The venerable Nokia 3210 holds a special place in my heart, and the announcement of its reboot immediately piqued my interest. In this post, I share my reflections on the original and rebooted 3210, drawing from both nostalgic and engineering perspectives.

Before the 3210 reboot was announced, I had been considering getting a feature phone for some time. While I appreciate the conveniences of modern smartphones, I often find myself frustrated by three key issues:

1. Battery life: Despite continuous improvements in smartphone technology, the typical battery life still hovers around a single day. This leaves me anxious - I worry when the battery level drops below 20% while I’m out, and I fret about whether my phone will have enough charge to wake me up in the morning if I forget to plug it in overnight. I understand that power-hungry apps are partly to blame, and some Android devices do offer a low-power mode akin to a basic feature phone, but in my experience, these extended battery modes only last up to two days and often stop working after a software update. Carrying a power bank is a common workaround, but one that I find less than ideal.

2. Phablet-sized form factor: With a few exceptions like Jelly Star or iPhone SE, the predominant smartphone design is huge and cumbersome to carry in a pocket. While this larger size can be advantageous for media consumption at home, I find the overall mobility and one-handed usability to be less convenient.

3. Lack of physical keys: Touch controls have certainly improved over time, but I still sometimes prefer the tactile feedback and eyes-free typing experience that a physical keypad provides. Some users address this by carrying detachable keyboards, but I don’t find that a practical solution given the added bulk.

In short, my motivation for seeking a feature phone may differ from the digital minimalism or detox trends that drive many others. When the Nokia 3310 reboot was released, I was excited but felt it was a missed opportunity to revive the 3210 instead. For some reason, I have always had a particular fondness for the original 3210 design.

At one point, I even contemplated a DIY reboot project, envisioning a modern 4G or 5G system-on-chip board housed within the iconic 3210 body. Now that the official reboot has arrived, that DIY idea may be off the table, but I’m eager to share my thoughts on the new device and how I might have approached its design differently.

Ode to the 3210

The Nokia 3210 was not my first mobile phone, but it managed to leave a lasting impression. I was drawn to its distinctive antenna-less design, which stood out among the popular candybar phones of that era, such as the Nokia 8110 and Alcatel One Touch Easy. Despite being in the low-end category, I found the 3210’s design incredibly sleek and enigmatic. I even wondered whether its lack of an antenna would impact its signal reception compared to the antenna-equipped models.

The Xpress-on cover options were another appealing aspect, though I did find the front shell difficult to detach, which prevented me from frequently changing the covers as I had initially envisioned. Even with the abundance of third-party covers featuring various themes, I ultimately preferred the original, understated grey design.

I have fond memories of exploring and maximizing the 3210’s features - customizing logos, downloading new ringtones, collecting 5-line ASCII art-based animations for SMS, and even connecting it to a PC to unlock two additional games. This sense of mastering all the device’s capabilities was empowering and contrasted with the limitless, sometimes overwhelming feature sets of modern smartphones, where I sometimes feel like the device owns me rather than the other way around.

When my parents upgraded their phones, my trusty 3210 was passed down to my grandmother. While I was excited to receive the newer Nokia 3310, deep down I felt a bittersweet attachment to my old 3210. I was content with the 3310 and subsequent phones, but there was just something about the 3210’s design, dimensions, and button shapes that I found more appealing than the rounder, more compact 3310.

Reboot

I still prefer the original 3210 design, but I must admit that having a large ear speaker area at the expense of the screen size is not very practical in 2024. Similarly, if the phone runs a newer operating system, it makes sense to have a multi-directional control button, and two select buttons in addition to accept and cancel call buttons. If I worked on that DIY reboot, I would have probably found the up-down control button with only accept and cancel call buttons limiting for modern usage. I think the reboot got this design change right, giving a nice visual homage to the original 3210 design while being reasonably modern.

I naturally went for the grey (or “Grunge Black”) variant. I think the other two colours (yellow and blue) look stunning and I almost wish the rebooted 3210 had exchangeable covers. At the same time, I understand that exchangeable covers may not be practical for this niche product. As with the original 3210 covers and judging from how difficult it is to remove the rebooted 3210 back cover, frequently exchanging them would likely remain an idea rather than a reality, and the alternative covers would only collect dust.

