Nokia 3310: How an Unbreakable Brick Sold 126 Million and Became a Meme

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In 2015 Finland released a set of national emojis: a couple in a sauna, heavy metal rockers, and a phone officially named the unbreakable. That phone was the Nokia 3310. Launched in late 2000 by a development team in Copenhagen, it abandoned the angular business handset for a rounded candy bar shape meant to be run with one thumb. Its screen was 84 by 48 monochrome pixels, its C button gave instant tactile certainty, and its engineers budgeted every kilobyte and milliwatt. It went on to sell 126 million units worldwide.

This episode explains why the 3310 mattered far beyond phone calls. Its Chat feature stitched three text messages into one long conversation, Snake 2 and Space Impact made mobile gaming a habit, and Xpress-On covers and a ringtone composer turned a handset into a statement of identity. It also looks at the regional variants built for different networks, the stress-test videos that fed the indestructible legend, and what the jokes say about today's fragile glass phones.

• Nokia made two batteries, 133 grams and 115 grams, and only the heavier one supplied enough power to show the startup animation of two hands touching.
• The phone let users type up to 459 characters, split the text into three SMS packets with hidden tags, and reassembled them on the receiving handset.
• The ringtone composer had users enter notes on the number keypad, with the asterisk and pound keys setting duration and octave, across seven custom slots.
• North American versions needed bulkier radio hardware to work with older analog and TDMA networks, which made them slightly heavier.
• HMD Global revived the 3310 in 2017 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for about 49 euros, with a 2.4-inch color screen and a 2-megapixel camera.