HMD Touch 4G

tthisislife2 about 20 hours ago 97 commentsRead Article on hmd.com

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Discussion Sentiment

82% Positive

Analyzed from 1621 words in the discussion.

Discussion (97 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

alfanick•about 19 hours ago

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)?

puzzlingcaptcha•about 19 hours ago

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?

walrus01•about 11 hours ago

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

I think that was made obvious by the big thing on the marketing website scroll about checking cricket scores.

iamtedd•about 8 hours ago

Because India is the only country that cares about cricket?

They're not even the only country in Asia where cricket's big.

janv•about 15 hours ago

No, it uses RTOS Touch. Looks like HMD/Nokia gave up on KaiOS a few years ago.

code_duck•about 17 hours ago

₹4,199 it seems, which is about $45.

cactusplant7374•about 15 hours ago

This is perfect. I've been looking for a burner phone for when I'm in Guayaquil. Something I wouldn't mind losing in a robbery.

amelius•about 17 hours ago

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.

type0•about 4 hours ago

Ikko MindOne Pro is small phone, could be a usable device if it had better software

wildzzz•about 15 hours ago

Apple struggles to sell budget models of their phones, everyone wants at least the standard version. Why would they try to sell an even tinier phone than the SE? No one will buy it. The Apple Watch is a tiny device with its own SIM but that's not a phone, it's a smartwatch so its really an accessory to your phone.

m463•about 12 hours ago

many people await the return of the iphone mini...

wolvoleo•about 12 hours ago

Yes you still see so many around. They might not have sold enough by Apple standards but they still sold in huge absolute numbers.

black_rabbit_•about 15 hours ago

I mean, depending on what you mean by "small smartphone", the early models definitely count (3.5"-4" diagonal). They were huge screens for their time, but nowadays everything's a phablet so they look tiny by comparison.

mangecoeur•about 18 hours ago

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

ColdStream•about 6 hours ago

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

Venkatesh10•about 5 hours ago

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.

abc123abc123•about 3 hours ago

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.

blululu•about 10 hours ago

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.

throwa356262•about 5 hours ago

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.

throwa356262•about 19 hours ago

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

danangReader•about 7 hours ago

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.

ColdStream•about 6 hours ago

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.

pr337h4m•about 19 hours ago

Without WhatsApp support it will not go far.

collabs•about 19 hours ago

> 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

KeplerBoy•about 17 hours ago

To be fair there's nothing else left under this sun.

w4der•about 16 hours ago

It's a chicken and egg problem tho, whatsapp doesn't support smaller platforms, and smaller platforms can't grow without app support. I remember that the uptake of Windows Phone 7 and early versions of 8 was pretty low partly because whatsapp didn't support that OS.

notpushkin•about 9 hours ago

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.

Venkatesh10•about 5 hours ago

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

kjellsbells•about 20 hours ago

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.

rjsw•about 18 hours ago

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

daneel_w•about 17 hours ago

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

ferongr•about 20 hours ago

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.

loosescrews•about 19 hours ago

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

anilakar•about 19 hours ago

Considering how bad the Windows Phone ecosystem was, the smartphones were not much better...

gmuslera•about 19 hours ago

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.

collabs•about 19 hours ago

My guess is because this is not an Android phone and it is important to be able to chat with Android and iPhone users. The real question is why would iPhone and Android users install this app?

https://www.hmd.com/en_in/about-hybrid-phones

Edit: Requiring Google Play login to use this express chat app is pretty stupid in my opinion. Why do apps require Google Play login? Especially a Chinese app? I am on an Android phone with Google play. I am just not signed in to Google play. I installed this app with Aurora store. The app simply throws me back to Play Store which tells me to sign in. Why?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moon.expre...

sim04ful•about 19 hours ago

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

jeroenhd•about 18 hours ago

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?

martheen•about 12 hours ago

A dedicated app that's only compatible with itself and only have miniscule install count means nothing. I tried downloading it and it only even support 4 countries prefix at the moment. It's also not that cheaper compared to "proper" smartphone from other brands in that area. Notebookcheck says it's launched with 3999 rupees while I see Itel Zeno 10 is just 4769 rupees. With India's unskilled labor minimum monthly wage about 20000 rupees I don't think anyone would care about the price difference.

