HMD Touch 4G | Hacker News Reader

HMD Touch 4G

hmd.com

91 pointsthisislife2111 comments

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?

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

which makes it a new platform. any other phone uses rtos touch ?

Apparently some other HMD devices (HMD 105, HMD 110) use "RTOS". Most likely their proprietary feature phone OS, don't expect it will provide an option for user-installable apps.

> 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.

Because India is the only country that cares about cricket?

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

I believe GP’s point is India is the place a company would highlight cricket scores above other marketing lines.

Cricket season is just starting up. I could see this ad in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, or hell, even Australia. India's not special.

Do you have some examples? I love to explore such things.

₹4,199 it seems, which is about $45.

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.

Why would you voluntarily go to a place where you expect to be robbed?

I go to places where there is very little, to no, risk of being robbed. This is good.

Maybe they have relatives there. Maybe their job requires them to.

Family and food. Guayaquil has the best bolón.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Conversely, I am counting 6 persons (7 when including myself) in my direct close circle that do not upgrade because there is no Mini on the Apple lineup.

I'm not counting people that did upgrade but are spiteful of the forced size increase.

I'm really not surprised. The mini is sooo cute.

I'd have got one myself but iOS doesn't work for me.. I have several things I need on a mobile phone that are not available on iOS.

For me a phone is really an outside the house thing only. I don't use it at home to poke around on the internet etc, like most people do these days. I still have a real computer with a massive screen and keyboard. So a mini size is great for me.

On Android there's the ones from Unihertz but they take the "small" factor a little bit too far, and also their software support is absolutely terrible. And people often mention the zenPhone, I'm not sure why because it was never smaller than the Samsung S-series. It wasn't really a small phone anyway.

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

> And it is indeed smaller than most smartphones. Apple never made a small smartphone

I couldn't find specs for this thing but from the picture it looks to be about the same size as the original iPhone.

A bit smaller.

Touch 4G: 102 x 62 x 11

iPhone: 115 x 61 x 12

The Samsung Z Flip is probably your best bet if small size is the most important factor - though, er, slightly more expensive than the HMD!

Z Flip 7: 86 x 75 x 13

Thanks so that's like the same ballpark, which kind of validates my counterpoint about "small" phones (which at the time were considered immense)

Flip phone is cheating! Haha kidding. Still a Z Flip 7 is giant when unfolded.

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 doesn't seem very competitive: it's priced at ₹4,199 (€38,08) on HMDs store.

On Amazon France, you can buy an "Energizer U506S" for €40.19 with free shipping. And that one has:

CPU: 1.5Ghz 4-core (MT6739 from 2017)

RAM: 2GB

Flash: 32GB

(and has card slot, dual sim)

And it runs Android 13 Go edition (probably not well, but enough to run Whatsapp and such).

So this device is facing some competition at that price point. Probably in India you can get an android device with higher spec at that €40 price point than you can in Europe.

Those android phones will have a abysmal performance. I don’t know this device but it’s perfectly possible that a feature phone like this will provide good performance for its limited feature set on much lower specs.

In theory, yes, a dedicated development team should be able to write a usable feature phone OS today, considering we had blazing fast feature phones in 2013 at even lower spec playing music seamlessly while browsing the web.

In practice this phone's YouTube reviews show it's running dog slow while lacking basic features, just like pretty much any other recently released feature phones at its price point.

But not everyone are thoughtless and uncritically think "biggerer number is betterer". I think a strong selling point of these phones is that they come with very little of the clutter and weight that Android has. A less complex relation to one's phone gives some peace of mind.

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

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

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.

WhatsApp has reduced the number of platforms that they support, they had a KaiOS app but disabled it last year.

I know, but my comment was more along the lines of Windows Phone 7 coming out in 2010 and whatsapp being available a year later, and of whatsapp not having a native app for Sailfish

This one was recently up in HN: https://dumbermini.com/

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.

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

Microsoft Kin was a separate thing, and was discontinued 48 days after launch.

Windows phone had excellent hardware (from nokia) and excellent UX, but very few apps bothered to support it. If my old windows phone was still updated and my critical apps supported it I'd still be using my lumia 800/900 series phones.

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.

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

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

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).

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.

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...

HMD is Finnish

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?

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.

Reminds me of the myriad of secure encrypted apps that are available.

Problem is, unless you have people willing to jump ship, or technical friends who like to experiment. You're just chatting to yourself

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.

They "shoot themselves in the foot" by only offering it in a billion-and-a-half-person market? Not sure how. The sales numbers in ROW are probably a rounding error compared to India.

Also HMD already sells that other product you're describing. They're on the same website linked above; click "Feature Phones" to see them.

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

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.

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?

I have found a very usable phone (for what I do, which is not much) in low cost Chinese "mini rugged phones" namely I had (until I broke the screen and battery was not in very good condition) a "king kong mini" and then I got the (slightly larger) "king kong mini 3" (the 4 is the latest model, I believe). They are slightly heavier than you would expect, but have very long autonomy and fit nicely in a shirt's pocket.

Neat. Even with all that padding it is smaller than current "compact" devices.

Do it support Wifi hotspot? I will buyit instantly.

The linked page says that it can be a hotspot.

Then it can be very handy in terms of its usability of wifi hotspot devices. In case you want to access intenret remotely on your laptop or in your car.

And in developing countries, you have to register your phones imei and pay tax if the value of your phone is greater than certain amount. And in that cases the amount of tax is maybe 50% of the actual price of the phone. So your phone is basically a brick with camera. And you get carry a second phone, which is inconvinence. With this I can see the potential use of it. Small, simple and useful wifi hotspot device with actual ability to call like normal phone.

But why not just your standard Android for that?

I used to have an Android head unit in my old car, I used my phone hotspot for connectivity

When IMEI is blocked (for not paying the tax) SIM will not work. Let's say I have Iphone 17, it would have to 70% tax of its value to get sim working.

Some of HMD's KaiOS phones can be hotspots too, I have a 6300 4G that I use for that.

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

Which is now KaiOS by the way.

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

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).

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

It's sluggish.

giving 4g. they are not even trying anymore

4G? WTF..

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

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.

In Europe there are still plenty of places without 5G coverage, which anyone travelling by train will quickly notice.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

4G is ending up as the replacement to 2G as the base network. I suspect 5G networks will be shut down before 4G ones given IoT devices are largely setting on the low power variants of LTE.

5G has more range than 4G on the same frequency bands. 5G UWB has less range than 4G.

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

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

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.

> 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

NSA can be rolled out with almost nothing more than a firmware update. For any existing carrier network, it was the obvious place to start 5G rollout.

If you're building new towers, things change, obviously. That said, a lot of industrial/IoT hardware still requires 4G so it's not entirely unreasonable to deploy 4G in new coverage areas.

And it also planned-obsoletes 4G only devices, a big win for the operators that can then sell new 5G capable ones. Such a racket I swear. Can't wait to go through this shit again for 6G in about 5 years, like we did for 3G.

They can replace 2G/3G IoT with LTE, but cannot with 5G (due to energy consumption).

5G RedCap is the solution, but that will need new infrastructure and chipset. LTE will stay at least for another ten years.

In other words - noone in real life is deploying 5G only infrastructure right now and won't for awhile.

MSR base stations are the norm in the industry, not a rarity.

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.

> Currently only available in India

Closes tab

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.

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.

now you know how it feels to browse this site as a non-American

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