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Brian Barrett
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The brick. It is not a particularly flattering nickname, especially for anything that has acquired cult status, especially for a technological element.However, twenty years after its debut, the Nokia 3310 still proudly bears the nickname.People enjoyed it for what they can do. But they miss him for everything he might not.
Technically, September 1 is the anniversary of Nokia’s announcement of 3310, not its sale; it’s a bit like celebrating an ultrasound instead of a birthday.However, now is the best time for the small blue tank, the indestructible chocolate bar, the device that sold 126 million units, more than 20 times more than the first generation.iPhone (comparison is unfair on several levels: price, longevity, markets that are sold, again, fun!)
The praises of the Nokia 3310 have already been widely sung, but the memories are brief and the last few weeks those days, so forgive a brief summary.Yes, it may be above all a drop of any moderate height.But he did so with a kind of clumsy style: the call and arrow buttons curved into a sophisticated smile; the frame was a midnight blue tone; The digital keys responded to each keystroke with a successful click.It was decidedly minimalist in a dazzling era. The battery lasted at least a week without recharging, and then Snake II appeared, an elite point of a time-wasting game that reliably gave you anything to look at on your phone nearly a decade before the iOS App Store launch.
Well, a few more reminders of his greatness. You can update the housing with another color or design and remove or update the battery.It doesn’t really count as modular, however, it’s closer than you get with most smartphones today.exchanges and more characters. There were 3 games beyond Snake II, of which at least one, Space Impact, was decent.It allows you to download ringtones and configure screen savers, two new features from this era.
In fact, it’s simple that having a cell phone was still pretty new at the time.2000 was the first time Pew Research interviewed American adults about cell phone ownership; 53% had one.By 2006, this number had increased to 73%. Given the popularity of the Nokia 3310 during this period, especially among a younger demographic, it is safe to say that this was the first advent of a giant number of other people to mobile phones, period.
This explains the persistent nostalgia it arouses. Every year or two, write a new commemoration, birthday or not. In 2018, a company called HMD Global even resurrected the 3310, somehow creating a flexible phone that remembers the iconic design while adding new touches: a fundamental Internet browser, a low-end camera, to help it function just like in today’s world.
This reinvention results in some inappropriate aspects. If you miss the Nokia 3310, it’s not with the proviso that you’d like to be able to attach it to Facebook from it.You miss him because it reminds you of a time when Facebook didn’t exist.The internet has been bad in some parts, however, in the 3310 era, it was at least something you’d rather forget for for long periods of time.The 3310 may not do much because there simply wasn’t much to do: there were no tweets to send, news to update, no photo filters to navigate.His phone was primarily a phone, not an intentionally addictive portal to infinite wisdom and existential weight.
Your right to repair the Nokia 3310 yourself has never been challenged.In-game microtransactions never apply. He never had to worry about carrying it.As close as you can be to doomscrolling to spinning through the ex on your touch list.
It’s not a desire to back down. It’s not even a preference for smart old days, not really, because they weren’t especially smart for most people; The limited availability of internet and reliable cell phones has led to inequalities that still persist today, but the 3310 is a reminder, as the spiral accelerates and the whirlwind widens, that things have not been so, that a number of possible intentional choices and accidental consequences have radically reshaped the role that generation plays in our daily lives.A lot was for the better, a lot of not. The more you pass, the more you realize that none of this was inevitable.
That’s a lot of weight for what amounts to a reasonable phone, functional enough and popular enough for its 20th anniversary.After all, it’s just a brick. That’s precisely the point: that’s all it ever had to be, and that was a lot.
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