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Comment by dmd | Hacker News Reader

The full specs page for the 3310 says it's a 2G phone. That must be an error? Verizon and AT&T have both started the shutdown of their 2G networks.

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I assume they are made for Europe and emerging markets. Note that it only works on 900/1800 MHz as well and not on the US frequencies, so even without sunsetting it would not work in the US.

Europe is not emerging.

Parent clearly says AND

Your comment is suitably ambiguous.

Worldwide, 2G is being shut down, not just the US. The primary reason is that carriers want to re-use the 2G spectrum for 3/4G.

You can buy a Samsung/Chinese 3G candybar format phone for $30, which gives good battery life.

Fun fact: Smartphones became the biggest mobile phone market just two years ago. Dumb phones and feature phones are still almost half of the markets if you measure them by number of units (smartphones dominate revenues).

Many emerging markets still sell more feature phones and dump phones than smartphones. India for example.

There is even small reverse trend when customers in developed world when people are getting fed up with smartphones.

Europe is actually going to keep their 2G network around while they take down the 3G network and deploy 4G.

Not the case in other parts of the world though. Here in New Zealand one of the two major networks no longer operates a 2G network and the other major network is planning to turn it off in the next few years. The only other network hasn't announced any plans but chances are they will turn off 2G soon after. Definitely would be very surprised if there were still a 2G signal avaliable anywhere in New Zealand in say 5 years time.

This is odd - there is plenty of industrial equippment/ M2M communication modules that run only 2g.

I'd assume that UMTS would be shut down long before 2g.

This is actually impacting San Francisco buses right now - the transponders that MUNI buses use to transmit their location for arrival estimates use 2G, and they stopped working because AT&T started taking down the 2G network.

https://www.sfmta.com/about-sfmta/blog/why-muni-arrival-time...

Only if the industrial users are willing to pay more than the alternative 3G/4G use of the spectrum would bring the operator.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. I nearly bought an oldschool 3315 off eBay a while ago before I heard about the 2G shutdown - when I heard about this I was so excited because I could finally get my dumbphone, but with 3/4G! Apparently not.. surely, I am not the only one who loathes the smartness of my phone?

I'm not sure what I would do with a dumbphone. According to my call history the last voice call I made or received was in November 2015...

Are... are... you living in a cave?

No, I just communicate pretty much entirely (a) in person or (b) by text.

Maybe it's meant for emerging markets.

Im guessing the target market are Asian and African countries, no? 3310 and the other 33xx series was a big hit in Asia.

It also has a 2MP camera. So it's clearly not high specs in a retro case... it's low specs in a retro case. 2G would fit with that.

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