Yes, all my selfies.
Over the course of one day.
That’s a good few pictures for someone who shares a lot of content and boasts an average of six hours screen time per day.
When I was presented with the prospect of using a Nokia 3310 as my main form of communication with the outside world for an agreed period of time for the purpose of a review, I was enthralled.
I was eager, ready, waiting, anticipating the inevitable nostalgic-based novelty that I would experience as I desperately tried to respond to important messages using predictive text and navigated Facebook at about the speed of your Da figuring out how to download a podcast for the first time.
Alas, such an intense and dedicated product review was not meant to be – for a few reasons.
The first reason was that I simply did not have the emotional capacity to give up my iPhone for more than two hours at a time.
I need that phone. It has all of my stuff on it. I require its usage to receive news alerts for work purposes and to check how many likes my recent Instagram post has gotten to feel a brief sense of validation.
The second reason was that my sim card didn’t fit inside the Nokia.
But I still decided to take a load of selfies on it for a day, and the results were… not as chronic as one might have expected.
In fact, they were actually decent.
The nice blue lad came with me on a journey of self discovery, hatred, and questionability as I traveled to Galway for the Her.ie Christmas party.
I knew that this event would be the prime occasion for Nokia selfie taking, as everybody would be looking nice, and also because everybody would be drunk enough to not notice that I was taking selfies on a Nokia that doesn’t have a front-facing camera.
No matter though, because what the phone does have is a whole two (2) megapixels and an LED flashlight that I had no idea how to switch off.
It’s also 3G ready which, considering the size of it (and the fact that it’s a literal Nokia 3310) is pretty impressive.
Taking selfies on the phone conjured up memories of a strictly 2k9 lifestyle where skinny jeans were a new fad, salads cost max €5.00 and selfies were taken without any prior knowledge as to what the resulting picture would even look like.
In the case of the Nokia 3310, they came out pretty OK.
Here’s an assortment of them all taken with another camera strictly for comedic purposes.
There was glamour.
There was divinity.
There was desperately trying to look like you’re relaxed even though your hand is in the shape of a claw and you’re about to drop the phone at any moment.
And there was a photo that’s not strictly a selfie but it’s a decent pic so whatever.
After the phone had had its solid 15 minutes in the spotlight, it returned to the depths of my handbag until the following day when it was commandeered back at the office.
The recovered images tell a story of chaos, confidence, and total delight.
Overall, I found my experience with the Nokia 3310 as an adult to be similar enough to my experience with the Nokia 3310 as a child: new, exciting, and swathed in the consistent fear that I was about to drop it.
The differences from the classic device, however, remain stark.
A phone for less than 50 quid that has a camera, internet access, and the game Snake should not be sniffed at.
Especially seeing as I just dropped two week’s wages on a new iPhone.
*The Nokia 3310 was provided to the writer for the purposes of a review.
