to 240 minutes) of talk time, so that’s how long you could expect from a single charge when you are calling the spy phone. However, you are unlikely to be listening to conversations around the phone all of the time, so the standby time is around 50 to 250 hours.

To fully charge the phone with a Nokia mains charger, it takes around 3-4 hours. You might also consider getting an additional or new battery from eBay, as you can get batteries with extra capacity, such as non-Nokia 1200mAh batteries v.s. 900 and 1000mAh genuine Nokia versions. These will last that little bit longer.

Keeping costs low? Calling a mobile phone is not cheap. However, you can take advantage of various mobile phone network deals to save money. If you have a contract agreement with your network, you will probably have free calling credits or minutes, meaning you can call a mobile phone using the same network for free. For example, if you had a personal mobile phone on the Vodafone network with a contract where you get 200 free minutes each month, you could the calling time to call the cheap unregistered Vodafone Pay-As-You-Go sim card that you put in the spy phone!

Since calling between two mobile phones that use the same network usually costs less, you might decide to use anonymous Pay-As-You-Go sim cards (as in unregistered, easily purchased on eBay), so that if the phone is discovered as a listening device, your personal number, and thus identity, is not comprimised. I personally recommend the Vodafone sim cards, as I believe that all other networks require you to register before you can use the sim card. Something to consider.

What could you use the spy phone for? In truth, the list is endless. It is a listening device, so applications where remote and covert observation is required are applicable. You might want to check up on someone periodically, listening out for out-of-place sounds, conversations, etc. You might use it for listening to conversations in your office whilst away on travel. You might use it monitor employees. In terms of the latter, I once had a customer that used the Nokia 3310 Spy Phone to obtain evidence that one of his garage employees was offering customers car servicing work in the employees private time, losing the company valuable business.

So there you have it, the Nokia 3310 Spy Phone. Easy to use, inexpensive, versatile and a very useful device in any investigators toolkit! I have secured a special deal, so that you can get your very own Nokia 3310 Spy Phone at a great low price! Just head over to the Spy Review Shop.