Hey Nokia, stop ruining our memories

At last year's Mobile World Congress, HMD Global -- the current owner of the Nokia brand -- played a nostalgia card by launching a rehashed version of the legendary Nokia 3310.

This year, the company's doing the same with the Nokia 8110, also known as the Matrix phone, or the bananaphone, but the effect is just not the same as the first time around.

I was excited about the revived 8110. After all, it's the phone that everyone wanted to have, not only because it was Neo's phone, but also because it was the top phone in Nokia's lineup, and Nokia phones were the best in the late nineties. And although it may seem normal now, cashing out north of a thousand dollars for a phone in those days was considered...well, if not crazy, then extravagant at the very least.

With the new Nokia 8110 4G, Nokia's done the same thing as it did the with the 3310 -- it launched a cheap-ish dumbphone (the 8110 4G retails for 79 euros ($97)) that sort of looks like the original.

But therein lies the problem: The 8110 4G is nothing like the original. The two-decade-old 8110 was a heavy beast, built like a brick house. Holding it in your hand gave you that special feeling of owning the best, most expensive phone around. The 8110 4G is a cheap, plastic phone with a slider, a flimsy one that's quite hard to open and even harder to close with one hand.

The trick worked with the 3310 because the original 3310 was a cheap phone for the masses. Its toughness and longevity made it legendary, but it was not a top phone in Nokia's range; it was an entry-level device. So while the revamped 3310 feels quite different in the hand, it's at least in the same ballpark.

The 8110 4G, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of its older brother, especially in the yellow, bananaphone color. I reckon it made little sense for Nokia to try to position the 8110 4G as an expensive phone (and maybe bring that spring-loaded slider that was only there for the movie version of the phone), but hey, that's what the original was. And I don't think anyone who held the original 8110 in their hand will be happy with the new one.

Nokia, the brand, has numerous fans, especially in Europe, and I've already seen folks wondering when the new Nokia will revive another legendary phone, the 7110, or even the Communicator. But if the brand's just gonna do plasticky, toy-like version of all those devices, perhaps it's best if they don't do it at all.