Nokia reboots the 3310; adds new snake and big colour screen. People forget the other phones.

Nokia is back. Well, sort of. It’s back as a name on phones made by another company under license (HMD Global). Besides three new smartphones launched at MWC, all eyes were on perhaps the biggest story of the show – the re-released Nokia 3310.

I take my hat off to the PR team who came up with the idea to reboot an old phone, considered a classic by many (personally, I preferred the 6nnn range with the individual soft keys instead of a single button on the 3nnn range) and sure to get the media in a frenzy.

It’s exactly what happened in the run up to MWC, at the press conference and then on the show floor.

I had to have a quick play, but I am not sure exactly who is really going to buy this phone. Cheap phones for £20 in Argos, the type you give to someone as an emergency phone, or use as a disposable phone at a festival, are already widely available.

The rebooted 3110 isn’t going to be as cheap as one of those, and its unique selling point is that it looks mostly like the original phone. But with a new directional pad (that I found a bit tricky to use) and a larger QVGA display.

Sure, it’s a bit of fun.. but I feel I had my fun by playing with it on the stand. Longevity isn’t going to be a big thing here.

Okay, so as the 3310 was never a favourite of mine (I have plenty of Nokia favourites I would love to see remade before this), maybe I’m not the best person to comment. However, I can’t help but feel a lot of people will think the same when push comes to shove. The novelty is going to wear off fast.

It seems that people who don’t even remember the original have more interest, almost out of some weird curiosity of when people owned phones that were just phones.

The biggest problem for me is that Nokia’s press coverage is great, but nearly all for the 3310, and without some people talking about the three Nokia Android smartphones that were also launched, one a European launch of a the Nokia 6 already launched in China at the start of the year.

It’s obviously early days and I am sure that the PR gurus will have other ideas to remind us of the glory days, and hopefully forget about that little blip with Microsoft.

Consider me along for the ride, but I am hoping for something a bit better than three rather basic smartphones that join an already packed market full of affordable phones (when is the flagship coming?) and a blast-from-the-past gimmick.

What are your thoughts on this? Where do you think the ‘new’ Nokia goes from here. Is it doing things right from the outset, or were you hoping for something a bit more special?