Nokia 8310 Vintage Mobile Phone

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The Nokia 8310 phone is now one of the many classics produced by Nokia in their heyday. This vintage phone is one of their 8000 series phones and it is often described as having a candy barshape.

The 8310 was also one of the smaller phones on the market, and was used by many who wanted a phone that could be carried around easily in any pocket, bag, or whatever.

The Nokia 8310 used the company's classic menu system and it proved to be very easy to use like other phones from the same company.

Other features supported by the phone included, white backlight for the screen, infra red short range connectivity, a calendar and it also supported GPRS to give some data capability to the device.

In line with Nokia's ethos to provide the user with what they wanted in terms of looks of the phone, it came in a huge variety of different colours.

Technical capabilities

The Nokia 88310 provided an excellent level of capability for most users of the day. Technically the 8301 was a dual band phone covering the 900 and 1800 MHz bands used in Europe. It did not cover the 1900 MHz band used in the USA and this limited its use in terms of roaming.

Nokia produced a different variant of the phone for use on the 1900 MHz band in the USA. This was designated the 8390 phone. It had the same capabilities except for the different frequency band.

The display was relatively limited by today's standards as it was a monochrome graphic display with width and height of 84 x 48 pixels. Messages, phone numbers, etc were displayed in the middle and bars on either side indicated the battery level and signal strength.

The fact that the display was only monochrome was a disadvantage when it was compared to some competitor phones such as the Ericsson T68 which had a 256 colour display.

Connectivity included GSM and GPRS for the mobile communications systems supported and there was also an infra-red port, although few people probably used this capability.

Nokia 8310 review

When it was launched, the expectations within Nokia were high for the 8310. It had to follow the 8210 which had been very successful, and it needed to keep up the momentum of the Nokia name.

At this time, phones were upgraded and released on a tight timeframe. They had to support the market demand for new phones every few months and as a result this meant new releases were happening all the time.

The 8310 is very similar to the 8210: it kept the small outline, intuitive operating system, and of course the very popular Snake game. This old mobile phone came in a variety of different coloured covers and it had a huge a big battery life.

These features along with an updated outline and a few improvements including a backlight colour that went to an ice-blue colour and the Nokia name ensured that the phone was a success.

Nokia 8310 specifications

The table below provides a basic summary of the key Nokia 8310 specifications, showing the performance it gave and accordingly how it compared with other old mobile phones of the time.

The Nokia 8310 was a very handy phone. As it was launched in 2001 before 3G had been deployed, its capabilities were totally in line with phones of the day - even a little ahead in some areas.

The 8310 was used by many people because it was so convenient, robust and provided what was needed for the time without taking up too much space in pockets, handbags and the like.

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