The new Nokia phones are here: Nokia 6, 5, 3 & 3310

The iPhone SE is really great, my only complaint is the 64gb limit. Rumors of a 128gb on the way though.

I'd probably be also using it if it supported a newer Android version.

I'm committed to the app store, but if the apple offering doesn't change I'm gonna jump to android right after the 8 announcement. googling around the samsung a3 seems a solid midrange offer (albeit I'm worried about operating system not getting updates) for the pocketable for factor

I think the new thing though is going to be same sized screens with smaller bezels, resulting in smaller phones. Samsung and LG's upcoming flagships both look to be substantially shrinking the bezel.

My only gripe is software buttons so quite a bit of screen estate is taken by the button bar.

They've basically created a generic featurephone and piggybacked on the glory of the 3310, which was anything but generic.

I highly doubt the new 3310 will be even slightly as durable as the old one.

Not round the corners? That gives you 2 options, and one is less comfortable in the hand.

The old phones could have interesting features because they had hardware keyboards, but the screen that's sometimes a keyboard (and symbols/numbers/emoji/swipe/draw) has won out over the better keyboard and smaller display options.

Nokia used to innovate with phone design because they had their own factories. Those days are long gone.

On the other hand, Apple is known to be obsessed with design even in the most unusual places. Have you ever looked at a motherboard for a MacBook? It's just beautiful; the colors, the arrangement. But not everyone will notice.

This is correct. ton = thousand.

Unfortunately thousands of loyal followers is not even a good start.

(Not that they will- the Nokia name has been licenced, so the manufacturer doesn't really have an incentive to push Meego)

And the Maemo platform kinda lives on in Sailfish. If going systemd and wayland can be called "lives on". Never mind that i suspect they in part got developer attention because of some experiences developing (for) the Maemo platform.

I know J2ME was not really good, but they managed to get something even worse. It's almost* impossible to develop applications to their new phones.

* http://mre.mediatek.com/ is down for good since the start of 2017 and they announced that they would shutdown in 2015/12/31, so I don't think there's any official way to download the SDK.

Consumers might like it but everybody else would hate it. It cuts into profits and teaches wrong habits to consumers.

The Nokia 5 has the same basic hardware as a Moto G4 Play, but costs twice as much ($200 instead of $100). You're paying double for a possibly better camera and a metal back.

Similarly, the Nokia 6 is a $242 5.5" 1080p phone. The Moto G4 is a 5.5" 1080p phone, but has a Snapdragon 6xx processor rather than 4xx - and costs less. Again, the Moto is lacking the metal design.

The Nokia reputation doesn't really have anything to do with these devices. They're certainly playing it up in marketing, but I think that's yet to be seen. It's possible they'll have good build quality, but looking at the Nokia 6, it's not going to be more durable than an iPhone. In the video, they clearly want to leave you with the impression that they're somehow more durable than other smartphones, but the display is just Gorilla Glass (of unknown generation) completely unprotected (there's no lip or anything to deflect some falls).

The Nokias definitely look cool, but are they offering a better option? In addition to the Motos, you can get a Huawei Honor 5X with a Snapdragon 6xx for well under $170 unlocked on Amazon. That has a better processor for $70 less. Again, they definitely look good, but they also seem expensive (42% more expensive) compared to, well, more powerful options.

When put in the perspective of 42% more expensive, they don't look as great. It's like, "yea, they're fine, but if I'm being cheap, I should get a Moto G or Huawei Honor. If I'm not being cheap, I should get something with a better processor than a Snapdragon 4xx series." I mean, a OnePlus X is $200 with a Snapdragon 8xx series processor. The OnePlus X isn't a great option for Americans since it doesn't support enough of the North American bands to get good coverage, but the Nokias don't really support North America at all. I have nostalgia for Nokia too and the phones do look pretty, but I'd definitely take a $200 OnePlus X over a $242 Nokia 6. Similarly, a Huawei Honor 5X or Moto G4 looks to have a better processor than a Nokia 6 and they cost less. A Moto G4 Play has similar specs to a Nokia 5 for half the price. And I think Motorola/Lenovo are coming out with a G5 this Spring (which might be before the Nokia gets into customers' hands). LeEco and ZTE also have devices with more power.

