The big early news coming out of this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona is a new feature phone from Nokia and another BlackBerry with a keyboard.
Pardon me for recycling an old joke, although it seems very appropriate in this case, but the early aughts called to say they want their phones back.
Aside from sharing an obvious appeal for nostalgia that no one seems to have asked for, the devices are coming from new interlocutors in the mobile phone business. The resurrected Nokia 3310, due globally this spring, is being manufactured by HMD, a Finland-based company that has licensed the right to use the former phone giant's name on its products.
The BlackBerry KeyOne, also set to launch globally in the spring, is the first licensed device from China's TCL, which has a similar arrangement with the former Canadian smartphone maker.
The newcomers are trading on the names of former market stars in an effort to make their own respective splashes. It was only 10 years ago that Nokia and BlackBerry were global superpowers in mobile phones, but then Apple came along with the iPhone and turned the two companies into also-rans.
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Mobile World Congress coverage
■ Time is running out on smartwatch launches
■ BlackBerry KeyOne: Welcome return of the brand's trademark keyboard
■ Review: Well-loved Nokia 3310 phone returns as a modern classic
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HMD and TCL are betting on an element of fatigue affecting phone buyers. They’re hoping that consumers have either become wary of always being connected and that they want to go back to a simpler time, or that they’re tired of paying exorbitant amounts for high-end technological features that are of dubious usefulness.
The Nokia 3310, in particular, is a hardcore throwback that hearkens back to one of the Finnish company’s most successful products. The new device connects at only 2.5G speeds and its camera has just two megapixels. It’s the quintessential “dumb” phone that isn’t intended for data usage, but rather just calling and texting.
It has an alphanumeric keypad for that purpose, which means you'll need to go back to pressing each number a few times to get the letter you want. Either that, or you'll have to revert to sending text messages that resemble Prince song titles (I Would Die 4 U).
The 3310 is also going to sell for only US$50, so it’s got that going for it.
The BlackBerry KeyOne, meanwhile, is a full-on smartphone that packs more expected specifications. It has a 12-megapixel camera, a decent quality screen, runs Android and is selling for $549, which is considerably less than most devices on the market, including several unveiled at MWC by LG, Motorola and Huawei.
The KeyOne's differentiator is BlackBerry's trademark QWERTY keyboard, which promises faster and smoother typing than can be found on all-touchscreen devices.
Early impressions from Barcelona suggest this is the BlackBerry device that the faithful have wanted for many years – a phone with a solid keyboard that doesn’t cost a bundle. BlackBerry itself floundered with its last-chance, overpriced keyboard phone, the Priv, in 2015.
While there may be a small contingent of consumers who will be interested in either the Nokia 3310 or the BlackBerry KeyOne, it’s wishful thinking to believe that HMD or TCL will post any sort of meaningful sales numbers with their respective products.
The number of people who want to go back to using keypads – whether alphanumeric or QWERTY – is probably very small. Keys also take away valuable real estate from screen size. “Switching from physical to digital keyboards was a big switch for many,” Shawn Dubravac, chief economist for the Consumer Technology Association, said on Twitter. “Going back to physical would be an even bigger switch.”
Momentum is indeed going in the other direction, towards more advanced technology such as voice input rather than analogue throwbacks. Coinciding with MWC, Google over the weekend announced that its Google Assistant will become available to all Android devices running version 6.0 and up as of this week.
Previously usable only on Google’s own Pixel phones and Home speakers, the artificially intelligent Google Assistant has received praise for its accuracy in handling voice inputs.
With natural language recognition, machine learning and cloud processing now all working together smoothly, AI and voice controls are finally fulfilling the promise of better smartphone inputs that Apple started a few years ago with the introduction of Siri.
In light of that, asking people to go backwards to keypads and keyboards is an effort to appeal to the wrong kind of nostalgia – the sort that sounds good on paper, but that isn’t going to translate into sales.
HMD and TCL might as well try bringing back rotary-dial phones. They’d have the same chance of success.
The tech week’s winner and loser
Winner of the Week: Sony. The Japanese company announced over the weekend that it had sold 915,000 units of its PlayStation VR headset in its first four months of availability. The brisk sales were a surprise even to Sony, executives said.
Loser of the Week: Uber. Besides the ongoing accusations of sexism, the company is now facing a lawsuit from Waymo. Google's self-driving car unit is alleging that the Uber subsidiary Otto has benefited from stolen files pertaining to sensor technology.
Peter Nowak is a veteran technology writer.
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