Candybar · 2000
The Brick
The phone everyone had. A battery that lasted a week, a screen the colour of a lime, and a snake that never stopped growing. Built to survive being dropped down the stairs.
Looks like
Modelled on these phones. Not affiliated with their makers.
In real life
The real phones that inspired The Brick. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited under each one.
Nokia 3310Photo: Michael Brandtner, Public domain Nokia 3310Photo: Asimzb, CC BY-SA 3.0 Nokia 3310Photo: Toteemipaalu, CC BY-SA 4.0 Nokia 3210Photo: Michael Brandtner, Public domain Nokia 3210Photo: FaceMePLS, CC BY 2.0
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What you can do
- Text in multi-tap (T9-style keys)
- Play Snake
- Choose a ringtone
- Dial and call your contacts
- Change settings
Specs
- Year
- 2000
- Form factor
- Candybar
- Screen
- 84 × 48 monochrome
- Input
- 12-key keypad + navi key
- Battery
- About a week
A short history
At the turn of the millennium, mobile phones stopped being something only business people carried. Prices dropped, pay-as-you-go top-up cards arrived, and for the first time a phone was something you might get for your birthday.
The phones of that moment were small, chunky candybars. The Nokia 3210 arrived in 1999 with its aerial hidden inside the body and covers you could swap for a new colour. A year later the Nokia 3310 followed and became one of the best-selling phones ever made, with well over 100 million sold.
What it was like
You texted in multi-tap: press 7 four times for an “s”, wait a beat, then move on. Every message had a hard limit of 160 characters, so people invented a whole spelling system to fit more in. C u l8r. Texts cost money, so you thought about each one.
The screen was a small green rectangle with black pixels, and the backlight lit up for a few seconds when you pressed a key. The battery lasted days, not hours, and you charged it when you remembered.
Snake
Snake was already on phones before this era, but this is when everyone played it. Guide a line of pixels round the screen, eat the dots, don’t bite your own tail. Every school playground and bus stop had someone trying to beat a high score.
Why people still remember it
It was simple, it was tough, and it did a few things very well. Many people still say it’s the best phone they ever owned.
The Brick is our recreation of that phone, rebuilt from scratch to work in your browser. Try it now and see how fast you can still text.