Archaeologists discover 4,000-year-old Nokia 3310 with just two bars of battery left

Giza (dpo) - A team of archaeologists in Egypt recently made an unusual discovery. When they opened a burial chamber which had been sealed for 4,000 years, they discovered a range of grave goods and, among them, a turned-off Nokia 3310. It is this object which has been puzzling scientists ever since: the battery in the ancient device is only half-charged. Consequently, this is the lowest battery charge level ever measured in this model of mobile phone.

“In my whole career as an archaeologist, I have never encountered anything quite like this”, reports Dr Mahmoug Tahiri of the Cairo Institute for Ancient History. He discovered the mobile phone in a burial chamber dated to the early 12th dynasty. “A Nokia 3310 with only two bars of battery left! It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Until now, there was dispute within the scientific community as to whether the display on the Nokia 3310 was even able to show a level of charge inferior to three bars.

Archaeologists discovered the ancient artefact in the third pyramid from the left

Tahiri and his colleagues have yet to come up with a satisfactory theory to explain how the battery could have depleted that much over just 4,000 years. “You could assume that the owner spent his entire life playing Snake II and never charged his phone before he died. Furthermore, it is likely that there was no reception in the burial chamber because of the huge rocks used in its construction, meaning that the phone has been constantly searching for coverage for the last four millennia. Yet even then, the level of charge should never have dropped that low.”
People living in the modern age may well find it very difficult to comprehend that an antiquated mobile phone like the 3310 was once a treasured item. In this context, it is important to note that Nokia devices were once reserved for rulers, while common folk had to make do with Ericsson phones.
This mobile phone will now be made available to the power research labs run by huge smartphone companies like Apple and Samsung. Afterwards, it is scheduled to feature in an exhibition in a museum until it can be re-examined – when the next bar of battery disappears in about 2,000 years.
chs, dan, ssi; first published 2017-10-13
Read the German version HERE.