Remember back in the day of the feature phone where Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS were considered luxuries? Nowadays just about every smartphone has such features and to not have these features would certainly raise a couple of eyebrows. However while most of us would turn our noses at these feature phones, there is a market out there for such devices – the drug dealing market.In a recent story run by Vice, it turns out that phone of choice for drug dealers is none other than the Nokia 8210 feature phone. Of course back in the day, the Nokia 8210 was considered one of the more premium devices as it was compact and extremely thin, but now it looks like it has relegated itself to being a drug dealer’s phone of choice.
The reason for this is because the phone does not come with features such as Bluetooth, NFC, or WiFi, meaning that unless the cops were to get their hands on the physical phone, there would be no way for them to monitor your movements, at least not as far as your phone is concerned.
Its infra-red connectivity and long-lasting battery life are also some of the reasons why it is so popular as it allows these dealers to conduct their business all day without worrying about the battery running flat. According to a dealer Vice interviewed called K2, “The feds can now use wifi and Bluetooth to get information from the phone, and seem to be able to listen to phones a lot easier now than ever before. Every dealer I know uses old phones, and the Nokia 8210 is the one everyone wants because of how small it is and how long the battery lasts.”
We’re pretty sure this wasn’t the legacy that Nokia was hoping to leave behind, but who would have thought, right?
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