Nokia 3310 3G Review - Review 2022

There are a lot of people who could practice with stepping back from their perpetual smartphone obsessions. Many of us would like to punch back to a day when you actually had to pay attention to the world effectually you lot. And plenty of Americans agree. According to Pew, 18 percent of mobile-phone users in the US are withal on feature phones, whether it's because they don't desire to deal with smartphone features, or they don't want to pay for them. The $sixty Nokia 3310 3G is an affordable, skilful-looking, unlocked phone for those looking for simple voice service. I simply wish information technology had ameliorate network coverage, and bent but a bit more to the needs of 2022 social club.

Pattern and Physical Features

The Nokia 3310 3G is an attractive, pastel-colored lozenge that comes in blue, gray, red, or xanthous. It measures 4.6 by 2.i by 0.five inches (HWD) and weighs a light 3.1 ounces The silver plastic buttons are clicky, if cheap-feeling. The top half of the phone is a somewhat dim 320-by-240 color TFT LCD screen. The speakerphone, photographic camera, and flashlight are on the back panel. It isn't h2o-resistant, but by virtue of being a very simple phone with a plastic screen, it'll likely handle minor drops without a problem.

There are several, physically identical versions of the 3310 being sold. Some of them don't support U.s. networks. The one y'all need is model TA-1036. I might likewise besides mention that this telephone has some sort of cult nostalgia thing going in Europe, where the original 3310 was spectacularly popular in the early 2000s. The original 3310 was never released in the US, although a variant, the 3390, had limited success on AT&T and T-Mobile in 2003.

2-Megapixel Camera

Vocalisation Quality and Networking

Every bit a voice phone, reception and vox quality here are cardinal. The 3310 fares well on voice quality, only it really falls down on coverage and network compatibility.

Voice quality on the AT&T network is loud, but harsh, without the roundedness you lot get in phones that back up Hard disk Voice. Nevertheless, though, I'd rate it improve than the 2G Blu vox phones we've tested. The speakerphone isn't terribly loud; I wouldn't use it outside. Only the volume and audio quality are fine indoors on a table, or in a quiet machine. There's some background noise counterfoil, although it isn't as consummate as meridian-of-the-line smartphones.

Battery life, at 6 hours, xvi minutes of talk time, is less than I'd similar. Only the phone has days if non weeks of standby time, because in that location aren't a lot of groundwork processes chewing upward battery.

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If you're going to connect to US cellular networks in 2022, and especially in 2022, you really need LTE, and the 3310 doesn't support information technology. The phone works on the 850/1900MHz 2G and 3G GSM bands. I couldn't effigy out what diverseness of HSPA data it uses, except that information technology isn't specially fast. Still, though, information technology's quite a lot faster than a 2G EDGE phone would exist.

The 3310 doesn't piece of work on Sprint or Verizon at all. On T-Mobile, it'southward only uniform with the sliver of a 1900MHz 2G network the carrier has left around for Internet-of-things gadgets. I establish that T-Mobile coverage dropped anywhere inside our office building. The 3310 has amend AT&T coverage on AT&T's 3G 850/1900 network. Simply there, too, AT&T has started to slowly cannibalize its older network for 4G.

Your best bet is to pair the 3310 with a low-toll carrier that uses the AT&T network. Red Pocket's $10, 500-minute plan fits the neb nicely, for example, and there's no commitment, and so if AT&T decides to reduce its 3G coverage, yous aren't stuck.

The telephone's lack of Wi-Fi too hurts its voice capabilities. All the U.s. carriers now have some kind of Wi-Fi calling solution, but you won't get it hither.

The Bluetooth two.1 is noticeably lower quality than on smartphones with Bluetooth 4.0 or higher. The phone wouldn't pair with my Plantronics Voyager Focus UC stereo headset, although it worked with a Voyager 5200 single-ear headset. Merely the connectedness to the 5200 was plagued by irritating pops and clicks, which I didn't experience with smartphones with Bluetooth v.0.

I'd rather use a wired headset here, which also has the advantage of activating the 3310's born FM radio.

Nokia 3310 3G

Yes, You Get Apps

The 3310's Java-based Series xxx+ interface has some of the standard onetime-phone apps. At that place's a calendar and contact volume, a basic music player, a bones video player, and Opera Mini as its Web browser. You tin download and run Java-based apps and games if yous get agree of them, and you can access mobile Web sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail through Opera Mini. The telephone comes with a few games, and they run sluggishly. I was deeply disappointed in the nouveau version of Snake, which 'upgrades' graphics and gameplay to look more like slither.io. I know Serpent. This ain't Snake.

The contact volume has an intriguing characteristic which lets it sync contacts with an Android phone over Bluetooth, but information technology creates a huge number of duplicate contacts every bit each phone number becomes a new contact. Still, that's better than typing them all in. The calendar doesn't sync with anything and is rather useless.

With only 64MB of the congenital-in 128MB storage free, you'll want to add a microSD card, which fits in a slot under the battery. Don't employ one bigger than 32GB, information technology won't work (we tried). The music actor volition gather together MP3, WAV, and M4A files from the memory card, just not OGG or FLAC. The video player handles one-time-school MPEG4 AVI files at up to VGA resolution, but don't attempt decoding H.264.

To get files on or off the phone, you tin ship them via Bluetooth, or utilize a standard micro USB cable and mass storage mode.

The phone's 2-megapixel photographic camera feels similar a lie. While it snaps photos quickly, the images are covered in hideous artifacts that expect similar they were upscaled or contradistinct. The phone records 352-by-288 videos whose jerky quality harkens dorsum to the previous decade.

You tin use ane of 12 tinny ringtones or your ain MP3, but you can't assign ringtones by person or by group. The phone supports SMS and MMS, but not emoji (they just announced every bit boxes). Predictive text is not turned on past default, and it's oddly hidden in the settings: You have to go into the Settings card and press the left role fundamental, which isn't labeled, to activate information technology.

Maybe Not Competitors

Conclusions

The Nokia 3310 is the cutest niggling voice phone we've seen this yr. As long equally y'all stick with AT&T, its feature set is on par with other cheap vocalization phones such equally the Doro PhoneEasy 626 and the LG B470, although the B470 has an actress-loud mode and a text-to-speech communication function which seniors may like. Because the 3310 costs under $60 unlocked, it pairs well with inexpensive virtual-operator plans on the AT&T network, similar Red Pocket'south plans.

Simply I'm still disappointed because in a 2022 voice phone, I'd like to run into a phone that excels in phonation calls. I desire to see a phone that takes advantage of features similar VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling for the best possible reception, has electric current Bluetooth for clear connections, and receives the emoji that younger family unit members may desire to send you. Considering the kids don't telephone call any more: They text you footling pictures of pigs.

I don't think that phone exists, alas. Shortly, we're going to check out the Alcatel Go Flip serial, which works with T-Mobile's and Sprint'due south growing 4G LTE networks. It may point the manner toward the future, rather than just acting like a phone from the past.

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