The thing about the mobile industry today is that it's reasonably saturated with good options. The Nokia devices look nice, but they're in the "get notified when you can actually get one" stage. Let's say you can get your hands on one in June. By then a whole slew of new Android slabs could be out - possibly with better specs and prices. I do love CNC machined aluminum like the Nokia 6, but I also like a phone that has enough performance to be great to use for a while.

I'm guessing that Nokia is going to push these in cheaper markets. There are European countries like Poland and Greece that have lower GDP per capita, markets like India where Nokia has been historically strong where people might be willing to shell out an extra $75 for the Nokia, and China where the cachet of having a Nokia could play well (Volvo, another Scandinavian brand, plays well there). But it's a hard market that's saturated with plenty of good options and it's hard to one-up anyone given that all players (other than Apple and maybe to a small extent Samsung) are essentially pulling from the same parts (and OS) bin.

They look like fine devices, but they're not a value you can't already get for multiple manufacturers today and given that they aren't available yet, it remains to be seen what this Spring will bring from competitors. I mean, they're super pretty and that almost makes me want to cast off all my cynicism aside and say "screw-it, I want a pretty blue or copper metal Nokia", but the practical side of me notes the Snapdragon 4xx processor (and the fact that the device won't work where I live). I kinda wish that Nokia had decided to go high-end. I think Nokia could have done well with a $650 device if their build quality is actually what they claim in the videos. Why not stick a Snapdragon 8xx in there with the latest LTE and a display to match. I mean, we all miss Nokia and the Nokia 5/6 look nicer than most Android phones out there. Why not go after the profitable part of the market? Even if you don't want to deal with CDMA, there are a lot of people on T-Mobile/AT&T in the US or other GSM-stack carriers in the world.

But, alas, it was probably a calculated effort to play into the markets that might have the most Nokia dumbphone penetration today and therefore most receptive to a Nokia smartphone.

Nokia is back!!!

You can buy a Samsung/Chinese 3G candybar format phone for $30, which gives good battery life.

Many emerging markets still sell more feature phones and dump phones than smartphones. India for example.

There is even small reverse trend when customers in developed world when people are getting fed up with smartphones.

I'd assume that UMTS would be shut down long before 2g.

At least they are offensively sticking to plain Google Android, so the usual excuse "we customized ourselves into a corner, now you can only get security updates if you buy new hardware" is out of the picture.

Otherwise SD card support, the type of lenses, regular Android and promise to actually care about updates are very enticing.

In any case, my device is not going to die yet, so I still get to see how they actually will look like.

I did make the leap for a nearly a year. The problems you point out are legitimate, and they made me to move back to a smartphone. Hopefully the 3310 fixes some of those bigger issues you point out (eg: group texting) just as a function of being newer.

The market for the 3310 is larger than you think. For one, there are plenty of old people that prefer to have something simple and smartphones are a nonstarter for them. I think we might actually buy two of these for my grandparents, as they're about to move onto our family plan from another provider.

Beyond that, I think a lot of people who walk around with an $800 phone might be interested in spending $50 as an insurance plan, so that if their phone breaks they have a readily available backup, or if they're doing something risky they can have something to take instead. (Of course, that means you can't post photos of your crazy exciting life to Instagram and Facebook while you're experiencing it, so I doubt most people would be interested.)

I personally won't pick one up because it lacks 3G and LTE, and I would never buy a phone that I can't tether to my laptop. I realize the lack of those radios results in the battery life it's able to get, but I'd prefer for it to be disabled by default but still available for when you need it.

I can't be unique in wanting something that's not a candy bar? I've passed peak smartphone - and toned down my app use. I'll accept a few different formats as alternative.

Yet again, after a ludicrously short time, my sealed in smartphone battery was getting tired. I was hoping Blackberry was finally going to make the "obvious" handset change - a Classic with Android. They announced they were exiting handsets instead. The Far East gets a selection of Android flip phones, mostly very expensive premium, never coming near Europe. So I settled on getting a LG V20 when it released as it at least keeps SD and removable battery. Then LG decided EU doesn't get those.

