He's doing God's work. Which God that might be, however, is open for debate. Read the rest

Nokia's resurrected 3310 is the dumbphone du jour, but it has two key flaws. First, the 2G radio bands it uses are insecure and being shut down by many telcos, meaning it might not work in your region. Second, the base model doesn't have a bas-relief portrait of Russian premier Vladimir Putin on it.

Sadly, this feature is a $3,700 upgrade from Caviar, one of those design houses that supposedly has a classy European pedigree but is, in any case, now devoted entirely to making special editions of phones for drug lords. Many are Putin themed, but Trump is the hot new thing.

WHAT’S BETTER THAN A NOKIA 3310? A GOLD NOKIA 3310 WITH VLADIMIR PUTIN’S FACE ON IT [The Outline] Read the rest

As warned last week, Nokia has relaunched its classic 3310 model candybar phone. The good news: it's a pretty little burner that honors and updates the original's design. The bad news: that's the only connection, and it's otherwise a modern dumbphone with no clear picture yet on how well-designed the interface and hardware is. It's not even made by Nokia, but under license. [via Daneel]

The new device is very cute and looks like a sleeker, updated version of the original. HMD Global retained the keypad buttons and the general shape of the old device. On the back, we see a camera. The new phone also has a color display.

As for details about the phone’s specifications and what HMD has done to update a very rudimentary device for the modern world, we didn’t get much. The company spent less than five minutes on the new device, and only rattled off some battery life details: The new 3310 is going to have 22 hours of talk-time (LOL), and one month of standby battery life. But hey, it has Snake and the classic Nokia ringtone. Take my money!

One worriome portent: you can apparently go diagonally in the new version of Snake.

UPDATE: Reader Brian_McNett writes in to point out that the licencee, despite having the banktastic name HMD Global, is stocked to the gills with former Nokia executives and based in Finland. A good sign! Read the rest

Nokia's 3310 is said to be the most reliable phone ever made. It's a classic plastic-and-silicon brick from the turn of the century, long consigned to the recycling bin in the age of smartphones and tablets. But because people actually like and appreciate technology that works, as opposed to all the modern internet-of-shit frippery that doesn't, they're bringing it back. Read the rest

Wallpaper took on the daunting task of narrowing down 20 years of design innovations to just over 100 eclectic choices, including the Tesla Roadster, the 9/11 memorial, Instagram, the bushy brow, and Ilse Crawford's IKEA collection, above. Read the rest

In yearning for simplicity, the question is its own answer. Or maybe just get something old from Nokia.

Nokia's latest ultra-cheap candybar phone looks like a good replacement for my trusty e-ink Moto F3. A month's battery life on standby, an FM radio and an LED flashlight add up to a perfect "backup" phone for long-term blackouts, natural disasters and zombie holocausts. [Engadget] Read the rest

Nokia's in dire straits despite launching the well-liked Lumia smartphone, writes Charles Arthur: "the rise first of Apple and more recently of cheap handsets running Google's free Android software has devastated the Finnish firm's profits and sales, cutting its share of the smartphone market from about 40% a few years ago to less than 10% in the first quarter of this year." [The Guardian] Read the rest

Reviews of Nokia's Lumia 900 are in: Ars Technica, The Verge, Gizmodo, Engadget and Wired each have in-depth coverage of the new flagship Windows Phone.

The good points include nice hardware, an inexpensive price tag (when under contract, at least) and the attractive design of the handset itself.

The cons include a low-res display—it's only 800x480, far less than recent Android phones and the iPhone 4S—and the poor selection of third party software available to Windows Phone users. Read the rest

Nokia's N9, the long-awaited MeeGo Linux cellphone, won't be coming to the U.S. after all. Engadget's Darren Murph received the "disheartening" news, echoed in UK reports, after asking the company to offer a firm release date.

"After the very positive reception to the launch of the Nokia N9, the product is now being rolled out in countries around the world. At this time we will not be making it available in the US. Nokia takes a market by market approach to product rollout, and each country makes its own decisions about which products to introduce from those available. Decisions are based on an assessment of existing and upcoming products that make up No...

Previously: Nokia’s N9 is “beautifully simple” Read the rest