It’s the well-known brick phone! The Nokia 3310 is loved by a lot of [not-so young] people for its sturdy casing, the right shade of midnight blue, the long-lasting battery (did you know it can last at least a week without a recharge?), and the god-tier game, Snake II. There’s a sense of nostalgia, with the memories of the past associated with the classic gadget. You’ll see new thinkpieces singing praises of the 3310, as Wired details:
That explains the enduring nostalgia it invokes. Every year or two someone writes a new commemoration, anniversary or no. In 2018 a company called HMD Global even resurrected the 3310, in a fashion, turning out a feature phone that recalls the iconic design while adding contemporary touches—a basic web browser, a low-end camera—to help it function in today’s world.
That reinvention feels in some ways misplaced. If you miss the Nokia 3310, it’s not with the caveat that you wish you could log onto 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 you could reasonably ignore for long stretches of time. The 3310 couldn’t do much because there simply wasn’t much to do: no tweets to send, no News Feeds to refresh, no photo filters to swipe through. Your phone was primarily a phone, not a purposefully addictive portal into infinite knowledge and existential weight.
Image via Wired
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And before that, we used to remember phone numbers by heart. Yes younglings, all you contacts by heart!
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There is something to be said about the freedom of just having a phone and not a computer, email device, and other things to keep us constantly connected. If it's important they'll call. Of course today in the era of robocalls maybe a phone that you can avoid them with would be best.
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