7 ms·

Of the many people I know who say they yearn for a 'dumbphone' (feature phone), I've yet to see anyone I know actually make the nostalgic leap. I don't think th

by helipad 10y ago

Of the many people I know who say they yearn for a 'dumbphone' (feature phone), I've yet to see anyone I know actually make the nostalgic leap. I don't think the Nokia 3310 would achieve that either. The long battery life of feature phones is fantastic, and I could certainly type faster with T9. The experience often falls apart when you want to join a group text, book an Uber, get directions etc. There are lo-fi versions of these, but the experience is bad enough to just not be worth it.

pjmlp 10y ago
I know quite a few people that don't care 1s for such things,they really just use their phones for calling and SMS, eventually taking some very occasional pictures.
adzicg 10y ago
I have a dumbfone, in addition to an iphone. Bought it because I needed a secondary phone number and Iphone does not support dual sim. Did not see much point getting another smartphone
IgorPartola 10y ago
I would use it as a backup phone but never as my primary device, and I did use the original back in the day. Sure, it is indestructible. But it is not applicable in the modern world.
Drumlin 10y ago
Only reason I own a smartphone is to fit in while working - it was like being an outsider with everyone else getting information immediately via Trello and Slack. I would often miss last minute changes to meetings and stuff. Other than that I have no reason to own one and would love to get rid of it. I deleted all my social media accounts, I use normal taxi services and public transport, I memorize directions from my computers and so on. I don't even check my emails on the thing.
- ams6110 10y ago
  If work requires trello and slack on a mobile device, it would be reasonable to ask them to buy said device for you. I dislike the trend of work expecting people to use their personal mobile device to stay connected or even for 2FA.
privong 10y ago
> Of the many people I know who say they yearn for a 'dumbphone' (feature phone), I've yet to see anyone I know actually make the nostalgic leap. I went back to a feature phone for almost a year, though I had a smartphone in "airplane mode" with me for most of the same time, but I'd just connect that to wifi. > I don't think the Nokia 3310 would achieve that either. Probably not. One thing that I couldn't get used to with the feature phone was call quality. It was terrible. I don't know if that's GSM (as compared to what 4G was like on my smartphone) or if that was the build quality of the feature phone (which was a rather cheap phone). But I agree that the 3310 isn't likely to entice many people to take the leap.
rmchugh 10y ago
I'm smartphone phobic, I have only used one briefly and I hated it. I prefer the ergonomics of texting with buttons and I get stressed out by constantly being connected to social media, emails etc. Personally I feel like smartphones are a huge step backwards. We have allowed corporations to colonise our leisure time and disrupt our social interactions in exchange for a few tawdry gimmicks.
- quicklime 10y ago
  I consider having access to maps and ridesharing to be life changing, not just tawdry gimmicks. I'm not exaggerating - for example I don't think I would've been able to go car-free without Citymapper and Lyft. I don't have any social media apps installed on my phone, nor do I have my work email set up.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ctack 10y ago
    Am in the same camp. Not that into my phone at all, my 16gb iphone is battered and almost entirely unloved, but holy smokes, Maps/Uber can be useful/life saving.
- rak00n 10y ago
  In my android I turn off most of the notifications, except the messaging apps. It's quite bearable that way.
- thisrod 10y ago
  I guess you're old enough to remember when everyone felt sorry for those people whose jobs required them to carry pagers.
  - rmchugh 10y ago
    Nope! I'm a young codger.
- 10y ago
carlob 10y ago
After owning a couple of smartphones I went back to dumbphones a few years ago. I've owned a Nokia 515 and now a Nokia 208. By book reading went up about an order of magnitude. The only thing I really miss are maps. I actually just spent some money to repair my 208, because it's the last of these to support 3G as well. I guess I was right not to wait for this one since it doesn't appear to support 3G.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  > The only thing I really miss are maps Did they deprecate the J2ME version of Google Maps?
jacquesm 10y ago
I have bought lots of different smartphones but I use an ancient Nokia every day. That 3310 will definitely be bought and tried to see if it works better than what I have right now.
yason 10y ago
