Nokia 3310

Nokia 3310
Nokia 3310

From desirability to ubiquity

The Nokia 3310 is one of the best selling phones of all time. Between 2000 and 2005 Nokia sold 126 million of this phone and the very similar 3330 (3).

Like the 3210 which it effectively replaced, the 3310 was a consumer phone with an bias towards the younger end of the market aged 12 to 25: teenagers and young professionals. Texting was already enormously popular, but the 3310 introduced a new chat function allowing people to chat on-line using texts.

 You could customise Nokia's new baby with new Xpress-on covers, your own screen saver and voice activated dialling. The mobile phone was becoming a part of you. Just how much a mobile phone could mean to an individual was revealed by the sad story of a Romanian man who hung himself after losing his Nokia 3310.

The Nokia 3310 gradually lost status but gained popularity.  When Tesco launched its own mobile phone service, a joint venture with O2 in 2003, the 3310 was the cheapest handset, retailing at £44.99. By the end of 2003, the Nokia 3310, already considered old hat, was amongst the phones being collected to be refurbished and redistributed to the Third World.

There are still Nokia 3310s in use today. As a reliable and basic phone that can make calls and send and receive texts, you cannot beat it.

Resources

Nokia 3310 on Wikipedia

References

(1) From Dial-a-phone advert in the Guardian (October 2000)

(2) From The Link advert in the Guardian (August 2001) on Cellnet, One2One and Orange.

(3) Nokia press release

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Comments (13)

Steven

good

John Jensen

What I need: Talk and text, battery-life a week or so. My new phone has about 50 apps I don't need, some I don't trust, and I can't remove them.

John Jensen

What I need: Talk and text. On my new phone there about a hundred things I don't need, and can't remove, but I like the camera.

Tanya
JUST LOOKING AT OLD MODELS OF NOKIA HANDSWETS
Karl
The Romanian man who HANGED himself. Curtains are hung, people are hanged.
zA hAnDo
zzzzzzZZZZOOOOOOOOOoooommmmmm "Oi Josuke, I've entered this old ass website using Za Hando, ain't that neat?" Ducco Bucco Italian Godfather Al Were here
Matt
"Romanian man who hung himself after losing his Nokia 3310" is this a true statement? I need to know because I'm using this for an article on the effect of mobile phones on our health.
fuvk u
"Romanian man who hung himself after losing his Nokia 3310" WTF
Alison Beecham
We have this phone how much is it worth pleas
bobby
Hi all! Nokia 3310 was one of the best phones, I have ever liked. I bought the phone 4 times. I am very much shocked and surprized that why the phone was discontinues. that is a wrong thing with the customers. Today I am dersigning a phone and want to give this to the world for a better tomorrow and to make things easy for you. thanks
bobbie fish
great but now we have the iphone
Steven
Bonsoir, J'ai ajout? deux modes emploie pour le Nokia 3310, en anglais et en fran?ais dans la passage titr? 'Resources'. (I have added two manuals for the Nokia 3310 in English and French to the 'Resources' section.)
rodlome39
Bonsoir, pourriez-vous m'envoyer 1 mode emploie pour mon nouveau NOKIA 3310
 
   
Mobile phone history