Nostalgia is a powerful drug. The sights and smells that remind us of our youth; the taste of a meal long forgotten to bring back not just the ingredients but where we were, who we were with and what we spoke about. Forgotten memories are summoned back into focus with the gentlest persuasion, expanded on and shared with those of similar age and experience.
This takes us to the new Nokia 3310, a phone so drenched in nostalgia. The first 3310 arrived at the end of 2000, barely a year into a decade kick-started by the PlayStation 2 and brought to a close by the third iPhone.
A decade of massive change not just across the technology landscape, but in the lives of the young people who were using personalised phone for the first time in their life. It was also an era of the birth of GSM in Nigeria and the explosion of mobile communication in the country.
A first mobile phone for many, the 3310 was independence half a decade before your first driving lesson; a means of gossiping with friends without using the house phone. Before affordable computers and dial-up modems gave us MySpace and MSN and Yahoo Messenger, there was the Nokia 3310.
The phone you could take to your bedroom, text with all night, or until your credit ran out, and speak with friends, perhaps even members of the opposite sex, in hushed tones for N60 per minute.
Removable front and back panels meant the 3310 could be made uniquely yours, and should a friend copy you, a new look was just a few hundred naira and a bus trip to the emerging local phone shops.
Then there was the indestructible build quality, the iconic ringtone, a tool for the smart kids to compose their own melodies. The battery lasted a week and its Snake game injected the thrill to compete and desire to win into young teenagers more than cross-country and sports day ever could.
So what about the new one? It does all of these things too. But where the original was granted first-love status on day one, a decade of 3G, 4G, iPhones, Androids, Facebook, WhatsApp, and BBM means its replacement is nothing but a nostalgic facade and clever marketing. Even 12-year-olds have smartphones now.
And once you spend just a few hours away from our hyper-connected world, once you realise Snake isn't the same as before, and there's no way to tweet your high score, the 3310 legends is washed away.
What is left behind is neither here nor there. Escaping social media and rolling news for the tranquil bliss of texts and Snake borders on the therapeutic at first, but soon brings with it anxiety and the fear of missing out. If you can't share it on Snapchat, did that Snake high score even happen?
We remember the original 3310 fondly because it was not only the best a young person could get, it was the best anyone could get. Texting and Snake are all phones could do and for everything else, you went outside.
But smartphones have spoilt us, letting us gorge on gigabytes of data until the phone memory is filled to the brim with downloads.
If you need a cheap phone for holidays and festivals, there are plenty to choose from. The new 3310 is a fine example, albeit at N19,000, a little on the expensive side for something that can easily be misplaced.
It will remind you of your childhood and formative teenage years. Your friends will demand to play Snake and you'll smugly not need to recharge for the entire trip.
But they'll have taken better photos and captured memories to treasure in high definition, while you are reminiscing with your 3310, ‘Ojabo ko fo.’
 "Dubai Submerged In Flood")