I've had various dumbphones over the course of years. A few Xcover line bar phones from Samsung, those were the best, really, but they eventually broke down and were discontinued by that time. A couple of years ago I had Nokia 225 because my smartphone broke, didn't find an appealing replacement, and I'm not that much into smartphones anyway. I loved the 225 for its simplicity and general responsiveness but texting was abysmally slow after entering a few dozen characters: while the phone was recomputing the text layout on each keypress I could almost see the code as it was written by someone who clearly should've read about computational complexity on compsci 101. That was the sole reason I dumped the phone, especially as SMS is one of the main uses for a dumbphone. Battery was great though, and ringer volumes, speakers and the microphone were good. I suspect the new 3310 is pretty much another revision of that phone. I would pay decent money for an old skool feature phone that: - is small enough to fit in a tight pocket without me either feeling it in the first place or bending it broke - doesn't have its back cover, battery, and phone flying in three directions when I drop it one the floor - has battery life in weeks - has a simple but usable camera, 2Mpx is enough for taking photos sharp enough for notes - has blazing fast user interface with absolutely no delays or lag (how hard can it be?) - its UI has predictable command paths instead of scrollable list and grid views so that I can punch MENU+5+3+2+1 or something similar to dive directly into one particular submenu. This is how you set your phone to silent/vibrate/loud in the good old times, while walking and never looking at the screen for feedback because you just knew what the phone would do. - Has 3G/4G data and a basic mostly text-based web browser for checking out timetables, locations or opening times if absolutely necessary - Has a native online map application: Google Maps for J2ME was, if a bit outdated, still decent - Bluetooth for transferring contacts, audio files, and photos All these features have been in phones ten years ago, probably earlier. The best phones at the time had probably 90% of the above list, usually by lacking something that wouldn't have been fixed by technology if only smartphones didn't take over.
- stonogo 10y ago
  Nokia 6700 classic checks all your boxes, except LTE. Getting hard to find, but totally worth it.
nickysielicki 10y ago
+1 I did make the leap for a nearly a year. The problems you point out are legitimate, and they made me to move back to a smartphone. Hopefully the 3310 fixes some of those bigger issues you point out (eg: group texting) just as a function of being newer. The market for the 3310 is larger than you think. For one, there are plenty of old people that prefer to have something simple and smartphones are a nonstarter for them. I think we might actually buy two of these for my grandparents, as they're about to move onto our family plan from another provider. Beyond that, I think a lot of people who walk around with an $800 phone might be interested in spending $50 as an insurance plan, so that if their phone breaks they have a readily available backup, or if they're doing something risky they can have something to take instead. (Of course, that means you can't post photos of your crazy exciting life to Instagram and Facebook while you're experiencing it, so I doubt most people would be interested.) I personally won't pick one up because it lacks 3G and LTE, and I would never buy a phone that I can't tether to my laptop. I realize the lack of those radios results in the battery life it's able to get, but I'd prefer for it to be disabled by default but still available for when you need it.
squarefoot 10y ago
"I've yet to see anyone I know actually make the nostalgic leap" Some people, including me, need two SIM, so I would not buy a new 3310 (though I had the old one and loved it) for that reason. My current phone however is a dumb dual SIM paid €20 new, and I would not swap it even for the latest iPhone or any costly Android equivalent.
- bobsam 10y ago
  They have a dual SIM version of 3310...
  - squarefoot 10y ago
    Interesting, thanks!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
wvenable 10y ago
I'm just wondering who these people are that are still making phone calls? I barely make 60 minutes of talk a month on my mobile. When I had a dumbphone the world was a different place.
mpg33 10y ago
I have both a "dumbphone" and a smartphone. But honestly, if you want a dumbphone get something like an old BlackBerry Curve. That way you still retain full keyboard capabilities instead having to use T9 for texting.
anexprogrammer 10y ago
Personally I yearn for a dumb-ish phone. That's as much due to form-factor as features. Essentially the entire market is candy bar touch sensitive, sealed battery and so on. I can't be unique in wanting something that's not a candy bar? I've passed peak smartphone - and toned down my app use. I'll accept a few different formats as alternative. Yet again, after a ludicrously short time, my sealed in smartphone battery was getting tired. I was hoping Blackberry was finally going to make the "obvious" handset change - a Classic with Android. They announced they were exiting handsets instead. The Far East gets a selection of Android flip phones, mostly very expensive premium, never coming near Europe. So I settled on getting a LG V20 when it released as it at least keeps SD and removable battery. Then LG decided EU doesn't get those. So when my "smart" phone died, I got my old V8 Motorola (The Linux based flip follow on to the v3) out the drawer. It's fantastic. It gets more signal and clearer calls than any smartphone I have owned, and the original (12 year old?) battery gives weeks of standby. It has ergonomics. Of course the camera is awful, and there's next to no storage. Seriously, give me that form factor with modern storage, Android and keep the a tiny screen that only comes on when you flip open. I don't need a huge screen to run a chat app, or listen to "turn left in 100 yards", or book a taxi. I can't think of a single app I use that needs a 4"+ screen. The miniscule external v8 screen is perfect for notifications and music player use. Should get decent standby life... Nope, the entirity of global capitalism offers me 23,509 near identical candy bars in a simulation of choice.

