Nokia
3210

The Nokia 3210 (Nokia firmware code NSE-8) was designed by Alastair Curtis in Nokia's Los Angeles Design Center with oversight from legendary Nokia designer Frank Nuovo. It was the first mass-market mobile phone from Nokia with a fully integrated antenna. Curtis cites the Nokia 3210 as his favourite Nokia phone because it was his first Nokia design to make it to market. In an interview with Slate.com, Curtis stated that the concept for an “expressive” phone that could be personalized to a user’s taste was what eventually resulted in the Nokia 3210. The Nokia team felt that no rival mobile phone manufacturer had built a device with young people in mind. It has incorrectly been reported on Wikipedia and in other media reports that the 3210 sold 161 million units, however, discussions with Nokia employees who worked on the product suggest that the real sales figures were somewhere between 20 to 60 million units over the lifetime of the device. Despite this, it played an important role in helping Nokia displace Motorola as the world’s biggest mobile phone maker by volume when it was launched. Although the Nokia 8810 was the company's first device with an internal antenna it suffered from poor radio performance, something which was resolved on the Nokia 3210. In the same Slate article cited above, Peter Roepke, who led the Denmark-based project team with the responsibility for commercialising the 3210, stated that creating a mobile phone without an external antenna was a “tough sell” and that the engineers working on the product “were completely against” having a design with an internal antenna. However, through some smart engineering, they eventually managed to redesign the phone’s battery pack housing allowing the antenna to be hidden in the device. When it was announced, Nokia's press release described the 3210 as "a mobile phone for ultimate convenience and personalization". The phone’s external appearance could be customised using Nokia's Xpress-on changeable covers which were first introduced with the Nokia 5110. Both the front and rear covers could be changed on the 3210, whereas only the front cover could be changed on the 5110. This strategy had an unexpected benefit as a result of third-party companies around the world producing custom covers for the 3210. These were affordable accessories with a decent margin so retailers quickly started devoting extensive retail space to the cases with entire walls in phone shops showcasing the different designs. This provided a huge amount of promotion for the phone itself. The design approach of having interchangeable covers is believed to be one of the reasons for the device's codename, Chameleon. The 3210 was a dual-band GSM 900 / GSM1800 device with a monochrome graphic screen that displayed five lines of text. The phone book could store telephone numbers and associated names on the phone's SIM card, allowing a maximum of 250 entries to be created. A specific ringtone could also be assigned to phone book entries and speed dialling was provided for nine entries using the 1-9 keys. Menu access was facilitated through Nokia's Navi key user interface design that was first introduced in the Nokia 3110. In addition to a range of pre-loaded ringtones, owners could also create their own using the composer function. The Nokia 3210 provided full SMS text messaging, including the use of T9 predictive text. It also offered basic graphic picture messaging allowing users to send pre-installed images, such as ‘Happy Birthday’, to other Nokia users via a text message. Other functions included a calculator, a clock with an alarm and a date calendar. Three games were also included: Snake, Memory and Rotation.  The 3210 is considered one of the most significant handsets Nokia ever developed and was loved by many for whom it was their first mobile phone. It was superseded by the iconic Nokia 3310 which was also hugely successful but only achieved sales of 128 million units. Some information courtesy of Nigel Linge & Andy Sutton, the authors of 30 Years of Mobile Phones in the UK (Paid Link)