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The phone was an immediate success and featured the following which made it a compelling purchase over the Nokia 3210:
More Stylish and Ergonomic: The 3310, like most phones at this time featured a choice between slim and standard batteries – but in this case the weight of the battery was substantially reduced giving the phone an overall lighter feel. The curves were accentuated and the phone was even more friendly to personalisation, with the Xpresson Covers covering the whole phone (instead of just the front in the case of the 3210 colour choices).
Better Screen: An 84 x 40 screen further allowed extra features to be added onto the phone, with sharper text and the addition of more picture messages, the first of which had been seen on earlier phones. The famous Snake game had been kept, and with the higher resolution a new ‘Space Impact’ game allowed proper arcade-style games for the first time.
Data Functions: The WAP browser was included for the first time in the Nokia 3330 and this allowed a new range of applications to be opened. Most websites around this time had become WAP-friendly, although these offered severely cut-down versions of just text. However, news sites, internet banking sites and other less graphics-intensive sites thrived in this environment.
Nokia OS: The tried and tested formula as evidenced in the Nokia 3210 also made it intact into the Nokia 3310 with few extras or amendments, the exceptions being more applications on the lifestyle zone with additional stuff such as stopwatch, currency convertor. The infrared data connection was killed though, in favour of a dual M/F bus data cable which connected below the battery, and hence the first versions of Nokia Data Suite were born.
What happened to it? The marketing of the 3310 was fairly standard and replaced the 3210 with more or less the same price point options. Available for free on a contract or around the £100 mark on PAYG, this became a hugely popular handset with all age groups, and there was little to choose between either the Nokia 3310 or 3330 versions. WAP, as it turned out was rather a relatively short-lived project in the terms of the mobile world, being largely superceded once colour screens were to become dominant in the next few years, but this did not stop the 3310 being one of the most successful phones of the decade. Owing to the numbers produced, there are still a huge number available, and these can be picked up from around £10 on Ebay, or even double that for a reconditioned handset.
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