Who would’ve thought that the biggest stars of this year’s Mobile World Congress would be phones that are not smart. Over the past couple of years, it has become obvious that people are getting a bit sick and tired of the large touch screens and endless features that are supposed to make our lives easier, but are just making them more complicated. With the Galaxy S8 coming out later this March and other new Android smartphones not being too impressive, people turned to simple handsets with old-fashioned functions and no complex features.
The Return of the Nokia 3310 and Snake
Source: Nokia. All photos belong to their rightful owner.
We can make jokes about it all we want, but the truth is that the original Nokia 3310 was a fantastic device, which everyone wanted to own back in 2000. Why? Because it was all but indestructible, offered an extremely long battery life, and came with a game that we couldn’t stop playing—Snake.
Now, 17 years later, Nokia has relaunched its most famous phone in Barcelona, with a different design and a couple of upgrades. The battery is about as powerful as it used to be and can provide you with almost a month on standby, and 22 hours of talk time. Don’t worry, you can play a new version of Snake on it, as well, and this time in colour, too. Along with the 2.4-inch colour display, there’s also a numeric keyboard, menu buttons, and a 2-megapixel rear camera. Laughable, when you think about today’s phones, but hey—for 49 euros, it’s a great second device to own.
Meet the Credit Card-sized Talkase T3
This 0.96-inch dumbphone looks like a ridiculous little thing compared to everything else available on the market (even the new 3310), but it’s endearing in its own way. With a design similar to that of a calculator, a small OLED screen, and a minimalist design, it offers only what you need from a phone: calls, texts, a music player, and an alarm. No apps to distract you, no camera, and no Internet.
Source: mashable.com
It does, however, come with a built-in hotspot feature, which you can use to turn the phone’s 3G connection into a Wi-Fi hotspot for other devices (although, given the slow Internet speeds, you probably won’t ever decide to use this feature). The best part about the Talkase T3 is that it will last for 72 hours on a single charge.
Smartphones Are Here to Stay, But Feature Phones Are a Welcome Change
As great as they may be, feature phones won’t be replacing smartphones any time soon (or ever). We’re living in a rapidly-evolving world of technology, and we need to stay in touch with everything and everyone via all those cool, yet complicated features new Android and iOS phones have to offer.
This means that yes, you can be excited about the upcoming iPhone 8 (or whatever they decide to name it) and the Galaxy S8, but that you can still like the Nokia 3310 and similar devices, and even use them. After all, wouldn’t it be great to be cut off from Twitter, Facebook, and such at least for a day? We sure think so.