Nokia's retro revival 3310 goes on sale and disappears immediately

People must really love Snake

If you blinked, you missed it.

Nokia's "new" 3310 went on sale on 24 May, 17 years after the original, and was promptly cleared out.

The retro-styled 2G handset has created extraordinary demand, something Nokia is struggling to fulfil.

"We have been working with our partners and can confirm the 3310 will be available again soon – we'll confirm the details as soon as possible," Nokia Mobile says on its Facebook page.

Nokia 3310: Old vs New

New

• 2.4 inch, 240x320 pixel colour display
• 115.6mm x 51mm x 12.8mm; 79.6g
• 2MP camera
• 16MB [not a misprint – ed] storage with microSD slot up to 32GB
• 744 hours standby time; 22 hours talk time
• microUSB 2.0
• Snake

Old

• 1.5 inch, 48x84 pixel monochrome display
• 113 x 48 x 22 mm; 133g
• 900mAh battery
• 55 hours to 260 hours standby time; 2.5-4 hours talk time
• Nokia connector
• Snake

Vodafone also launched and immediately ran out of stock. The network was flogging the black model priced at £39 with a £10 airtime bundle. (Ironically, it includes "500GB of 4G data", which will trickle in at GPRS speeds.)

Then again, you may want to go off-grid completely once you discover that Google is going through your credit card statements.

A Vodafone spokesperson told us: "Due to high demand we have currently sold out of the Nokia 3310 online. We are working closely with the manufacturer to make sure more stock is available soon. In the meantime, orders can still be placed and they will be fulfilled as soon as stock is available."

Being able to go for a full month between charges is the promise here, and the revived 3310 can boast something useful that the iPhone is missing – a 3.5mm audio jack. ®