Nokia 2140 (Nokia Orange)

Nokia 2140, the first Orange phone

The first Orange handset

When the Orange network launched in 1994, customers only had one choice of phone. Fortunately it was the phone of 1994. The first Orange phone was a reworked version of the high end business phone, the Nokia 2110.

The first Orange phone was the Nokia 2140.  Although, the Orange network primarily targeted consumers rather than business users, Nokia dropped none of the advanced features of their flagship phone for the Orange rebrand. The only functional difference was that the Nokia 2140 supported the Orange network on 1800MHz rather than the Vodafone one.

The handset itself had a minor redesign, it was less curvy and the buttons were different. Nevertheless, Orange's first customers were getting their hands on the top phone of 1994. It was a significant improvement over the early offerings on Mercury One2One, the rival consumer network.

Resources

Nokia 2110 on Wikipedia

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Comments (10)

Jolla Sailfish
1st handset I bought I think from a Radio Rentals shop and possibly on credit. Very advanced for the time. I remember a mate asking me what an SMS was. I also opted for a Line 2 service: a second number on the SIM for incoming and outgoing calls. I think I bought a fat high capacity battery and a magnetic antenna with a 2m (?) cable to get better reception in poor coverage areas. Fond memories!
charlotte
hey
Ray Portulo
My dad bought this for my birthday back in 1995. Man, those were the times. I remember calling my friends' housephones with this asking them if they were up for a ride to South-West Phoenix and check out a movie or get something to eat. A shame I lost it a year later and my dad beat me with a spatula and broke apart the family. Good times!
Q
The second phone I ever owned and the first on Orange, back in January '96 was the Nokia Orange Special Edition. Basically, a Nokia 2140 with the carbon fibre (unremovable) fascia. It still works when plugged in. Still have the original box etc. Offers to sell it started a week after I bought it. I'll never part with it though. Love it too much.
Paul Russell
I have an immaculate Nokia 2140 which has been in a case since I bought it from Orange in 1995. Any ideas what it would be worth ? Unfortunately I don't have a charger but am willing to sell it
billy
oh dont do it
Toothy Chris
The Nokia 2140 on Orange was a lovely phone, but many of them suffered from an instability in the RF output stage, which resulted in dropped calls (the old triple tone) as you tried to make, or during calls. What happened was that the RF was fine when the phone was in your hand, but as soon as you put it against your head the RF stage became unstable, and started to transmit on all sorts of random frequencies which it was not supposed to be on. This was observed happening on an hp spectrum anaysler, using several different handsets. To the best of my knowledge Nokia never admitted the problem existed, and Orange just kept sending out replacement handsets.
Ant leach
Looking through old stuff came across the orange nokia 5.1 the battery is dead but the phone ok !! any one know where a battery can be got ????????? have tried a few places none in stock !! As usual : any help please : regards: ANT: ps : At the minute i use a galaxy note 4 :
David
I had one of these years ago & loved it. Unfortunately I had to trade it in to upgrade with Orange so until recently it'd been missing from my arsenal of old mobiles.. However, I recently picked one up in great working condition on Ebay. The only problem is that it's blocked & I do not have the code required to unlock it. Is there a simple way of doing this, such as taking it to a market stall where they'll do such things for you or would Orange be able to help me (I've been with them from the start)? Thanks in advance for any advice, David.
matthew rogers
hello im matthew, l still use this phone right up to today march 2013 and its never stopped a beat, works great on the EE network and is so retro, l have lots of people come up to me commenting on the phone asking were did l get it and others wanting to buy it, this phone is in mint brand new condition and l wont ever sell it l love the handset ive been with orange since 1994 and l do have a stock of good batterys and the battery im useing does its job great see with iphones and other new phones today there packet with to much stuff and kills the battery even if you drop the new phones it will straight away damage and need repairing as for the nokia 2140 its bullet proof long battery life and is a classic vintage handset. Alot of intrest has come to these sort of phones as retro is comeing back ive seen them fetch up to ?400 pounds or even more they only opporate on the 1800mhz single which makes it very rare as the single band phones wont work any more unless you have an early type sim card 2g so l will keep injoying my phone for many years to come so thankyou for reading my report on the 2140 nokia........ kind regards Matthew. Eastmidlands
 
   
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