Nokia will re-launch the 3310, perhaps the best-loved and most resilient phone in history.
The phone, originally released in 2000 and in many ways beginning the modern age of mobiles, will be sold as a way of getting lots of battery life in a nearly indestructible body.
The new incarnation of the old 3310 will be sold for just €59, and so likely be pitched as a reliable second phone to people who fondly remember it the first time around. It will be revealed at Mobile World Congress later this month, according to leaker Evan Blass who first revealed the details.
It’s still possible to buy the 3310 on Amazon, though only through its marketplace and not directly from the company itself. The Amazon listing describes a range of features, including a clock, calculator, the ability to store up to ten reminders and four games: Snake II, Pairs II, Space Impact, and Bantumi.
Snake was so well-loved that it’s currently available for iPhone, Android and Windows phone users to download.
That collection of features has led to it being branded as perhaps the most resilient and long-lasting phone ever made. The reputation has let it become the star of hundreds of memes, and even led people to crush it in a hydraulic press.
Nokia struggled to bring its brand into the smartphone era and ended up being sold to Microsoft. But since then it has targeted success by making new versions of old phones, including the Nokia 215, which costs $29 and lasts for 29 days.
Phones made under the Nokia brand are now sold by HMD Global, a Finnish company that bought the rights to the name. HMD will reveal other new mobiles – the Nokia 3, 5 and 6 – at the same MWC event.
Those other new phones wll be more like smartphones, but will retain much of the same low price.
