Five phones other than the Nokia 3310 that we wish would make a comeback

As Nokia brings back the 3310 we take a look at five other iconic handsets that deserve a comeback.

As Nokia brings back the 3310 we take a look at five other iconic handsets that deserve a comeback. (Reuters Photo)

The remake of a 17-year-old phone is stealing the show at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. The new Nokia 3310, a re-imagined version of the original indestructible classic, was unveiled by Nokia's new owners HMD Global on Sunday.

We take a look back at some other iconic phones that we would love to see make a comeback:

1. Nokia 1100

What is the highest selling phone of all-time? One of the iPhones? The Nokia 3310? It is actually the Nokia 1100, better known as the 'Torchlight phone'. The 1100 sold an eye-watering 250 million units. The phone was marketed as being 'dust resistant' and 'Made for India' with an iconic ad featuring a trucker driving through the country. The big selling point was tiny but remarkable ad-don, a flashlight on top of the phone that could be switched on with a single button press.

2. Moto Razr

Mobile phones in the early 2000s we built to be sturdy and simple. While there were phones that had polished aesthetics, 'sex appeal' was not a phrase you would use to describe them. Enter the Moto Razr, with its striking appearance and ridiculously thin profile. The Razr elevated phone design to the next level and everyone else played catch up. The later models of Razr also featured iTunes and were Apple's first attempt to take a stab at the cellular market that would culminate in the juggernaut known as the iPhone.

3. Nokia N95

Released in March 2007, the Nokia N95 with a fancy two-way sliding mechanism that revealed either media playback buttons or a numeric keypad, was the jealousy phone in the pre-iPhone age. Running on the Symbian OS v9.2, it had a 5 Megapixel camera, Carl Zeiss optics, GPS, WiFi, and a built-in accelerometer. That was cool.

4. Blackberry Curve

The 2007 "business phone" that rebranded itself as the It Phone of an entire generation is one of those phones that is still sorely missed. The qwerty keyboard, BBM, and that Blackberry OS; there would still be many takers for the Blackberry Curve over. And who can forget the Vodafone 'We're the Blackberry Boys' ad that went viral before the concept became popular.

5. Nokia Communicator

Popular as a 'brick' phone, the communicator was as much a status symbol as a utility phone. First released in 1996, the Nokia 9000 Communicator is considered to be the first ever smartphone. It was unique in that it opened in the unique clamshell format to reveal a qwerty keyboard and a cool LCD screen.