mikroblogi/posts/2024-12-04-nokia-225-4g-ebook.html
Juhani Krekelä e088ff89b7 Haunt
2026-03-16 19:45:29 +02:00

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title: eBooks on the Nokia 225 4G
date: 2024-12-04 00:00
originally-zola: nokia-225-4g-ebook
---
<p>(I'll post a proper <a href="https://ahti.space/~nortti/writeups/">writeup</a> about
this later, but here's the quick version)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_225_4g-10532.php">Nokia 225 4G</a> is an (imo)
pretty dissapointing featurephone by HMD Global.
Unlike some other <a href="https://lpcwiki.miraheze.org/wiki/Mocor_OS">Mocor
OS</a>-based devices from them,
the 225 4G supports web browsing using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini">Opera
Mini</a>.
It's alright, the usual Opera Mini caveats apply.</p>
<p>However, some time ago I discovered that the 225 4G actually <a href="http://williamsmobile.co.uk/nkbrowser.htm">comes with a
second, hidden, web browser</a>.
Unlike Opera Mini, that one does <em>not</em> proxy all your requests through a
server.</p>
<p>Both Opera Mini and the NokiaBrowser support saving pages for offline usage
(though, annoyingly, the OS on the 225 4G does not let you start up Opera
Mini if you are in offline mode, and NokiaBrowser can be started only from
within Opera Mini).
Opera Mini uses a bespoke binary format called OBML, but NokiaBrowser uses
HTML with just a small header prepended to it.
As such, I created <a href="https://ahti.space/git/nortti/n225-saved-pages">some tooling to attach such a header to arbitrary HTML
documents</a>.</p>
<p>So, what can you use this for?
For one, eBooks.
The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB">EPUB format</a> is essentially just
(X)HTML files in a ZIP archive.</p>
<p>After extracting the "Compatible epub" of <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/alexandre-dumas/the-count-of-monte-cristo/chapman-and-hall">The Count of Monte
Cristo</a>,
I'm left with a collection of <code>.xhtml</code> files under <code>epub/text</code>.
If I mount 225 4G's internal storage on my computer, I can then run:</p>
<pre><code>python encode.py epub&#x2F;text&#x2F;chapter-1.xhtml &#x2F;media&#x2F;nortti&#x2F;disk&#x2F;browser&#x2F;snapshot&#x2F;monte-cristo-1.html
</code></pre>
<p>When I unmount the phone's storage and open up NokiaBrowser, I now have the
first chapter of the book available under Menu → Open → Offline pages.</p>
<a href="/nortti/img/monte-cristo-ch1.jpeg">
<img src="/nortti/processed_images/monte-cristo-ch1.6fd7a7da36ef58aa.jpg" alt="Beginning of the 1st chapter of The Count of Monte Cristo on the Nokia 225 4G" width="577" height="700"/>
</a>