Nokia 3310 is going to fail in the markets it's being launched at, i.e. India. The biggest reason for it's (possible) failure is that the people have simply moved on to Android/4G.
Nokia's were a rage when the mobile market was nascent (2004-2010), and carriers flooded the market with cheap SMS rates. With loads of cheap Android phones available, and no WhatsApp on Nokia devices, it's a DoA device. And it doesn't even look as durable as the original classic.
There is still a huge population which wants basic phones as a backup atleast. There are places in india where electricity is not so easy to get and the monthly salary is still under 100$
The senior citizens even though have migrated to smartphones stil are in the dire need of a durable small phone.
I feel apple may also jump in with a luxury feature phone,Just a matter of time
Our teen could hold her iPhone under the dinner table and 2-thumb touch-type texts while keeping eye contact with us, hoping we wouldn't notice. When caught, she demoed that she could be almost 100% accurate even with the phone completely out of her sight. Dead-reckoning with no feedback! Necessity is the mother of invention, I suppose.
I could probably do that too on a smartphone in my teens. But its so much easier with the classic Nokias. The plain old keypads is way better than haptic feedback. The jutted part of the keys serves as your anchor. SImilar to the F and J on a touch system.
>There is still a huge population which wants basic phones as a backup atleast.
I don't just want a basic phone as a backup. I want real sim card portability/functionality. I want to have a smart-phone when I need it, and I want a lightweight, rugged, long battery endurance phone I can pop the sim card into for activities where I'm willing to compromise features for durability (or speed/ease of use).
> The senior citizens even though have migrated to smartphones stil are in the dire need of a durable small phone.
I still can't believe that nobody has done this. I attribute it to my cynicism about dealing with telecom middlemen (data providers).
I have the same opinion amout that market segment, but bear in mind that the 3310 costs twice as much as the cheapest mobile phones; considering this, the lack of 3G (/4G,...) could be considered a significant omission.
I had to buy a cheap phone, and to be precise, the 3310 costs 3 times the cheapest (an Alcatel).
It's not like Nokia are pioneering dirt cheap feature phone, they even have a few themselves. When people are bearish on the 3310 launch, it's not because there isn't a market for feature phones, it's because this market is already well served (including by Nokia), and most of the people who remember the 3310 fondly has owned fully featured smartphones for a decade.
I was talking to a friend, and I was making more or less the same points.
Also, a phone has now become an indispensable tool for the modern man, a tool which augments your capabilities and allows you to expand them via new software.
There are plenty of cheap Android phones to choose from, that give you a better camera, proper connectivity, and a worldwide app ecosystem; with the new Nokia 3310 on the other hand, you get a 2G, 2 Megapixel camera, 2 inch screen phone with no software ecosystem. To me this seems like a no brainer.
They might not care about software per se, but they do care about having access to information, education, communication and getting things done faster and better; and networked software enables people to do these things. Provided one has no other computational devices, carrying a dumb phone in this day and age is tantamount to bringing a knife to a gun fight.
I'll assume you are being serious. Many people don't use or want facebook. The only reason it's still on my phone is because I've been too lazy to figure out how to delete the pre-installed applications
I never really considered that they would simply make a clone of a Nokia 3310 with an updated display. Why no modern radio? I think people would buy this if it weren't crippled by obsolete hardware.
Anyone saying this phone is destined to fail miserably - don't look at it from your viewpoint, but from your (grand)parents'. My mum can't stand touchscreens from an UX perspective, plus she hates the constant charging. All she ever does is call her friends and family and send the occasional text to check on us.
There are currently phones that serve her well (e.g. Nokia 230). This is another one.
I still see quite a few of them even among the 30-50 years-old range. Here in the lowest rungs of the developed world, the choice is often between a featurephone or a very cheap Android, and the latter are often unusable crap. Personally, I use a 20€ Wiko Lubi4 and a tablet instead. Smartphones are jack of all trades, but not really satisfying for any.
That said, even my Wiko does support four networks. Seems shortsighted to be selling these nowadays, even in the markets they're targeting.
This is exactly what a retro-phone should do. Originally a standard GSM-phone worked everywhere else except in USA and some clueless South American countries, like Chile.
