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Sony Launches Phone With World's First 4K HDR Screen; Nokia Brings Back the 3310 Handset (wired.com)
Rumors were true. Nokia did launch its 3310 handset at MWC. It's been almost 17 years since the 3310 first came out. In that time the Nokia brand has been bought, sold, and stripped for parts. From a report on Wired: The 3310 is still very much a feature phone. It has a web browser, but only barely -- it's a dumbed-down version of Opera, basically there for emergency tweeting. It exists for you to make phone calls, send texts the way you did a decade ago (T9 FTW!), and play Snake. The 3310 weighs less than three ounces, and its battery lasts an absurd 31 days in standby time, or up to 22 hours of talk time. The new 3310 has a camera, for one thing, a 2-megapixel shooter. It also has a 2.4-inch, 240x320 screen, which is hilariously small and low-res but still a huge improvement over the original. It is priced at 49 Euros ($51). Also at the event, Sony announced that it is not done with putting a 4K screen on smartphones. From a report on The Verge: The XZ Premium has the world's first 4K HDR (2,160 x 3,840, High Dynamic Range) display in a smartphone. Sony has the latest and best Qualcomm chip while others are still offering the Snapdragon 820 and 821, but the Xperia XZ Premium won't be out until late spring or just ahead of the summer. Hell, the demo units shown off ahead of MWC weren't running anywhere close to final software -- so Sony is pre-announcing its new flagship device by a long margin. Other notable features include water resistance, rated to IP65 and IP68, a thinner profile at 7.9mm, and MicroSD storage expandability. The phone's battery is a reasonable 3,230mAh, and there's a fingerprint sensor integrated into the side-mounted power button as usual.
Actually..the world's first phone with a 4K screen was the Sony Xperia Z5 Pro and it was launched in October 2015. The XZ is not the first 4K screen phone launched by Sony.
It's the first 4k HDR (High Dynamic Range) screen in a smartphone
'4K' TV is one thing (putting aside for a moment the lack of OTA broadcast 4K content), assuming your TV is gigantic, but a 4K display on a phone? Really? How does that even make sense? On the other hand I'm sure wireless companies love the idea, because of how much data you'll use up so fast watching online 4K content on a tiny little phone screen.
It's more of a homage really. It reminds me more of a 6300 than a 3310. I was hoping for a monochrome LCD with maybe a few extra menu options and voice over LTE. I always found the monochrome LCD much easier on the eye than the present-day colour ones. They could have gone e-ink if there wasn't a suitable LCD available without deviating too much from what the 3310 used to be.
The specs say 2G. ATT has shut down it's 2G GSM network and I assume others will follow. So this phone appears useless out of the box, at least in the US.
Is the new 3310 indestructible?
Umm ... Nokia or Microsoft or HMD Global has been making and selling these feature phones for many years. While the new 3310 is styled to look somewhat like the original, the feature set appears to match the MRE (MAUI Runtime Environment from MediaTek) phones (such as the Nokia 220, which by the way retailed for ~$29 US) that have been available since the death of Series 40 phones. The real story would be the return of 3 & 3.5G S40 mobiles.
"Nokia brand has been bought, sold, and stripped for parts."
No, Nokia has LEASED it's name for HMD for next 10 years for phones and tablets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMD_Global
No one cares. It's a phone that caters to a particular consumer niche who only want a mobile phone for emergencies and traveling; or parents who prefer to give their children a non-smart or less-smart phone. The Nokia 3310 would be perfect for that, there's currently few options/competition in that niche, and this Nokia model has a recognizability/nostalgia edge over the few competitors.
For example my father bought a phone about 2 years ago that rarely leaves his car's glove box. He has a smartphone because it was the cheapest phone he could find and there were little to no non-smart phone options, but he doesn't use or want those "smart" features. He would gladly trade the ability to surf the net for a much longer battery.
Not everyone wants a phone to access the Internet. The $50 phones can be far more reliable, robust and have batteries that you can charge once a week instead of daily.
They are also lighter and you don't cry when they fall on the floor and your amortized cost just jumped by another $150 because you cracked your screen.