by helipad 10y ago

pjmlp 10y ago

I know quite a few people that don't care 1s for such things,they really just use their phones for calling and SMS, eventually taking some very occasional pictures.

adzicg 10y ago

I have a dumbfone, in addition to an iphone. Bought it because I needed a secondary phone number and Iphone does not support dual sim. Did not see much point getting another smartphone

IgorPartola 10y ago

I would use it as a backup phone but never as my primary device, and I did use the original back in the day. Sure, it is indestructible. But it is not applicable in the modern world.

Drumlin 10y ago

Only reason I own a smartphone is to fit in while working - it was like being an outsider with everyone else getting information immediately via Trello and Slack. I would often miss last minute changes to meetings and stuff. Other than that I have no reason to own one and would love to get rid of it. I deleted all my social media accounts, I use normal taxi services and public transport, I memorize directions from my computers and so on. I don't even check my emails on the thing.

ams6110 10y ago
If work requires trello and slack on a mobile device, it would be reasonable to ask them to buy said device for you. I dislike the trend of work expecting people to use their personal mobile device to stay connected or even for 2FA.

privong 10y ago

> Of the many people I know who say they yearn for a 'dumbphone' (feature phone), I've yet to see anyone I know actually make the nostalgic leap. I went back to a feature phone for almost a year, though I had a smartphone in "airplane mode" with me for most of the same time, but I'd just connect that to wifi. > I don't think the Nokia 3310 would achieve that either. Probably not. One thing that I couldn't get used to with the feature phone was call quality. It was terrible. I don't know if that's GSM (as compared to what 4G was like on my smartphone) or if that was the build quality of the feature phone (which was a rather cheap phone). But I agree that the 3310 isn't likely to entice many people to take the leap.

rmchugh 10y ago

I'm smartphone phobic, I have only used one briefly and I hated it. I prefer the ergonomics of texting with buttons and I get stressed out by constantly being connected to social media, emails etc. Personally I feel like smartphones are a huge step backwards. We have allowed corporations to colonise our leisure time and disrupt our social interactions in exchange for a few tawdry gimmicks.

quicklime 10y ago
I consider having access to maps and ridesharing to be life changing, not just tawdry gimmicks. I'm not exaggerating - for example I don't think I would've been able to go car-free without Citymapper and Lyft. I don't have any social media apps installed on my phone, nor do I have my work email set up.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ctack 10y ago
  Am in the same camp. Not that into my phone at all, my 16gb iphone is battered and almost entirely unloved, but holy smokes, Maps/Uber can be useful/life saving.
rak00n 10y ago
In my android I turn off most of the notifications, except the messaging apps. It's quite bearable that way.
thisrod 10y ago
I guess you're old enough to remember when everyone felt sorry for those people whose jobs required them to carry pagers.
- rmchugh 10y ago
  Nope! I'm a young codger.
10y ago

carlob 10y ago

After owning a couple of smartphones I went back to dumbphones a few years ago. I've owned a Nokia 515 and now a Nokia 208. By book reading went up about an order of magnitude. The only thing I really miss are maps. I actually just spent some money to repair my 208, because it's the last of these to support 3G as well. I guess I was right not to wait for this one since it doesn't appear to support 3G.

kalleboo 10y ago
> The only thing I really miss are maps Did they deprecate the J2ME version of Google Maps?

jacquesm 10y ago

I have bought lots of different smartphones but I use an ancient Nokia every day. That 3310 will definitely be bought and tried to see if it works better than what I have right now.