So when my "smart" phone died, I got my old V8 Motorola (The Linux based flip follow on to the v3) out the drawer. It's fantastic. It gets more signal and clearer calls than any smartphone I have owned, and the original (12 year old?) battery gives weeks of standby. It has ergonomics. Of course the camera is awful, and there's next to no storage.

Seriously, give me that form factor with modern storage, Android and keep the a tiny screen that only comes on when you flip open. I don't need a huge screen to run a chat app, or listen to "turn left in 100 yards", or book a taxi. I can't think of a single app I use that needs a 4"+ screen. The miniscule external v8 screen is perfect for notifications and music player use. Should get decent standby life...

Nope, the entirity of global capitalism offers me 23,509 near identical candy bars in a simulation of choice.

I actually just spent some money to repair my 208, because it's the last of these to support 3G as well. I guess I was right not to wait for this one since it doesn't appear to support 3G.

I went back to a feature phone for almost a year, though I had a smartphone in "airplane mode" with me for most of the same time, but I'd just connect that to wifi.

> I don't think the Nokia 3310 would achieve that either.

Probably not. One thing that I couldn't get used to with the feature phone was call quality. It was terrible. I don't know if that's GSM (as compared to what 4G was like on my smartphone) or if that was the build quality of the feature phone (which was a rather cheap phone). But I agree that the 3310 isn't likely to entice many people to take the leap.

Other than that I have no reason to own one and would love to get rid of it. I deleted all my social media accounts, I use normal taxi services and public transport, I memorize directions from my computers and so on. I don't even check my emails on the thing.

That 3310 will definitely be bought and tried to see if it works better than what I have right now.

I loved the 225 for its simplicity and general responsiveness but texting was abysmally slow after entering a few dozen characters: while the phone was recomputing the text layout on each keypress I could almost see the code as it was written by someone who clearly should've read about computational complexity on compsci 101. That was the sole reason I dumped the phone, especially as SMS is one of the main uses for a dumbphone. Battery was great though, and ringer volumes, speakers and the microphone were good. I suspect the new 3310 is pretty much another revision of that phone.

I would pay decent money for an old skool feature phone that:

- is small enough to fit in a tight pocket without me either feeling it in the first place or bending it broke

- doesn't have its back cover, battery, and phone flying in three directions when I drop it one the floor

- has battery life in weeks

- has a simple but usable camera, 2Mpx is enough for taking photos sharp enough for notes

- has blazing fast user interface with absolutely no delays or lag (how hard can it be?)

- its UI has predictable command paths instead of scrollable list and grid views so that I can punch MENU+5+3+2+1 or something similar to dive directly into one particular submenu. This is how you set your phone to silent/vibrate/loud in the good old times, while walking and never looking at the screen for feedback because you just knew what the phone would do.

- Has 3G/4G data and a basic mostly text-based web browser for checking out timetables, locations or opening times if absolutely necessary

- Has a native online map application: Google Maps for J2ME was, if a bit outdated, still decent

- Bluetooth for transferring contacts, audio files, and photos

All these features have been in phones ten years ago, probably earlier. The best phones at the time had probably 90% of the above list, usually by lacking something that wouldn't have been fixed by technology if only smartphones didn't take over.

Some people, including me, need two SIM, so I would not buy a new 3310 (though I had the old one and loved it) for that reason. My current phone however is a dumb dual SIM paid €20 new, and I would not swap it even for the latest iPhone or any costly Android equivalent.

I used to keep an old Android phone as my "on call" phone with a separate phone number, and with data turned off, it lasted 2 weeks on a charge. Those batteries are dimensioned to run a huge screen and demanding games. When you're not doing that, they last forever.

I'd be curious to decompose that into:

1. The fact you're familiar with iOS

2. The fact that Huawei have tampered with default Android and not all of those changes will be improvements

3. The remainder - genuinely valid complaints about Android vs iOS

Number 3 would have to be weighed against a corollary of (1) - if you're more familiar with iOS you'll notice deficiencies a lot quite quicker than you'll notice improvements as the latter requires relearning habits.

I'm not denying the validity of your opinions but I think the factors I lay out above go some way to reducing their universal applicability.

Probably would do jack all good, as the tight integration between hardware and software is likely what makes iOS anything special.