HMD Touch 4G — HN Reader

What is special about this? Does it cost $20? Is it a cheap smart phone (why do they call it a hybrid phone?) targetting India (mentioning of cricket)?

The little print at the end says "Currently only available in India."

Reminds me a bit of HMD's KaiOS feature phones but this is apparently Android?

It says "Small phone".

And it is indeed smaller than most smartphones. Apple never made a small smartphone, presumably because they need the big screen for their vending-machine-in-your-pocket to sell more content.

₹4,199 it seems, which is about $45.

3.2" display. Weighs 100g. Cheap (presumably)

You know it's an India focused device when the top selling point is "Check the cricket results" ;)

Could do alright in Australia and the UK for about 6 months of the year as well. ;)

But smartphones especially Chinese ones are so abundant in India, literally no one wants to buy this slop device. They socialize, watch TV, share through other internet medium to get cricket scores.

Ok, this is kinda cool. In case you wanted to read the actual specs: https://www.hmd.com/en_in/hmd-touch-4g/specs?sku=1GE001CPG30... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMD_Touch_4G RTOS Touch on a Unisoc T127... that's cool. Amazed they can get the price that low.

CPU: single A7, 1GHz

RAM: 64MB LP-DDR2

Flash: 128MB NAND

I think the OS is an update of the Mocor RTOS by the SoC vendor Unisoc.

I am curious if there are 3rd party apps on this device. If nothing else, it would be a fun challenge to write apps for something constrained like this.

This is a odd one. I don't think it can compete with cheap android phones.

But I would love an android in small form factor like this. Can live without hi-res display and multiple cameras, if they can get the phone down to this size.

IMO, Xperia mini was the perfect phone.

https://m.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_mini-3947.php

Without WhatsApp support it will not go far.

> Without WhatsApp support it will not go far.

Speaking of which, it is bizarre how the tables have turned. Whatsapp used to support everything under the sun... But now it is all Android and iPhone

They could do Telegram at least, which has a non-zero user base (not sure about India, though, which seems to be their target market), and supports third party clients. Rolling their own chat app is... well, good luck with that.

I really liked to buy these HMD phones for my kids. Unfortunately the camera quality is not very good enough . Sometimes kids need decent image quality for printig and home work, and I couldn't think a few MBs are nice to have nowadays.

Unfortunately, the camera is the one place they always cut very hard. It gets to the point that it would probably best to have nothing at all.

This is nothing new. It's a dumb-phone with a touchscreen. There were quite a few examples back in the day in the late 00s.

It seems particularly similar to the short lived Microsoft Kin phones from 2010.

Even now, there's been a market for them. I know a few older people who have them

This is an odd little device. It seems you can only call other express chat users? it's reminiscent of cellphone systems from the old old days like Nextel walkie talkies. Also I see its available in India only and given the feature restrictions perhaps it's meant as an ultra low end device ?

If HMD came out with something that was optimized to the nth degree for whatsapp calls, that might be interesting, but even then I wonder how cheap it would need to be to compete with budget androids.

My read is that "Express Chat" is effectively a push-to-talk feature. It's implemented as an Android and iOS app: <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moon.expre...> (Android) and <https://apps.apple.com/in/app/express-chat/id6745220803> (iOS).

Several carriers offer this, usually aimed at corporate users (construction, maintenance, fleet workers, emergency responders). See Kyocera and Sonim, particularly their rugged phone offerings (Dura from Kyocera, XP from Sonim).

Carrier-based PTT is typically limited only to other phonesets on that carrier, though in practice the feature is generally accessed through a programmable key, and can be configured to use another (unlimited) press-to-talk app, such as Zello (which I've seen before) or Express Chat (#TIL).

I assure you it can do regular calls and texting on the public telephony grid.

There looks to be an express chat app for iPhone and Android as well.

Why to put front and center that chat app? I mean, is not something that makes it unique, if the app itself can run in android and iOS then it is just a chat app, with far less users than i.e. whatsapp.

At first I thought that it was an AI app, and reading more could find why that would be innovative, but no, just a chat app targeting the same phone users and the ones willing to install the app in other phone brands.

I recently found my old Nokia Lumia 800.it behaved rather smoothly with the metro ui, ofcourse nothing worked aside phone calls

The device came out about a year ago: https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-HMD-Touch-4G-is-an-all-scr...

It looks like it's still India-exclusive. I haven't heard much about it online, and with a dedicated chat app I would've expected to if it was a success. Did it bomb?

It's a nice attempt. Dumbphone, with 2 MP camera and wifi hotspot. Sadly they shoot themselves in the foot by only offering it in india.

Now, if they would only remove the gimmicky touch screen, and replace it with buttons, the phone would be a perfect for those who do not like to have a surveillance device in their pocket. Or at least a "lesser" surveillance device.

the hardware design reminds me of the Nokia Lumias, a black rounded display glass within a straight squared colored unibody

https://m.gsmarena.com/nokia_lumia_920-pictures-4967.php

the good old days

What's the point of even releasing this device? Serves no distinguishing factor.

> It’s not your old keypad phone.

It's not your phone at all if you don't control the software.. even old keypad phones were often flashable, but HMD is working hard to make sure you have no say what software is running on your smartphone.

There is a severe lack of compact smartphones in the market. Are there any devices available with regular OS updates, that fit into normal sized pocket?

Do it support Wifi hotspot? I will buyit instantly.

The front of the device in the illustrations looks like the LG Fireweb from 2013, that ran Firefox OS. Good old times.

Something like this could do without the selfie cam, or bezels in general.

Ideal hardware, garbage software (can't unlock HMD bootloaders)

It's sluggish.

giving 4g. they are not even trying anymore

4G? WTF..

They couldn't find a stock photo for the selfie cam instead of using AI slop?

4G? In 2026? Good luck having no tower reception. 4G barely works anymore.

> Currently only available in India

Closes tab