Review | New Nokia flip phone: review of Flip 2720 by a non-techie, spurred by Hong Kong protests

Nokia’s Flip 2720 wouldn’t be a step up for most but for Fionnuala McHugh it was light years ahead of her previous phone

It’s cheap, has a camera and 4G – so she can check which stations are being trashed by Hong Kong protesters. But there’s also one major flaw

Reading Time:5 minutes

The Nokia Flip 2720 works with apps including Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube. Photo: Antony Dickson

Published: 12:45pm, 29 Sep 2019Updated: 8:23pm, 29 Sep 2019

In the autumn of 2014, I bought a mobile phone for the first and, so far, only time. That decision was a direct result of Hong Kong’s Occupy protests, then clogging up the streets around the Admiralty area. As the MTR subway system hadn’t yet extended itself to Kennedy Town where I live and the buses were constantly being diverted and I’m a hyperventilating punctuality obsessive, I had to tell people that I was running late.

Of course, I was already considered incredibly tardy on the telecommunication front, but I didn’t see the need for an expensive mobile. In 2014, prices for the new iPhone 6 started at a faint-inducing HK$5,000 (US$640). I had an iPad mini, which had all the functions of a smartphone except actual phoning. The trouble was I’d no internet access beyond my front door. I remember a glum moment at an MTR Wi-fi hotspot, when I was instructed to enter my mobile number to access the free, but secret, Wi-fi code.

A friend suggested I try the one-number-two-sim-cards method – one for a phone, one for an iPad – a classic Hong Kong solution that might, or might not, work. People told me that I needed a mobile plan.

But when I asked about their own plans – about cost, data, China roaming – no one knew exact specifics. Such plans were like Hong Kong’s Basic Law, much referred to yet barely read; the Consumer Council was receiving more and more complaints about telecom companies’ reinterpretation of initial agreements. (“This is why Li Ka-shing is Hong Kong’s wealthiest man,” someone told me at a dinner.)

One night, in a speck of a shop opposite the Southorn Playground in Wan Chai, I bought a Nokia for HK$200. The instructions were in Indonesian. As it was pay-as-you-go, with stratospheric charges for incoming as well as outgoing calls, I was reluctant to hand out the number.

I put HK$50 on it that autumn of 2014 and didn’t top it up again until June 4, 2015, on my way to Victoria Park for the Tiananmen vigil.