Nokia 3310 (2017) review: Nostalgia comes at a cost

Nokia has been in the course of the wringer and emerged as a remodeled company. It now owns the sports fitness model Withings, is energetic in developing web of issues (IoT), cloud and communications applied sciences, and –via HMD world — has its identify back on mobile phones.

announced at mobile World Congress in February, the Nokia 3310 harks again to the unique 3310, which launched back in 2000. Nokia hopes its new tackle what used to be an organization favorite on the turn of the millennium will lure people who want a easy however powerful telephone with remarkable battery existence.

part of me desires to write this review with my nostalgia hat on (and that hat will see the light of day), however the remaining wants to put this ‘retro’ telephone into nowadays’s market. Does it operate neatly sufficient to be a hit on the £50 worth?

Nokia 3310, historic and modern.

photography: Nokia, ZDNet.de

the new Nokia 3310 is not a blocky simulacrum of the unique. instead it can be more curved, a lot thinner and has a significantly better display. The monitor is also colour, whereas the unique’s used to be monochrome.

The small D-pad underneath the monitor, together with the big call and end buttons, cater for movement round icons and menus — the reveal could also be colour, nevertheless it’s not contact sensitive. A touchscreen fan might to find all this a trouble, despite the fact that many landline phones rent the same conventions — as do many ‘feature phones’ in the mobile market.

textual content entry is by means of the number pad in traditional T9 type, involving a couple of key presses to cycle through numbers and letters or other characters. i discovered it superb how my T9 knowledge came flooding back as I created my first few messages.

that you may get the Nokia 3310 in warm red and Yellow (gloss finish), and darkish Blue and gray (matte end).

picture: Nokia

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The Nokia 3310 is on hand in 4 colors. Mine used to be a relatively sober dark blue, but there are additionally red, yellow and grey versions. The construct may be very solid and the front and back look as though they should be reasonably scratch resistant. My matte-finish handset was additionally well grippy.

The handset bulges to a most 51mm at its midriff, making it narrow sufficient to suit snugly right into a small palm comparable to mine, and it is short sufficient at 115.6mm not to poke out of the highest of my favorite jacket pocket. At 12.8mm it’s thick in comparison with today’s slimline handsets, although the device’s proportions are captivating. It weighs just 79g including the battery.

The 3310’s tight-becoming backplate pops off to disclose a battery that must be removed to get entry to the Micro-SIM and MicroSD slots, which might be stacked one on top of the opposite.

The monitor may be larger than that of the 2000 model of this handset, but it isn’t the rest to jot down dwelling about. It measures 2.4 inches across the diagonal or (with the aid of my measurements) 3.6mm broad and 4.9mm tall. It has a QVGA decision of just 240 by using 320 pixels.

can you see individual pixels? sure. however frankly that does not subject, as a result of this is not a handset on which you can be gazing capture-up tv, studying a novel or looking websites — unless you in reality have to.

there’s no wi-fi and no GPS, and communications are limited to 2G on the 900MHz and 1800MHz bands. You do get Bluetooth 3.0 though.

do not be fooled via the sequence 30+ name which is given to the operating system. this isn’t associated to Nokia’s entry-level collection 30 OS from the previous days. as a substitute, series 30+ is the MediaTek-developed platform that was once used by Microsoft mobile when it took over Nokia. The OS is now within the arms of HMD global, the Finnish handset maker responsible for the 3310 and other Nokia-branded handsets.

The 2017 Nokia 3310 has a 2.four-inch non-touch colour display. D-pad navigation and predictive text entry are the order of the day here.

picture: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet

For the technically minded it’s price noting that collection 30+ does no longer run J2ME purposes just like the previous sequence 30 did. instead, where handsets make stronger it, series 30+ runs apps within the MAUI Runtime environment. The Nokia 3310 is pre-populated with a range of inventory apps, and has a retailer.

the overall structure of the consumer interface and the stable of constructed-in apps will probably be acquainted to anyone who can take into account that using previous Nokia characteristic phones, or later Microsoft mobile variations.

A grid bargains icons that take you to apps like messaging, track player, weather, an FM radio, videos, notes, calendar, calculator, alarm clock, file supervisor, camera and voice recorder.

An Extras menu hides a countdown timer, a stopwatch, a torch toggle for the camera LED and a unit converter. internet looking is by the use of Opera Mini, but excellent luck with that on 2G: I ground my enamel just like I keep in mind that doing years ago…

there’s also a game known as Snake, nevertheless it’s no longer the identical as Nokia’s original Snake.

i discussed a digital camera. This shoots at 2 megapixels and isn’t much use for anything past on-handset images. With simply 1.4MB of the 16MB of interior storage available, it can be most probably a just right factor that you just is not going to need to take too many photographs.

Snake, however not as you needless to say it.

image: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet

the overall efficiency of the Nokia 3310, in the short time I had it, was once high-quality — apart from that tooth-grindingly gradual looking. I made calls and sent texts, I listened to song played from a MicroSD card and used the FM radio — which needs an hooked up headset to kind the antenna.

The supplied headset is lacklustre, but plugging in a better one did not rather improve sound high quality both. Audio used to be ok, but now not great, throughout the single quite tinny speaker. Irritatingly some surfaces damped the sound from the speaker considerably. To console myself I performed Snake, and fiddled with the choice of brash and plinky ringtones.

Battery lifestyles is excellent. The 1,200mAh battery, which is charged by means of Micro-USB, is rated as just right for up to 22 hours of discuss, 31 days on standby, fifty one hours of MP3 playback and 39 hours of radio. I didn’t have the handset to test for extraordinarily lengthy, but I by no means came with reference to working low on power, and could go for days on end without even interested by recharging.

Conclusions

The Nokia 3310 does the basics well sufficient, during which I imply making calls, sending texts, listening to some (mediocre high quality) tune and enjoying the atypical sport. Its very good battery existence is a huge plus point.

however there may be an elephant within the room, and that’s the reason the associated fee: £50 is just too pricey — even £30 can be too expensive. The Nokia 3310 in point of fact needs wi-fi and higher than 2G twin-band connectivity. To take a handset at random for comparability: the Nokia 215, launched in 2015, has reasonably similar specs and is on hand at the moment for £15.

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