yason 10y ago

I've had various dumbphones over the course of years. A few Xcover line bar phones from Samsung, those were the best, really, but they eventually broke down and were discontinued by that time. A couple of years ago I had Nokia 225 because my smartphone broke, didn't find an appealing replacement, and I'm not that much into smartphones anyway. I loved the 225 for its simplicity and general responsiveness but texting was abysmally slow after entering a few dozen characters: while the phone was recomputing the text layout on each keypress I could almost see the code as it was written by someone who clearly should've read about computational complexity on compsci 101. That was the sole reason I dumped the phone, especially as SMS is one of the main uses for a dumbphone. Battery was great though, and ringer volumes, speakers and the microphone were good. I suspect the new 3310 is pretty much another revision of that phone. I would pay decent money for an old skool feature phone that: - is small enough to fit in a tight pocket without me either feeling it in the first place or bending it broke - doesn't have its back cover, battery, and phone flying in three directions when I drop it one the floor - has battery life in weeks - has a simple but usable camera, 2Mpx is enough for taking photos sharp enough for notes - has blazing fast user interface with absolutely no delays or lag (how hard can it be?) - its UI has predictable command paths instead of scrollable list and grid views so that I can punch MENU+5+3+2+1 or something similar to dive directly into one particular submenu. This is how you set your phone to silent/vibrate/loud in the good old times, while walking and never looking at the screen for feedback because you just knew what the phone would do. - Has 3G/4G data and a basic mostly text-based web browser for checking out timetables, locations or opening times if absolutely necessary - Has a native online map application: Google Maps for J2ME was, if a bit outdated, still decent - Bluetooth for transferring contacts, audio files, and photos All these features have been in phones ten years ago, probably earlier. The best phones at the time had probably 90% of the above list, usually by lacking something that wouldn't have been fixed by technology if only smartphones didn't take over.

stonogo 10y ago
Nokia 6700 classic checks all your boxes, except LTE. Getting hard to find, but totally worth it.

nickysielicki 10y ago

+1 I did make the leap for a nearly a year. The problems you point out are legitimate, and they made me to move back to a smartphone. Hopefully the 3310 fixes some of those bigger issues you point out (eg: group texting) just as a function of being newer. The market for the 3310 is larger than you think. For one, there are plenty of old people that prefer to have something simple and smartphones are a nonstarter for them. I think we might actually buy two of these for my grandparents, as they're about to move onto our family plan from another provider. Beyond that, I think a lot of people who walk around with an $800 phone might be interested in spending $50 as an insurance plan, so that if their phone breaks they have a readily available backup, or if they're doing something risky they can have something to take instead. (Of course, that means you can't post photos of your crazy exciting life to Instagram and Facebook while you're experiencing it, so I doubt most people would be interested.) I personally won't pick one up because it lacks 3G and LTE, and I would never buy a phone that I can't tether to my laptop. I realize the lack of those radios results in the battery life it's able to get, but I'd prefer for it to be disabled by default but still available for when you need it.

squarefoot 10y ago

"I've yet to see anyone I know actually make the nostalgic leap" Some people, including me, need two SIM, so I would not buy a new 3310 (though I had the old one and loved it) for that reason. My current phone however is a dumb dual SIM paid €20 new, and I would not swap it even for the latest iPhone or any costly Android equivalent.

bobsam 10y ago
They have a dual SIM version of 3310...
- squarefoot 10y ago
  Interesting, thanks!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

wvenable 10y ago

I'm just wondering who these people are that are still making phone calls? I barely make 60 minutes of talk a month on my mobile. When I had a dumbphone the world was a different place.

mpg33 10y ago

I have both a "dumbphone" and a smartphone. But honestly, if you want a dumbphone get something like an old BlackBerry Curve. That way you still retain full keyboard capabilities instead having to use T9 for texting.

anexprogrammer 10y ago

Personally I yearn for a dumb-ish phone. That's as much due to form-factor as features. Essentially the entire market is candy bar touch sensitive, sealed battery and so on. I can't be unique in wanting something that's not a candy bar? I've passed peak smartphone - and toned down my app use. I'll accept a few different formats as alternative. Yet again, after a ludicrously short time, my sealed in smartphone battery was getting tired. I was hoping Blackberry was finally going to make the "obvious" handset change - a Classic with Android. They announced they were exiting handsets instead. The Far East gets a selection of Android flip phones, mostly very expensive premium, never coming near Europe. So I settled on getting a LG V20 when it released as it at least keeps SD and removable battery. Then LG decided EU doesn't get those. So when my "smart" phone died, I got my old V8 Motorola (The Linux based flip follow on to the v3) out the drawer. It's fantastic. It gets more signal and clearer calls than any smartphone I have owned, and the original (12 year old?) battery gives weeks of standby. It has ergonomics. Of course the camera is awful, and there's next to no storage. Seriously, give me that form factor with modern storage, Android and keep the a tiny screen that only comes on when you flip open. I don't need a huge screen to run a chat app, or listen to "turn left in 100 yards", or book a taxi. I can't think of a single app I use that needs a 4"+ screen. The miniscule external v8 screen is perfect for notifications and music player use. Should get decent standby life... Nope, the entirity of global capitalism offers me 23,509 near identical candy bars in a simulation of choice.