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The brick. Their It’s not a particularly flattering nickname, especially for something that has gained cult status, especially for a piece of technology. Yet twenty years after its debut, the Nokia 3310 still carries the moniker with pride. People loved it for what it could do. But you might miss him for all the things he couldn’t.
Technically, September 1 is the anniversary of when Nokia first announced the 3310, not when it went on sale; it’s like celebrating an ultrasound instead of a birthday. Still, it’s as good a time as any to remember the little blue tank, the indestructible candy bar, the device that sold 126 million units – more than 20 times more than the first-gen iPhone. (The comparison is unfair on several levels: prices, longevity, available markets. Still, fun!)
The praise for the Nokia 3310 has already been widely sung, but the memories are short and the last few weeks these days, so forgive a quick recap. Yes, first and foremost it could survive a fall from any reasonable height. But he did it in a kind of rough-and-tumble style: the call and arrow buttons curved into a subtle smile; the body was a perfect shade of midnight blue; the number keys responded to each press with a satisfying click. It was staunchly minimalist in a dazzling era. The battery lasted at least a week without recharging. And then there was Snake II, an elite-level waste of time from a game that reliably gave you something to watch on your phone nearly a decade before the debut of the iOS App Store.
Well, a few more reminders of his greatness. You can exchange the case for a different color or design and remove or replace the battery. That doesn’t count as modular, but it’s closer than it will be with most smartphones today. Its chat function reinvented text messaging, allowing chain exchanges and larger numbers of characters. I had three games beyond Snake II, at least one of which, Spatial impactIt was decent. It allows you to download ringtones and configure screensavers, both novelties at that time.
In fact, it’s easy to forget that having a mobile phone was still pretty cool at the time. The year 2000 marks the first time that Pew Research surveyed American adults about cell phone ownership; 53 percent had one. By 2006, that number had risen to 73 percent. Given the popularity of the Nokia 3310 during that period, particularly among a younger demographic, it’s safe to say that it was the first introduction by large numbers of people to mobile phones, full stop.
That explains the enduring nostalgia it invokes. Every year or two someone writes a new commemoration, anniversary or not. In 2018, a company called HMD Global even resurrected the 3310, in a way, producing a feature phone that is reminiscent of the iconic design while adding contemporary touches (a basic web browser, a low-end camera) to help it function on the world today.
That reinvention feels somewhat out of place. If you miss the Nokia 3310, it’s not with the caveat that you’d like to be able to log into Facebook from it. You miss it because it reminds you of a time when Facebook didn’t exist. The internet has always been bad in parts, but in the 3310 era it was at least something that could reasonably be ignored for long periods of time. The 3310 couldn’t do much because there just wasn’t much to do: no tweets to send, no news to update, no photo filters to go through. His phone was primarily a phone, not a purposefully addictive portal to infinite knowledge and existential weight.
