Nokia 3210 from the 1990s washes up on a beach
An old Nokia phone has washed up on the shores of the Gold Coast beach this week, covered in barnacles but somehow still intact.
A local mum had been walking along Palm Beach on Friday morning (11 November), when she came across the 3210 phone sitting in the sand.
The old phone was such a blast from the past that the woman's daughter decided to take it to school for show and tell today.
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Certainly living up to its reputation of being indestructible, the mobile phone has managed to stay in one piece over the years.
The Nokia 3210 was first released back in 1999, and was one of the most popular phones of its time, selling over 160 million units.
It was the first phone to be released with an internal antenna, and had enough memory to store 250 names in its phonebook.
The phone was also pre-loaded with three games; Snake, Rotation, and Memory.
To appeal to a younger market, there was some versions of the Nokia 3210 that came with the extra 'hidden' games Logic and React.
Ah, it was a simpler time before the birth of the App Store. And who needs Instagram and TikTok when you have Snake?
This was also the first phone that came with composer software, allowing users to create their own monotone ringtones, and even send them to other Nokia phones.
And as if that weren't already enough to get the first generation of teenagers hooked on mobile phones, they came in so. many. colours.
Not only different colours, but you could get glitter Nokias, fluffy Nokias, Nokias with coloured keyboard panels, Nokias with your favourite film or TV character on it. You could get as creative as you wanted with these little brick phones.
Following its successful release, the Nokia 3210 was considered one of the most popular and successful phones in history, and helped to make the Finnish company the leading phone brand of the early 2000s.
The Nokia 3210 was then swiftly followed by the Nokia 3310, which turned 22 years old this year.
As well as offering extra long text messaging and voice dialing, the model had a notably long battery life of 22 hours for a single charge.
The Nokia 3210 and 3310 models are so strong and durable, that today's generation of the fragile iPhone, Android, and Google Pixel users still can't quite believe it.
YouTubers can often rack up hundreds of thousands of views by trying to destroy the two indestructible phone models, whether it's charging the phone with one million volts or crushing it with a hydraulic press.
It's no wonder this bad boy managed to survive a decade under the sea. I wouldn't be surprised if you could still play Snake on it.
Topics: Technology, Australia
Ali Condon