Monday, February 27, 2017

Nokia and HMD bring back a modern version of the Nokia 3310. Time to get your "snake" on.


Nokia has sold 126 million of its original 3310 phone since it was first introduced back in September, 2000. It was a time before the iPhone, and Nokia ruled with popular handsets that let you play simple games like Snake. Now the 3310 is making a nostalgic return in the form of a more modern variant, thanks to Nokia-branded phone maker HMD. Like its predecessor, it will still be called the Nokia 3310, but this time it’s running Nokia’s Series 30+ software, with a 2.4-inch QVGA display, a 2-megapixel camera, and even a microSD slot.


Those specs are still fairly basic by our modern phone standards, but that’s the beauty of such a basic feature phone. But remember with a basic feature phone you get no app store (see no apps), GPS, or Wi-Fi. Unlike the brick-like sturdiness of the old 3310, the modern variant is a little smaller, thinner, and lighter all round which is sort of a let down. I would like to have seen this phone be IP68 dust and water resistant. It’s also a lot more colorful this time around, with glossy yellow and red colors, and matte grey and dark blue models. It’s instantly recognizable as a Nokia, and HMD has even included a modern Snake game on the handset just to play on the nostalgia.


Opera Mini is bundled for basic web surfing, but the real selling point is battery life. Just like most feature phones, standby time on the Nokia 3310 is 31 days, alongside a talk time of 22 hours. That’s a massive amount of battery life, but as the phone is so basic you’re hardly going to be wasting battery away on Snapchat or Facebook. Though adding Whatapp as a universal international messaging app would have made this amazing for overseas sales.

HMD is planning to make the new Nokia 3310 available in Q2 this year for $52.

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