Nokia 3310 3G appears to add a key missing feature to the phone

There's another new Nokia phone! Except it's the same phone that we saw earlier this year - but with the one key feature that it was missing.

No, it's not the new colors that it's appearing in - azure and charcoal (AKA blue and gray) are now added to the mix - but it can now connect to 3G networks.

This feature was something that was sorely lacking from the new Nokia 3310 (2017) that HMD Global (the brand behind Nokia phones) launched at MWC this year, because it meant that it wouldn't be able to work on some networks in the future.

But now - at a press launch in Australia - HMD has quietly rebooted the phone to come with 3G capabilities, just half a year after being shown off.

But...why?

Let's not beat about the bush here: the new Nokia 3310 was something of a marketing gimmick, designed to evoke nostalgia for a phone brand and show that 'Nokia was back!'

So it didn't really matter that the handset was technically inferior in some ways to cheaper feature phones bearing the Nokia name... people were buying into a memory, not a piece of hardware.

So if that's the case, then why bother rebooting it? Or if the plan always was to bring out a 3G variant, why not do it at the start?

The answer could lie in the price - or lack thereof. The new Nokia 3310 3G release date has been set for October this year, but it doesn't have a cost attached.

The original Nokia 3310 (well, the one from this year, not the actually original one) sold for a low price, and that was part of the attraction - if that doubles just to add 3G, some new colors and the ability to customize the UI, then that would have slowed sales at launch.

So let's wait and see the actual price - it's been confirmed to land on O2 in the UK already - before deciding whether HMD is playing a smart game or just likely to upset users who purchased the original, lifetime-limited version.