My mother is not able to use a modern Android or other phone, she really does need the phone numbers and some small address book facility, 1: daugher 2: brother 3: son 4: her best friend 5??? After that then it is paper phone book and typing digits. The turn of the century never happened!!!
We have tried getting special phones for my mother but the UX is always worse than worse. They are unusable to people! So maybe if this Nokia actually worked on 3G it would be perfectly suited for her, a landline style phone that worked without the landline. There is definitely a market for such a phone that has a good brand, e.g. 'Nokia' is nice and shiny with lots of colours and just works.
The other feature I think is needed is mobile wifi hotspot. Ideally you just press a button and the display shows the SSID and access code, again that being some easy code.
Again, my mother can use a computer perfectly fine for online shopping, if she just had to press a button on the phone and that meant her computer was online then that would be something she could do herself. Her hands are too arthritic to do web surfing on a handheld device, she needs a keyboard and trackpad. The right Nokia could have enabled this.
I love the idea of a stripped down "basic" well designed phone. I was just talking to my friend who is much older, about it. We were romanticizing the days of the Motorola StarTAC. I don't want a browser, email, apps, social, or a big screen, just a phone and contact list. The StarTAC was simple sleek, had a dial pad and contact list, and the battery lasted 5 days.
In todays terms, for me that is like StarTrek technology.
LTE is more spectral efficient, but it's expected that GSM will outlive 3G technology (WCDMA, ie. UMTS/HSPA) due to the low cost of deploying and ability to run on very small spectrum slices (200khz, can be done with only about 1Mhz of spectrum so long as the network is planned carefully due to channel reuse)
Carriers that can get away with running GSM in their guard bands often do to support legacy M2M devices and international roaming customers.
How expensive would it be to manufacture a feature phone that is compatible with 2G, 3G and 4G LTE with VoLTE support? I think there is a good market for such a product.
Getting cheaper but those radios are still comparatively power hungry, costs of certification are high, and it's really up to the carrier if they want to allow it on their voLTE network. 3G/2G featurephones do exist.
Try buying an international phone with the correct band support and put it onto a US network, it'll kick down to 3G or 2G to make the call. No point really in having the extra data speeds a featurephone won't need (for most people). I personally would like to have a small, durable, and low powered featurephone I could also use as a usb modem.
Is anyone aware of an alternative (with a similar budget price, maybe something marketed in the developing world?) that can be used on a modern phone network?
Go to ebay and buy a featurephone from around 10 years ago.
I have a Sony Ericsson K850i that's quadband GSM and works on HSPA 850/1900/2100 (meaning it'll work on AT&T and T-Mobile's 3G networks as well as a good chunk of international 3G networks)
Woulda been nice if they could have put GSM1900 in it. It would have worked on T-Mobile.
I'm in the DIGITS beta and have a sim that's basically a clone of my main smartphone line, I use the clone on a 2G featurephone cause the battery lasts a week. It's also funny to have the old ringtones go off.
T-Mobile still uses GSM1900 nationwide and GSM850 (not well known that they do) in Myrtle Beach, SC.
>I think on different frequency bands, limiting the usefulness of international phones.
You don't know what you're talking about, stop spreading misinformation. There are small rural/regional carriers that still use GSM1900 or GSM850 in areas, I can think of Indigo Wireless out in west PA as one of the companies.
>T-Mobile still uses GSM1900 nationwide and GSM850 (not well known that they do) in Myrtle Beach, SC.
I wasn't trying to establish that they had stopped, I was pointing out that they adopted it quite some time ago.
Perhaps "international phone" was the wrong term, my intent was to say that phones sold in Europe often wouldn't work in the US. Was that not the case? Oh, I see in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13792767 that you agree with that. Sorry if I used the wrong words.
If memory serves. In the US it was GSM1900 up until the late 90's/early 2000's, AT&T Wireless decommissioned their legacy TDMA network at the time on 850mhz and shifted to using 850mhz for GSM due to better rural signal propagation.
Worldwide outside north america's 850/1900, there is 900/1800, and to a much lesser extent maybe 450 for siberia, and in other places likely better served by satellite.
Nokia's were a rage when the mobile market was nascent (2004-2010), and carriers flooded the market with cheap SMS rates. With loads of cheap Android phones available, and no WhatsApp on Nokia devices, it's a DoA device. And it doesn't even look as durable as the original classic.