nor0x•about 19 hours ago

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

zoom6628•about 11 hours ago

Reminds me a lot of my old Nokia 525 with windows. Great form factor for running and hiking. If this one got GPS I would buy it. But it's up against excellent full function phones like bluebox and veelo from China which make stunningly good small phones.

moondowner•about 19 hours ago

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

wolvoleo•about 12 hours ago

Which is now KaiOS by the way.

opengrass•about 15 hours ago

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

functionmouse•about 19 hours ago

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

thisislife2•about 19 hours ago

Think of it as the front cam you need to make video calls ... I think the bezels is so that the corners of the phone doesn't poke you when you keep it in your pocket (it's a small device - smaller than even feature phones).

ppnpm•about 8 hours ago

It's sluggish.

foragerdev•about 17 hours ago

Do it support Wifi hotspot? I will buyit instantly.

rjsw•about 15 hours ago

The linked page says that it can be a hotspot.

arun6582•about 19 hours ago

giving 4g. they are not even trying anymore

brcmthrowaway•about 19 hours ago

4G? WTF..

uni_baconcat•about 11 hours ago

After GSM and UMTS shutdown, LTE is the foundation for IoT and entry level mobile connectivity. 5G RedCap coverage is not widespread enough and the chipset is not cheap enough.

daneel_w•about 17 hours ago

Do you live in a 5G-only region? If not, what's the problem?

HDBaseT•about 15 hours ago

There isn't many (if any) countries with only 5G, although most countries have shutdown both 2G and 3G networks, with the 4G shutdown likely within the next decade.

Not supporting 5G limits this devices longevity, although at the price point and Indian market focus, I think its acceptable.

zb3•about 20 hours ago

> 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.

chedabob•about 17 hours ago

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

justsad•about 20 hours ago

These fucking cookie settings I swear lmao

moffkalast•about 20 hours ago

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

InsideOutSanta•about 19 hours ago

4G is currently the dominant mobile data network with the best coverage.

moffkalast•about 19 hours ago

Yeah in your dreams maybe. I'm often seeing zero bars, asking others if they have any signal only to have them show me a full 5G signal. New towers aren't backwards compatible, and the bandwidth has been largely reduced.

InsideOutSanta•about 18 hours ago

I'm not entirely sure why you're arguing with me about this. 4G currently has much better coverage than 5G; that's just a fact. I'm sure "4G barely works anymore" is true for you, but you don't represent the world, much less India, where this phone is sold.

traceroute66•about 19 hours ago

> New towers aren't backwards compatible, and the bandwidth has been largely reduced.

Yup.

In tech-speak there is 5G NSA (Non-Standalone Architecture) and 5G SA (Standalone Architecture).

5G NSA is a kludge, it is 5G radios operating on a legacy 4G core. Inherently backwards compatible.

5G SA is 5G radios on 5G core. Clearly not backwards compatible.

5G SA is the preferred route for good reason:

    1. It delivers reduced power consumption at both operator and user-device level
    2. It delivers improved latency and bandwidth at both operator and user-device level

izacus•about 19 hours ago

Did you mix up 4G with 3G/2G?

traceroute66•about 19 hours ago

> Did you mix up 4G with 3G/2G?

Most operators have switched off both 3G and 2G by now.

userbinator•about 16 hours ago

2G is still active in a few areas as a low-speed, long-range fallback while 3G is being shut down.

izacus•about 17 hours ago

This is why I'm asking, because noone is shutting down 4G anywhere. And 5G actually has LESS range than 4G.

awestroke•about 20 hours ago

> Currently only available in India

Closes tab

wilsonnb3•about 20 hours ago

I suspected as much after their first use case for cloud services was cricket results.

Perhaps the limitation to whatever express chat is isn’t a dealbreaker in India.

martheen•about 9 hours ago

This phone cost about one-fifth of India's minimum monthly wage, while proper new Android cost one-third of monthly wage. My country's economy is somewhat in the same ballpark as India and I doubt anyone I know would buy this. In an r/dumbphones reviews, comments by Indians shows nobody cares about these devices aside from those buying weird devices for curiosity sake.