Convert 3GP to WebM Online
Convert legacy 3GP mobile phone videos to modern WebM. Free, in your browser, no file uploads.
.3gp · up to 100 MB
What you can do
Revive old phone videos for the modern web
Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola
Convert videos from any 2000s 3G phone to WebM playable in any browser.
100% private
Your personal videos never leave your device. Re-encoding happens locally in WebAssembly.
H.263 → VP8
Transcoding from H.263, MPEG-4 Part 2, or H.264 encapsulated in 3GP to modern VP8.
Universal compatibility
WebM works in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge without plugins. Share on social networks effortlessly.
How it works
Three steps, no hassle
Upload your 3GP file
Drag or select the .3gp — videos recorded with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, or any 2000s phone. No signup.
VP8 re-encoding in the browser
H.263 or MPEG-4 Part 2 video encapsulated in 3GP is decoded and re-encoded to VP8 on your device via WebAssembly.
Download your WebM
A .webm file ready to share on modern social networks, embed on the web, or archive with universal compatibility.
FAQ
Got questions?
3GP (Third Generation Partnership Project) is a video and multimedia format created in 1998 by the 3GPP consortium (Third Generation Partnership Project), the same body that standardizes 3G mobile networks. It was designed specifically for mobile phones with limited processing and storage capabilities: the ARM chips of the time could decode H.263 at 176x144 pixels (QCIF) with reasonable battery life, but not H.264. 3GP files are extremely small — one minute of video at QCIF takes around 500 KB. It was the standard recording format for all non-smartphone mobile phones between approximately 2002 and 2010, including popular Nokia 6600, Sony Ericsson K750, and Motorola RAZR series.
3GP files can use several video codecs: (1) H.263 (profile 0 or 3) — the most common in basic 2G and 3G phones, standardized by ITU-T in 1995 as the successor to H.261, designed for transmission at low bitrates over telephone lines; (2) MPEG-4 Part 2 (also called MPEG-4 Visual, not to be confused with MPEG-4 Part 10 which is H.264) — in mid-range phones from 2004-2007; (3) H.264 (AVC) — in more powerful phones of the late 2000s. The 3GP format also defines a 3G2 (.3g2) subset for CDMA2000 networks, used primarily by operators in the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
The QCIF (176x144 pixels) and CIF (352x288 pixels) resolution of 3GP videos is not a format limitation but a limitation of mobile phones of the time. ARM7 and ARM9 chips used in Nokia 6600 (2003), Sony Ericsson K700 (2004), or Motorola V3 RAZR (2004) had processing capabilities of 100-200 MHz equivalent. Decoding H.263 at QCIF consumed a significant portion of CPU and battery. Phone screens of the time were also very small — the Nokia 6600 had a 2.1-inch screen at 176x208 pixels — making higher resolutions unnecessary.
Yes, all 3GP videos recorded with conventional (non-smartphone) mobile phones are convertible. 3GP files typically don't use DRM because they were personal recordings. The only problematic cases are corrupt 3GP files (from incomplete transfer from the phone) or those with exotic non-standard codecs that some manufacturers used in their first multimedia devices.
It depends on the goal. For sharing family memories or historical moments on modern social networks, converting to WebM (or MP4) is necessary because platforms don't accept 3GP. The resolution will still be 176x144, but compatibility will be universal. For archiving, converting to WebM preserves the video in a long-term playable format without depending on 3GP decoders that are increasingly scarce. Artificially increasing resolution is not necessary — upscaling doesn't add real information.
All three are variants of the same ISO Base Media File Format (ISO BMFF), defined in MPEG-4 Part 12 (ISO/IEC 14496-12). MP4 (.mp4) is the general container, 3GP is the profile optimized for 3G networks with resolution and bitrate restrictions for mobile devices, and 3G2 (.3g2) is the variant for CDMA2000 networks (used by Sprint, Verizon, KDDI in Japan, SK Telecom in Korea). Technically, many players that open MP4 can also open 3GP, but modern web browsers don't include 3GP support as it's an obsolete profile.
Convert 3GP to WebM: modernize mobile phone videos from the 2000s
The 3GP format represents a specific era in mobile device history: the transition from basic phones to the first multimedia-capable handsets. 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) is the international consortium founded in 1998 to standardize 3G mobile telephone networks, and as part of that standardization work it also defined the 3GP multimedia file format in specification TS 26.234. The goal was to create a video and audio format adapted to the limitations of 3G phones of the time: ARM chips with 100-200 MHz processing capacity, screens of 1.5 to 2.5 inches at 128x160 or 176x208 pixel resolutions, and data networks with bandwidths of 64-384 kbps (GPRS/EDGE/UMTS). The primary video codec was H.263, standardized by ITU-T in 1995, which could encode QCIF video (176x144 pixels) at 10-15 fps with bitrates of 32-64 kbps — perfectly manageable for the ARM chips of the era. The first phones with 3GP video recording included the Nokia 6600 (2003, with a 0.3-megapixel VGA camera), the Sony Ericsson Z1010 (2003), and Siemens S65 series models with video capability.
The 3GP phone ecosystem spanned approximately the full decade from 2002 to 2012. Nokia, which at its peak controlled 40% of the global mobile market in 2008, used 3GP in virtually its entire Symbian phone range: Series 60 (Nokia 6600, N70, N80), Series 40 (the huge range of low-cost phones), and the first N-Series multimedia phones such as the N90 (2005). Sony Ericsson used 3GP in its popular K and W (Walkman) series, including the K750i (2005) and W810i (2006). Motorola used it in the RAZR V3 and V3i (2004-2005), which were the best-selling phones in the world at the time. Samsung and LG also used 3GP extensively in their mid-range lines. The result is that a huge corpus of personal videos, family memories, and historical content is trapped in 3GP files that modern phones and platforms do not directly play.
The technical conversion of 3GP to WebM involves decoding the original video codec (H.263, MPEG-4 Part 2, or H.264 depending on the phone and file year) to uncompressed YUV frames, followed by re-encoding with the VP8 compressor. The specific technical challenge of 3GP files is that many have irregular timecodes or incorrect duration metadata, the result of recordings interrupted by depleted batteries or full storage that were not properly finalized. Convertir.ai handles these cases via WebAssembly in the browser, applying stream correction where possible. Local processing is especially valuable for personal and family videos: birthday parties, children's first steps, school events recorded with Nokia or Sony Ericsson in the early 2000s represent irreplaceable memories that deserve careful conversion and preservation without sending to external servers.