Nokia 1100 is Still the Biggest Selling Handset in the World

The world’s best selling phone is not the iPhone but something very old and not a smartphone at all? Remember the classic old Nokia 1100, the phone we all perhaps began with? While the iPhone 6 may have sold 71 million units in about three months, the numbers have nothing on the Nokia 1100.

 

The Nokia 1100 was an entry-level handset that came out in 2003. At the time it was perhaps the best thing to ever hit the mobile market. Lets consider this a 2003 post and talk of the specs that makes the phone a true badass. The handset does not come with two cameras, a curved screen or a snapdragon processor. What it does feature is a torch-light, a pair of no-slip grips, dust-proof case, monochrome graphic with, wait for it, 96 x 65 pixels, monophonic ringtones (36 pre-installed, 7 user-made), interchangeable covers, and an unbreakable will (we mean it).

This smooth handset can also store up to 50 contacts and 50 messages (25 sent, 25 received) and gives a whopping 400 hours standby time between charges. But the one thing that really tied this phone together was Snakes II and Space Impact – those 8-bit games that were played by 250 million people around the world.

We say 250 million because that’s how many units of the Nokia 1100 were sold by 2008, becoming not only the world’s best selling phone, but also the best selling consumer electronics device. There are many reasons behind why the 1100 was the craze at the time. For one thing, the phone was highly affordable at about $100 with all the features mentioned above, which were all that one needed at the time.

The phone was discontinued in 2008 because of the next wave of phones that were coming in, However, in 2009, the obsolete device became something of a collectors item as they were being sold for obscene amounts of money – say $32,000 a piece.

But if you thought you had seen the last of the Nokia 1100, think again. There are rumors that the classic handset might come back with a technological makeover. In March this year, the Nokia 1100 was seen in a GeekBench’s database and suggested that the 2016 Nokia 1100 will feature a quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek MT-6582 processor and will reportedly run on Android 5.0. However, this could all be an elaborate ruse by Nokia to use an old model since under the terms of its deal with Microsoft, Nokia cannot offer a new smartphone under the last quarter of 2016. It would be fun, though, to see what the 1100 would look like fitted with all the new toys today.