This year’s Mobile World Congress will be a memorable one not because one will witness some top-of-the-line smartphones launches, but a reincarnation of one of the most popular feature phone. Yes, we are talking about Nokia 3310. HMD Global, the company who will now manufacture Nokia-branded devices, is said to revive the iconic 3310 feature phone. However, we still need to wait a bit to know whether the company will be able to continue the legacy that follows the iconic device or not but to refresh your memory, we present you the top five reasons which made the original Nokia 3310 one of the best feature phones in the history.
The Force was definitely strong with this one!
Indeed, the phone become an instant success with its sleek and compact look coupled with a smaller and lighter frame. The feature phone gave a distinctly solid look (it got the indestructible title for a reason, mate) which was loved around the globe. And yes the phone one of the cheapest options available in the market at that point of time, which made it highly popular. The success of the phone can be gauged from the fact that it was sold over 126 million units since its launch.
Unlike smartphones of today, which sport some fancy displays, the green-lit 84 x 48 Pixel display of Nokia 3310 was more than enough to stand any harsh lighting situations, a thing we miss these days. This coupled with all other minute details like ‘c’ button, which acted as back, undo and delete key and responsive keypad with T9 Predictive text input (with no autocorrects!) coupled with a clock, stopwatch, timer, calculator and currency converter, made it one of the smartest feature phone we have seen till now.
Dual Band support and long-lasting battery life
The Nokia 3310 was a life saver as it came with a dual band 900/1800MHz support meaning that it would work on almost most of the networks across the globe at that time. And it was one of the few, which had the Antenna band installed on the inside, rather placing it on the exterior. This coupled with the 900mAh NiMH battery, which gave a Standby time of 260 hours (approx. 11 days). We all have heard legends saying that the device will still last a day’s worth of use even when the battery was ‘getting low’.
Highly customisable options
Probably, the best thing about this phone was the swappable front and back panel, which is an extinct feature in today’s world. Users had the options to select from the sea of options available from the market and can customise it according to their taste. So, if you got bored with one colour, then you could easily swap it for a new one (how cool was that). And yes, there were a plethora of jazzy phone covers available in the market because of which it become a style statement.
Snake, Space Impact and Bantumi, the best games
You all would agree, that these games were one of the primary reason behind the buying a Nokia 3310. The most popular of them was Snake in which one had to feed a snake some fruits only to grow it long enough and avoid biting its own tail. The simple concept behind the game could keep one glued to the screen for hours and hours. And same was the case with Space Impact and Bantumi.
Oh, we miss that symphony!
Nokia 3310 was basically a little DJ for us. The feature came with built-in melody composer, which ignited the inner artists of all. The phone was only able to play monotonic ringtones, but that didn’t stop us from creating over favourite ringtone, whether be it iconic Mission Impossible theme or any other one for that matter. But there was a catch, one could only save five ringtones and one had to choose carefully.