Why the Nokia 3310 was so Durable

This is the internet's favorite phone, the indestructible Nokia 3310. And I put it into a Limfield CT scanner, so we can find out how this phone earned its durability meme status. But what the CT scans don't show us is what is missing from the phone. If you look at the Nokia 3310 and its direct predecessor, the Nokia 3210, and put them in a line with their direct competition, you'll notice very quickly why they stand out. There's no antenna stub which immediately made the phone more durable as the antenna is a major source of stress concentration during falls. Before internal antennas were practical, most cell phones used a quarter-wave monopole. Antennas evolved over time. The simplest is a pullout wire antenna. But as phones shrank and networks added more towers, manufacturers switched to a more compact helical antenna stump. Instead of a long vertical wire, you can coil it, so it becomes a short cylinder. Helical antennas were a bit less efficient, but the denser network coverage made up for the power difference. So, where is the 3310's antenna hiding? You may not even be able to spot it in the scans without some knowledge of planer inverted F antennas. Nokia phones were the first to use them. This is it here. A planer inverted F antenna uses a metal plate. One end of the plate is connected directly to the ground through a shorting tab and the radio feeds the plate at a point a short distance away. When transmitting, current flows from the feed across the plate and returns through the short into the ground plane, forming the resonant path that radiates. The unusual shape of the antenna is because it is designed to resonate at two frequencies, one for each of the 2G bands. The resonant frequencies can be customized by changing the dimensions of the antenna and the slit in the middle. This simple antenna paid off. They were cheap to make, just a metal stamp. They never bent, broke, or went out of tune, adding to the durability of this phone. The Nokia 3310 is the first episode of our new Nebula exclusive series, The Anatomy of. And you can watch the episodes on the Nokia 3310 and the first generation iPod right now exclusively on Nebula with the links in the comments.