Hardware

On the hardware side, I have a few reservations and would have made some different choices. Overall, the used system-on-chip seems adequate for the functionality it provides, but I would have considered different modules:

• I would have traded the 2MP camera for a Wi-Fi and/or GPS module;
• I would have considered using an E-ink display instead of a TFT LCD. Here, I would need to see if E-ink could make a significant difference in either extending the battery life (which is already pretty good) or improving display readability (which isn’t good under direct sunlight with TFT LCDs). But I feel the TFT LCD choice is reasonable (I’m not happy about the 2MP camera and lack of Wi-Fi though).

Software

On the software side, I would have naturally gone a different route. I would still choose an RTOS, but look for an open-source variant that could be easily extended (either dynamically or by rebuilding the OS image). My personal favorite would be LionsOS, but FreeRTOS could be a good base as well.

However, those choices are more in my hypothetical dream world. In the constrained feature phone market, the current realistic options may be between KaiOS and S30+ / MocorOS. While KaiOS is extensible, I’ve read many reports about its clunkiness for basic phone features. So, S30+ may have been a slightly better choice here.

The core S30+ static feature set is, however, somewhat limited in 2024 and would be more appropriate for a hypothetical 5th-anniversary reboot in 2004:

• Opera Mini as the default web browser;
• No common internet messaging apps (the Facebook app is just Opera Mini going to mbasic.facebook.com, which sadly discontinued the Messenger feature);
• Pre-installed trial games limited to 3 attempts (pretty bizarre in my opinion);
• No USB internet tethering, VPN, etc.

Naturally, it does not have apps related to the missing hardware features mentioned before (such as Wi-Fi tethering or GPS-based maps). Besides specific regions, such as UPI payments, it does not provide common utility apps. In any case, a different default web browser (such as Puffin Browser) or having USB internet tethering is something that could be fixed, i.e., not related to other platform limitations. The basic features, such as SMS or calling, naturally feel great.

Cloud Phone

A glimpse of hope for more modern features is through the Cloud Phone app. This app has a modern Chromium-based browser (Puffin Browser) under the hood and uses cloud-based rendering, allowing access to today’s web applications, such as Twitter/X or YouTube, on an underpowered feature phone. The page rendering runs at about 15FPS, so it is not suitable for playing real-time web-based games, and watching videos in it is so-so. Still, along with USB-C and 4G, the Cloud Phone app is one of the few Nokia 3210 reboot features that feels a bit like 2024, unlike its other features that feel more like 2004. The current Cloud Phone app is pretty limited in its app selection and lacks some browser features (such as file selection), but I assume it is being worked on and may improve over time.

Sadly, the Cloud Phone app is not available in some markets (notably Europe or the USA). The official marketing statement for its lack in certain markets is that people in those markets are seeking digital minimalism, hence they do not need it. I suspect the real reasons are different, such as the cloud browser potentially bypassing national communication control policies in countries like China (if they did not deploy servers specifically for those countries) or the licensing/operational costs not being worth it for those markets (they could use the current servers in Singapore, but the roundtrip time may be too high). Anyway, it is a pity, but perhaps once the Cloud Phone ecosystem is more polished and developed, future feature phones could ship it in other markets as well.

Summary

The Nokia 3210 reboot is a bit bittersweet to me. On one hand, I feel happy, it scratches my nostalgic itch, and it eases some common frustrations I have with smartphones. On the other hand, I see missed potential and flaws, especially on the software side. Practically speaking, WiPhone or Mudita Pure would perhaps be a better choice for me in terms of what I was looking for in feature phones. For other people, it could be KaiOS phones (if they could bear its perceived clunkiness) or cheaper Nokia phones (which, given they lack the Cloud Phone app in some markets, may be pretty much feature-identical to the Nokia 3210). However, for me, enjoying a nostalgic revisited retro device need not be purely practical. The satisfaction and delight I find in using the iconic Nokia 3210 again is a big part of the appeal, even if it does not offer the better features I could imagine.