A 2007 Nokia phone can now chat with ChatGPT and Claude

A Turkish entrepreneur has found a way to chat with modern AI on a Nokia 6300, a phone that came out nearly 20 years ago. The app is called Aikon, and it is free to use and open source. There is a catch for US readers: the 2G networks the phone needs are gone here.

Why the old phone needed help

The Nokia 6300 arrived the same month Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. It still became one of Nokia's best-selling phones. Today it struggles. It only works on 2G networks, which few carriers still run. Its browser also uses an old security standard, TLS 1.0. An estimated fewer than 25 percent of websites still support it, so the phone can barely reach the modern web.

How Aikon works

Emir Karşıyakalı first showed the idea on X in late September, under the name Claude S40. It worked only with Claude. He has since widened it to ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, and renamed it Aikon, which is Nokia spelled backwards.

The phone cannot talk to these chatbots directly. Instead, you set up a small server that holds your account key from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI or SpaceXSI. The server talks to the chatbot, then cuts each answer into 8kB pieces the old phone can read. The app runs on Nokia phones with the S40 or S60 system.

What it can do

• A reading mode with its own keypad shortcut, made for the 240x320 screen
• Saving answers to a memory card for offline reading
• Sending photos to a chatbot for analysis
• Voice messages up to 30 seconds, turned into text by an OpenAI model
• Eight languages, including English, Spanish and German

The server keeps messages for up to 30 days.

Who can try it

If you live in the US, you cannot. T-Mobile shut down its old GSM network in August, and that was the last 2G network in the country. Readers outside North America can find the code and install steps on GitHub.

There is also a cost. Because the app goes through each company's API, which is the way software connects to a chatbot, you must set up token billing. That means paying based on how much you use it. Engadget calls the project a gimmick, but a thoughtful one.