If you’re looking for a new mobile that’s environmentally sound then Nokia is hoping the 3110 Evolve will be up your street.

The Nokia 3110 Evolve is essentially last year’s 3110 Classic with an eco-friendly makeover that includes covers made partially from renewable materials, an energy-efficient charger and greener packaging.

An eco-friendly phone

While this currently puts the 3110 Evolve above other handsets in the green mobile stakes, potential buyers should be aware that while this is a welcome development, this phone is still some way short of a fully carbon-neutral, environmentally friendly handset.

Still, Nokia’s efforts at improving the environmental sustainability of its mobile line-up are better than most. This involves here the introduction here of ‘bio-covers’ made from over 50 per cent renewable organic sources.

Using unpainted materials for these means less fossil fuel consumption in the manufacturing process. Nokia has greened-up the packaging, too, using 60 per cent recycled materials.

Also cutting down on wasted energy is the charger that comes with the phone. This new high-efficiency AC-8 charger reduces no load energy consumption, which means it minimises the amount of energy used if it’s accidentally left plugged in after your phone’s been charged.

The usual Nokia features

We anticipate Nokia expanding its latest environmental initiative across its range soon, but for the time being anyone looking for a gadget-heavy greener mobile may have to compromise or hold fire.

The 3110 Evolve is built on Nokia’s popular and widespread Series 40 user interface rather than the S60 Symbian operating system used by Nokia’s higher end Nseries models. It lacks the latest 3G connectivity too, so high speed multimedia content processing is limited too.

As such, the 3110 Evolve includes some typical Nokia Series 40 phone features, including a multi-format music player, FM radio, swappable MicroSD card memory, a mobile web browser and various web-based applications, plus standard email and organiser apps.

Disappointingly though, it sports an entry-level 1.3-megapixel camera on the back panel that offers lower quality imaging than you might expect. Similarly limited is the screen Nokia uses here, a modest 1.8-inch 262,000-colour display with a low 128x160 pixels resolution.

These aren’t compromises required for environmental integrity – they’re the same types used on the earlier 3110 Classic version.