25 years after its release, the legendary Nokia 3210 is about to make a comeback

Three games (snake, memory and spin), the ability to personalize ringtones or even change the skin, the first intuitive T9 written dictionary… Remember? Telephone Nokia 3210released in 1999 and sold 160 million copies, it could be making a comeback very soon.

The mystery comes from a tweet posted by HMD, the Finnish telecommunications company that makes Nokia phones. She announced that the catalog “icon” would (re)appear in May 2024, on “her birthday.”

And this Wednesday, May 8, 2024, HMD confirmed it.

The phone may arrive at a price of 89 euros.

According to a specialized website Nokimobthis “new” Nokia 3210 may go on sale in a few days, namely on May 15th.

The phone could cost €89 and will be available in several colors, including blue and yellow. And the snake game would be there!

It will have the shape of a phone released 25 years ago, but with a modern touch, with a 2.4-inch LCD screen, a small 2-megapixel photo sensor, a USB-C port for charging, and a microSD port to accommodate a 32GB card.

The “boring phone” or “dumb phone” trend

Since the Finnish company HMD Global began selling phones under license from Nokia, it continues to popularize the brand’s iconic models.

It was the 3310 that was relaunched in 2017. It was followed in 2018 by the “banana phone,” the nickname given to the Nokia 8810. This strategy is all the more effective as consumers increasingly look to step away from their screens. Some see older, affordable cell phones as a means to disconnect from social media while still being accessible.

Boring phones or dumb phones (usually flip phones) are now cool because they prioritize basic phone functions like calling and texting.

The trend, born of Gen Z’s (people born between the late 1990s and late 2000s) suspicion of the data-gathering and attention-gathering technologies they grew up with, came back to mind there for a few days. The keeper.

A phenomenon called “neutro” between “new” and “retro”, which is reflected in the revival of vinyl records, cassette tapes, fanzines, 8-bit video games and, consequently, old-fashioned mobile phones.

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