Nokia
3300a

The Nokia 3300 was a quirky “music phone” that was a successor to the Nokia 5510. The company considered it to be a “3-in-1-music device” given the inclusion of a digital music player (MP3 and AAC), FM stereo radio and mobile phone. It was initially launched in the US and Nokia hoped it would “appeal to music enthusiasts and youth everywhere". The design has strong similarities to the Nokia N-Gage which was introduced in November 2002 but did not ship until October 2003 which was after the Nokia 3300 was already on sale. Music was transferred onto the Nokia 3300 via a USB cable to a 64MB multimedia memory card (MMC) with the help of Nokia’s Audio Manager software. This enabled users to rip music from their own CDs to turn them into an MP3 format. The FM stereo radio could store 20 preset radio stations and an embedded sound recorder allowed users to save clips such as their favourite songs from the radio. The Nokia 3300’s battery offered up to 9 hours of digital music listening or up to 11 hours of FM stereo radio listening. The phone came in two variants – the 3300a with a standard numeric keyboard which shipped in Europe and Asia and the 3300b which shipped in North America which featured a qwerty keyboard. The variant in the Mobile Phone Museum is the 3300a. The phone was debuted at a private concert and media event alongside the SXSW (South By Southwest) music festival in Austin, Texas.