Design classic: the Nokia 3310 mobile phone

Smartphone screens may tremble at the sight of a marble floor but the Nokia 3310 relishes the challenge. Launched in September 2000, the name of the game with this brick-like device is durability. The 3310 harks back to a time when phone batteries would see you through a ski trip and not just a chairlift, and worries about WiFi were just three curved bars on a distant technological horizon.

Before Apple’s worldwide domination, there was Nokia, and the 3310 is probably the model that defines the Finnish company’s brand. It has a near-legendary status for its hardiness, which is ensured by a plastic faceplate that can be easily snapped off and (if desired) switched for something jazzier. The shell protects the T9 (“text on nine buttons”) keypad and encases the thick rubber on/off button at the top. Developed in the age before colour blasted on to phone screens, the original handset, which weighs 133g, featured an 84 x 48-pixel monochrome display. A much-loved and time-consuming element of the 3310 was Snake II, in which a long, striped snake, controlled via the keypad, navigates the screen in search of food.

Recently Nokia has been living in the sleek rectangular shadow of the smartphone but this year will see it re-release the 3310 almost 17 years after it hit the market.

The new model borrows many classic elements from its ancestor but is considerably less tubby at just 79.6g. The revamp boasts a colour display and a battery life of up to a month on standby. It will be available in matt or gloss colours at €49.

More than 100m of the original devices were sold worldwide and Nokia will be hoping that hipsters, who have shunned computers for typewriters and prefer Mason jars to water glasses, will today be looking for a more nostalgic approach to telecommunications.

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