Bitksel - Bricks with speakers + logos

During christmas holidays I visited my parents and took some photos of the old Nokia phones I used to have. Thankfully my parents had kept them safe, I'm sure some of them would still work if recharged, but I'm not sure if the batteries are good anymore so I didn't take that risk.

I will type anything I remember about them on this post, but I won't go into technical details since you can find those elsewhere.

Nokia 2010

I actually never used this phone, just played around with it. It was a "toy phone" for me when I was very young, which explains me trying to pimp it out with a sharpie. I'm kinda bummed I did that, but well, kids. I wanted to cover it here since it still used those huge sim cards, as you can see in the back of the phone. The battery is really big too, and even without the battery the phone is really heavy. It really is a brick.

Nokia 2110

I'm not exactly sure if I ever used this either, but I remember either my mom or my dad using it. It's a really cool looking phone, also a huge brick, but smaller than the 2010. I think it still would work if I were to recharge it.

Nokia 3110

Now this phone I did use. It was my first phone ever, I was about 6 years old when I got it as you can see from the racing cover on the front and Ferrari sticker on the battery. I think it's my uncles old phone, and when he got a new one I got this one. First it was just a "toy phone" without a SIM card, but I didn't really play with it. I remember always whining about "I want a working phone" and "I want an e-mail address" and my parents just replied "What would you use those for?" They were right, really. 6 year old in those days didn't really need a phone.

But eventually I started elementary school and moved outside alone, going to my friends place etc. I think it was halfway through the first grade my parents decided to get a SIM card for this phone. I was usually bullied at school, but the day I brought this phone to school I was the "cool kid" for the day. "Oh wooow you have a phone?! Does it have any games?!" they asked. During that time 3210 was a new thing and phones started to have games, so naturally they asked if this brick had too. Unfortunately, it didn't.

Me bringing this phone to school kinda started some kind of mobile phone craze in our class: Fast forward few weeks and everyone had a phone, and people had games on them, such as Snake-game.

Nokia 3210

Obviously, I didn't want to fall behind others, so I pestered my parents for a new phone and I got myself 3210. 3310 had just appeared on the markets so this one was cheaper, so I got it. It was the first phone with games I ever used. I also bought logos to this phone: Logos are images that replace your operator name in the lock screen of your phone. It was basically the phones wallpaper. I will cover some of them later in this post.

Nokia 3310

Nokia 3310 is usually the phone people refer as the most durable phone ever, jokingly or otherwise. To be honest, it really IS very durable phone. I took great care while using my phones, so I never had cracked screens or anything like that. My classmates though... I remember one of them talking how he threw the phone at wall when he got really angry at his parents and of course instantly regretted it. Luckily, the phone still worked just fine. So it definitely could take a beating.

This phone also had two more games instead of Snake. Some kind of puzzle game and a space shooter sidescroller game. I remember spending lots of time playing those games, they were actually really fun.

Nokia 3510i

I used 3310 for a long time. It was a great phone. But then, color screens for phones became a thing and games for phones got more complex, so of course I wanted a new one! I remember saving money for this for months. I helped my grandparents do yardwork in order to get some cash, and eventually I had the money to get 3510i. I also got this "gaming case" for it: https://www.esato.com/gfx/phones/nokia3510i.jpg It was cool back then, but nowadays it just looks silly.

I really liked this phone though, probably one of the better ones I ever used. The buttons started shortly to lose the number markings though, since they were made of rubber. I bought some weird games on it that were advertised in back of magazines back then. I got some game that they advertised as "The Sims for your phone!" (I had gotten the first Sims game recently and I loved it so I wanted to play it on the go too.) Well, it was some really ridiculous game where you only move a woman in a night club and tried to hit on men or something. I never understood how you were supposed to play it. It was far from Sims though and I was very disappointed for spending 5€ for that game. Lesson learned though: Those advertisements were shady as hell, and the final product was never what you expected it to be.

Nokia 7210

The reason why I wanted this phone was simple: It just looked cool to me. I liked my 3510i, but I wanted something a bit smaller and my 3510i had had some problems working, for example it cut in middle of calls sometimes. Luckily my uncle was getting a new phone, so I got his old 7210 I had drooled after for some time.

I don't remember much about this phone, except that it was very light and small. It had no crazy features or anything, pretty much the same as 3510i. It had colored screen too.

Nokia 3220

Phone technology moved forward rapidly. After color screens, Nokia decided it was time for adding cameras on phones. And of course I wanted to stay on track with technology, and Nokia marketing this phone towards younger people, especially teens and pre-teens worked on me. The phone got the nickname "Teiniledit" as in "Teenage-LED's" since it had flashing LED's on the sides. I think I got this phone back in 2004.

I began to save money again and eventually got it. I was so excited to use photos as my phone wallpaper: I could finally have an image of GTA Vice City or Battlefield 1942 as a wallpaper. It was super cool to me, I could customize the phone the way I wanted. I also remember printing many photos to put inside the back case, so it would be truly be my nerdy phone and look like me.

I used this phone for a very long time. I even bought some games for it, like solitaire and some weird Splinter Cell game that had only four levels, but that game was actually alright for a phone game in those days. I also used the camera a lot, taking stupid photos of friends bouncing on trampoline or something like that.

Nokia 6630

The last Nokia phone I used. I was in junior high-school, 8th grade in Finnish school system, so it was 2008. This was usually called "one of the first smart phones" back then. My 3220 was working fine, albeit it looked rather worn off since the rubbers covering LED's had broken.

My uncle again got a new phone and offered me his old one, in this case he offered me 6630. I never say no to a new phone, so of course I accepted the offer.

Shortly I learned this phone could play music so I finally could replace my shoddy MP3 player. It had a SD card support so I could fit more music in it than in a cheap MP3 player. It also had a good camera for it's time and, best of all... It could run DOOM. Hell yeah, I loved it! Back then I was playing a lot of Counter-Strike 1.6, so I downloaded a Counter-Strike mod for DOOM so I could play fake-CS 1.6 on my phone. It was silly, but oh man, so cool. 6630 supported also custom themes, so I got a Windows 98 theme for it. I guess I have always been a bit of a oldschool-PC lover, heh.

I used this phone for few years. When I graduated from jr. high and went to business college to study IT, my classmate told me about ZTE Blade. After that, I never went back to Nokia, but any phone that had Anrdoid running on it.

And thus ends my journey with Nokia phones. If Nokia would ever make a comeback and make Android phones, I would get one in a heartbeat.

So, what are logos?

In case you don't know, logos are small images you could use as your phones "wallpaper." Normally, your old Nokia phone would have your operator name on your main screen, but when you bought a logo, it would replace this operator name with an image.

After my parents getting a random 30€ bill because of this shady bullshit, we never bought any logo's or anything off these advertisements. Eventually, camera phones killed them completely. Good riddance, I say.

I do miss logos themselves though, they're kinda cool and some of them were really creative, considering the tiny amount of room you had for making them. They're basically pixel art. Unfortunately these logo sellers gave them a bad image.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this short look into old Nokia phones. If you're curious, right now I have a LG Nexus 5 as my phone. I like it and I'm not in any hurry to replace it. Phone technology isn't as exciting to me anymore, since everything has really been done (for now). Back then, phones getting colored screens and cameras were new, cool features. Nowadays they're expected and people would be weirded out if some phone didn't have a camera. And no, I'm not complaining. It's just fascinating how times change.