Yahoo Finance Nokia 3310 review: A noughties icon is reborn - Snake included
As soon as you turn on the new Nokia 3310, you’re hit with a wave of nostalgia. Those blocky white capital letters spelling NOKIA show up on the screen, and that jingle plays. Each press of those oval number keys responds with a beep. And that’s before you’ve loaded up Snake.
The original 3310, first released 17 years ago, has become the stuff of legend. Nokia sold more than 100 million 3310s, establishing the Finnish company as the world’s dominant mobile maker. The iPhone came along and ruined everything for Nokia, of course, but the 3310 retains a special place in the hearts of a certain generation who remember its week-long battery life, interchangeable fascias and texting system (press the 2 key once for “a”, twice for “b” and so on).
Nearly two decades on, the 3310 is back. Nokia stopped making phones a while ago but HMD, a Finnish outfit made of former employees, has the rights to the name and design. In February, HMD said it was reviving the 3310 for 2017. It goes on sale this Wednesday, May 24, and costs £49.99 - a fair price considering the original cost £129.99.
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The phone is by no means a copy of 2000’s Nokia 3310. It is more of a homage - while many elements will be familiar, a lot has changed too.
A retro revival
Phones have changed a lot in the last 17 years, but the new 3310 bears an unmistakable resemblance to its ancestor. It has the same curved edges and white border around the screen, not to mention the keypad. My review model even comes in the same matte dark blue like the ones I remember from school.
The 2017 version is roughly the same height and width as the original, but it is considerably lighter and thinner. While this makes it very pocket friendly, I’m not sure it would survive the same beatings that many originals took.
It does have a colour screen, though, and the navigational buttons are different - a four way keypad and central button replaces the original’s layout. There’s also something that would have been unimaginable on a phone in 2000: a 2 megapixel camera on the back.
The pin charger has gone: instead there’s a micro-USB connection like you get on some Android phones. There’s also something some modern phones don’t have - a headphone jack, which can be used to listen to music. There’s no Spotify or Apple Music here, but there is an FM radio, and you can store songs on a micro SD card.
Another rarity nowadays is the removable back, which you can take off to access the battery, memory card and SIM card slot. Annoyingly, the new 3310 takes the micro SIM standard, a different design to the nano SIM on modern smartphones. To use it you’ll have to get a special SIM from your network or an adapter.
Oh, and that battery will last you days. Nokia says a month on standby - in regular use you’ll get about a week out of it.
What’s changed - and what hasn’t
While the 3310 might look very similar to its predecessor, using it is a different matter. The phone runs Nokia’s S30+ operating system, the same that is used on a lot of the cheap feature phones sold in emerging markets.
If you remember the old 3310s, using this is a bit like seeing your old bedroom after you’ve left home and your parents have converted it into a guest room: it’s familiar, but lots of things are in the wrong place.
The T9 texting system from the old days remains, but years later it's somewhat disappointing. If you pine for the old days of sending texts with physical keys, a few minutes tapping out words on the 3310 may cure you of this. I compared typing “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” on the 3310 to my iPhone. The former took 40 seconds, the latter took five.
Of course you could speed that up by reverting to txt spk, but sending “cnt w8 2 c u :)” to your crush won’t do you many favours in 2017.
While there are a handful of downloadable games there’s no WhatsApp, so you’re back to using SMS. While this is down to the S30 operating system, it feels like an oversight - if the 3310 had WhatsApp it might have been the perfect festival or holiday phone. You can also forget about emoji by the way.
There are a few other modcons: the Opera browser can load websites, although the phone’s 2.5G connection makes this painfully slow, even on special low data versions of Facebook. The 2MP camera is certainly not Instagram worthy, although it is okay for a picture in a pinch - and its piddly internal memory means you need a memory card if you want to store more than six messages. Usefully, the flash doubles as a torch.
It also has some distinctive Nokia hallmarks: the famous ringtone and the “beep beep” of receiving a text. And just like the old 3310, you can write a welcome note for when the phone boots up (“hello handsome”).
But if there’s one thing we most remember from the old 3310, it’s the mobile game that started it all.
Snake
Ah, Snake. The game that trained a generation of thumb muscles is here with pride of place in the settings menu. Like a microcosm of the phone itself, it has a few tweaks that make it not quite faithful to the original.
The main game is a sort of campaign mode, in which your snake must make its way through a series of mazes and trials, eating the apples and getting bigger along the way. Luckily, there’s also “survival” mode, which is closer to the old version - getting as big as you can before you get so big you crash into yourself.
You have to make sure the controls are changed to the traditional “up, down, left, right” in the settings, because the other setting lets the snake move diagonally, which is quite frankly sacrilege. The game also features power-ups and traps to avoid - a bomb that will end your game and a magnet that pulls in nearby apples - making it a little more complicated.
While improved graphics are a plus in most games, I feel they spoil it a little here. The version for colour screens feels a little overdone - a retro “classic” mode would have been great.
Still, I’m happy to report new Snake is just as addictive as ever.
Play classic Snake
Use the arrow keys to direct the snake around the screen and eat the dots.
The more dots the snake eats, the longer it grows and the higher your score.
Avoid causing the snake to eat itself, and use the arrow keys to start the game again.
Verdict
Should you use the Nokia 3310 as your main phone? Of course not, unless you’re determined to go on a digital detox.
For all the flak that smartphones get, having internet access, Google Maps and a great camera whenever you need them are a wonderful thing.
Then again, that’s not really what the new 3310 is for. This might be your holiday phone, one you take camping, or an emergency backup. It's there for whenever you need a long lasting reliable phone that you wouldn’t cry over getting stolen.
There are a few frustrations - no WhatsApp being my primary one. But it’s a perfectly capable phone, and with a big dollop of nostalgia on the side, it’ll put a :) on your face.
The Nokia 3310 is available now for £49.99
