Move over Nokia 3310, here are 7 other classic phones that deserve a 2017 revival

In case you hadn’t heard, Nokia’s iconic 3310 is back — brought back to life by HMD Global, the company that now owns the rights to the Nokia name.

As owners of the older 3310, Karan Bajaj & Hitesh Raj Bhagat started thinking, what if?

Motorola Razr V3


(Image: amazon.com)

The Razr is one of few phones that still has a relevant design and high recall, on the same level as the Nokia 3310, many would say. The super-slim profile, flip design and chemically etched keypad stood out from the crowd quite easily. Even today, no one — not even Motorola — has been able to create something as iconic and desirable. It weighed a paltry 95 grams, had an anodized aluminum body, quad band support, dual colour displays, Bluetooth and a VGA camera.

Nokia N-Gage


(Image: amazon.com)

Many will remember the N-Gage as the first smartphone for gamers. It took traditional phone design and turned it on its side — literally! It looked like a hand-held console with a colour screen in the center, D-pad on the left and number keys on the right (these also doubled up as gaming keys). It had a dedicated game slot for inserting game cartridges — the games had to be bought separately. It was powered by a 104Mhz processor and ran Series 60 OS. While the phone was unique, it did not find too much success due to many design flaws. A successor called the N-Gage QD offered improved design and performance but by that time, the era of N-Gage was over.

Sony Ericsson T68i


(Image: wikipedia.org)

The T68i was the phone for the youth when it launched in 2002. It had a colour screen, Bluetooth, email, T9 predictive text, customisable ring tones and was amongst the first phones to support MMS. It was one of the most feature-rich phones you could buy at the time and this is a big deal considering that BlackBerry and Symbian phones were very popular. There was even a separate add-on camera dongle if you felt like capturing photos.

Nokia 6600


(Image: ebay.com)

The 6600 was amongst the first breed of high-end Symbian smartphones and was counted as the most advanced smartphone at launch in 2003. It included support to install games, browsers, office suites, themes and various other third-party apps. It was also one of the first smartphones to support mp3 playback and had a memory card slot for storage expansion. Features included a 2.1-inch colour display, VGA camera, Bluetooth, infrared, a 5-way joystick and a 104Mhz processor.

Sony P990


(Image: ebay.com)

When it comes to smartphones, the P990 from Sony Ericsson stands its ground as one the most unique yet handy designs. It was the only phone at the time to offer multiple modes of text input: via the touchscreen, with a stylus, a QWERTY keyboard and a standard number pad. With the flip closed you had a number keypad but it revealed a full QWERTY keyboard when opened. That’s why the 2.7-inch touchscreen was smaller than previous versions of the phone. It was also one of the first to offer WiFi, 3G, video calling support via front VGA camera and handwriting recognition. It ran the UIQ 3 interface based on Symbian and was powered by a 208Mhz processor.

Motorola StarTac


(Image: ebay.com)

This one wears the crown of being the first clamshell phone in the world, way back in 1996. If you’ve seen the old Star Trek movies, you can easily see that the StarTac drew inspiration from the communicator device. It was available in CDMA and GSM variants and is counted as one of the first phones to help push widespread adoption of mobile phones. There have been successors to the StarTac, namely the StarTac 2004 and StarTac III (2007) that offered updated specs and features.

Nokia 8110


(Image: ebay.co.uk)

If you’ve seen the Matrix (movie), you’ll remember the curved slider Nokia phone used in multiple scenes. The phone used in the movie was the Nokia 8110 and it earned the nickname ‘Banana phone’ because of the unique curved slider. It had a green monochrome display and was also the first phones to come with an internal antenna. Even though the phone offered limited features, it won accolades for the stylish slider design. The successor to the phone was the Nokia 8850 that featured a similar stylish design and came with a blue monochrome display. The 8850 also had the added advantage of voice dialling support.