For some days, we’ve been inundated with several reports that the “almighty” Nokia 3310 has returned. The feeling is one of excitement and nostalgia, one that relatively has been rightly earned by the brand for its rugged, long lasting attributes.
The new Nokia 3310 is smaller, sleeker and reportedly has 22 hours of talk time with a one-month battery life on standby. The phone’s makers have also made a conscious to include Snake in it, and this time, in colour!
The Nokia 3310 re-launch took place ahead of this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The handset is noticeably slimmer than the original Nokia 3310, which sold around 126 million units before it was discontinued in 2005. It’s also almost half the weight – the original was 133g, the new one is 79g.
Many people here in Nigeria would have some nostalgia about the simple, old Nokia 3310 phone which could drop off a cliff but somehow gets to land without getting damaged (at least assuming the ‘phone’s parachutes’ are active). It also had a pretty amazing battery life that made it seem more or less a phone truly made for the Nigerian environment. Simple as the phone was, it did not come cheap back then, but people weren’t particularly reluctant to buy, after all, there weren’t really so many alternatives.
Nokia 3310 returns after 17 years, to be retailed officially at about N17,000 against N30,000 it was sold during its first outing in Nigeria.
Potential buyers also need to know that while many of the phone’s internals have been updated, the 2017 version of the 3310 will use 900 MHz and 1800 MHz – the frequencies typically used for 2G communications before mobile data and 3G became popular.
These are the bands used in most parts of the world such as Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia but they have been switched off in other regions – North, Central and South America typically use 850 MHz and 1900 MHz – and are gradually being phased out in other countries, too. This means the new Nokia 3310 won’t work in regions where the frequencies have been disabled and could face problems in the future if they are turned off in regions where the phone previously worked.
Available in gloss red and yellow and matte blue and grey, the Nokia 3310 has a 2.4-inch colour screen, Bluetooth 3.0, an FM radio, LED torch, microSD card support up to 32GB and a two-megapixel camera. The 2.5G connection even lets you go online – albeit very slowly – to access Twitter, Facebook and other services through the Opera Mini browser.
The phone has been developed by HMD, which acquired a ten-year license to use Nokia’s brand name in May 2016. The company continues to sell a broad range of simple phones in developing markets, but the Nokia 3310 will be sold worldwide as a “digital detox” phone.
Undoing a portion of its 2014 acquisition of Nokia’s phone business, Microsoft sold off its low-end phone unit as part of a $350 million deal. The buyers were FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Taiwan-based manufacturing giant Foxconn, and a new Finland-based company called HMD Global.
