Nokia 3310 Spy Mod

Nokia 3310 Mod

The Nokia 3310 is considered an old phone. I happened to have one lying around not used as I've moved on to PDA phones. These phones aren't worth much nowadays and can be bought online for as little as £5.00 on ebay. I've also seen firms doing a spy phone modification for these phones and then re-selling them. -good for them I say.

The NokiX project provides a lot of customization software updates to the phone's firmware such as adding calendar, world clock, and call duration info. To update the phone one must first have the correct connecting cables and circuits. Flashing the firmware is much harder as simultaneous communication with the phones M-Bus and F-Bus is required.

Applying updates to the firmware requires reading the firmware and saving it to a file on a PC. Then patching the firmware, by using special software, which adds the extra features. Then flash the patched firmware back into the phone. I've been able to boil it down to a few steps in the menu sequence. It just so happens that the same circuit can be used for the spy phone mod as well.

Some of the latest phones that can run Java based games can also run special programs to play tricks on your friends such as the auto accept call feature which is similar to the spy phone on Nokia 3310. I am always amazed at how modern phones have so many features. You can pick up a great bargain these days from online shops.

There's also the Nokia 3310 port modification I made when the phone was new so that the specialized connector would not be required, and instead another readily available connector is used in place. This is useful if you plan to work on just one phone for development such as learning assembly language for the new ARM microcontroller.

This article focuses mainly on the hardware and electronics required to interface a Nokia 3310 to a PC, and thereby flash it's firmware. There is no software provided as the Internet is littered with the stuff. You just have to search for it on Google.

The goals of this article are simple: Before this decade is through, man will be able to download the firmware from the phone to the PC, modify it, and then safely flash the phone, operating as normal. We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard... :-) ...actually just wasting time to see how these things work, as I am currently looking for work.

Skills required: Excellent soldering skills needed, knowledge of electronics, basic tools, some downloaded software and of course some hardware and the ability to improvise.