Why India will be thrilled to see new Nokia 3310 back

The way smartphones are ruling the roost, they will soon all but have the kitchen sink fitted into them – technically they just might be able to, thanks to modular phones. With ever newer iPhones (with no useful features) and phones with more powerful computing capabilities than the world’s first supercomputer, it is sometimes terribly refreshing to take a step backwards.

And who better than Nokia, the once ruler of the mobile phones market, to reboot one of its hardiest and most iconic phone models – the Nokia 3310. Yes, the phone everyone has seen in their childhood, that had nothing but endless hours of Snake (the game) to offer, is soon going to be back in business – with a few improvements, of course. 

The updated version of this hall-of-famer technological legend was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday, February 26. 

The relaunched 3310, produced by HMD Global (which licensed the Nokia brand last year), has slightly bigger screen than the original one, a camera on the back, and has a microUSB charging port. But more importantly than ever – and this strictly a nostalgia thing – it has Snake!

Although, according to Forbes, the game has been given a makeover that hardcore fans just might not appreciate. The retro phone game now has a more animated amphibian that collects red apples from various points across the screen. In fact, you can even travel diagonally. Well, at least the game is still there.

“This is what consumers have been asking us for, and so we decided that we’d just do it and have some fun with it. That’s the unique opportunity we have here at HMD with the Nokia brand,” said Florian Seiche, president of HMD Global.

The new 3310 has a 2.4 inch, 240 x 320 resolution display. The phone lets you use the internet with its 2.5G band and an Opera Mini browser (how crazy is that, considering the state of the internet 17 years ago, when it was first launched). It has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a MicroSD card slot, which successfully makes it an upgrade to the latest iPhone. And true to all old Nokia feature phones, the 3310 reboot has a 1200mAh battery that offers 22 hour talk-time and month-long standby time.

The phone’s expected to cold $52 (roughly Rs 3,500) and THAT, along with a nostalgia trip for a generation that still celebrates the fact that they were “90’s kids”, is what will make these phones sell like hotcakes, especially in India. In a country like India, where a huge section of the population still lives in considerable poverty, buying even cheap smartphones is not always an option.

This, is the kind of economic factors that has led even Reliance to introduce the idea of cheap 4G feature phones in this country. According to an Economic Times report, feature phones continue to dominate the market with a more than 50 per cent share as they remain the preference of people in small towns and rural areas. Those are the kind of numbers no one can ignore.

And more than anything else, when it comes to feature phones, India has always favoured Nokia. According to a report in The Guardian, Neil Mawston, the executive director at Strategy Analytics said, “Nokia has struggled in smartphones, but it maintains a very good reputation for delivering user-friendly feature phones at competitive prices”.

But economics aside, in an age when one uses their phone for everything besides its actual functions, when phones are more computers, or smaller tablets, than an actual device meant for talking, it is just amazing to return back to a device that allows you to use it, before everything else, as a phone.

Smartphones may have made our lives easier. There is no doubt about that at all. We can video-chat, IM, browse, shop and do just about anything one can think of. But try and remember all the wonderful things you miss about the old handsets: durability, long-lasting battery, not parting with money enough to pay for a child's education for a year. Isn't that incentive alone to jump at the new old Nokia 3310. 

PS: Hopefully, this phone works as a kevlar vest as well as its predecessor.

Also read - Nokia as Android smartphone: Will it work?