14 DAY TRIAL // This week we took you down memory lane with a story in which we talked about some of Nokia’s most iconic handsets the world has seen.
The Nokia 8210 was not included in the list, but you’d be surprised to know that the handset is still actively used today, by a very particular category of people.
Smartphones are extremely useful to our daily life, if that entails going to your job and taking care of your kids. But if you’re on the dark side of things, a smartphone will translate into the equivalent of a GPS tracker.
Drug lords do business like in 1999
So people involved in illegal activities such as drug dealers don’t tend to favor smartphones at all. They go for dumb phones all the way.
According to VICE, drug dealers in the UK are absolutely in love with the Nokia 8210. The phone launched back in 1999 and comes devoid of Bluetooth, near-field connectivity or Wi-Fi, so users don’t have to worry about being trailed.
But the phone has some key features which allows people in this “business” to operate. The Nokia 8210 takes advantage of infra-red technology which becomes handy when you need to swap info from phone to phone. It also has a chunky battery life so dealers don’t have to worry about running out of juice while on the job.
VICE also talked to a few customers and one of them confessed to using a Nokia 8210 after his Samsung became unusable. Once that happened, he was quickly approached by two dealers who offered to purchase the phone.
A mobile phone shop owner in Birmingham also confirmed that people have been asking about the Nokia 8210 quite a lot, but he couldn't say what these people were planning to do with the device.
In a world where everybody is spying on everybody, paranoia has escalated for some, to a point were dumbing down seems the way to go to avoid being caught red-handed.
