[HN Gopher] HMD Key - A lightweight, affordable smartphone
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       HMD Key - A lightweight, affordable smartphone
        
       Author : namanyayg
       Score  : 107 points
       Date   : 2025-01-12 12:27 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.hmd.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.hmd.com)
        
       | mjd wrote:
       | This sounds great, except I don't live in those places.
       | 
       | Is there a similar product that works in the USA?
        
         | TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
         | There are an endless number of budget phones with essentially
         | identical specs to this, yes.
        
       | TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
       | Yet another phone with Android Go edition, four very slow
       | Cortex-A53 cores
       | (https://www.unisoc.com/en_us/home/TZNSJ-9832E-7), 2GB of RAM
       | (https://www.hmd.com/en_int/hmd-key/specs?sku=1GS009MPG3001), 2GB
       | of "virtual RAM" (swap space)...
       | 
       | Destined to become immediate e-waste like all the other phones in
       | its class. Wanna bet that it can only run 32-bit apps despite
       | having a 64-bit CPU, because it's so memory-starved? That's
       | extremely common in this segment.
       | 
       | The "Upgrade without overspending" pitch is rather bizarre
       | considering that the specs on low-end phones seemingly do not
       | change. Five years ago they were selling four very slow
       | Cortex-A53 cores with 2GB of RAM, today they are selling four
       | very slow Cortex-A53 cores with 2GB of RAM, in five years the
       | phone manufacturers will have somehow continued twisting Google's
       | hand to be able to continue selling four very slow Cortex-A53
       | cores with 2GB of RAM.
        
         | amarcheschi wrote:
         | I truly feel sorry for those that will use this phone for
         | anything that is not just calling and writing sms. I've had
         | relatives with slow phones, and especially if old and not tech
         | savvy, they click, wait, click again because nothing happened.
         | Then, the feedback of the first click arrives, but the 2nd
         | click will now click something different because what is being
         | displayed has now changed. So they go back, but it's so slow
         | they have to wait and press back again (...). And so, the
         | eternal cycle of slow mobile phones restarts
        
           | TeMPOraL wrote:
           | > _I truly feel sorry for those that will use this phone for
           | anything that is not just calling and writing sms._
           | 
           | Phones in this class will freeze every other time they're
           | receiving a call, so they're hardly suitable for even that.
           | 
           | In my eyes, these phones should be labeled as not suitable
           | for advertised use and shouldn't be allowed to be sold in
           | civilized world, as to protect the poorest from psychological
           | damage they can cause. I'm serious. My first Android phone
           | was like that, and it's depression through thousand
           | papercuts.
        
         | ZiiS wrote:
         | Four cores, each with more computing power then existed in the
         | known universe when I was born.
        
           | hooli_gan wrote:
           | Executing more bloat, than all of the code that existed when
           | you were born
        
             | jeroenhd wrote:
             | My experience with HMD ("Nokia") phones has been that
             | they've come quite bloat-free from the factory. There are
             | the Google apps (because no normal Android user outside of
             | maybe China would buy a phone without those) but other than
             | that the ROM has always been very clean.
             | 
             | If you load it up with Tiktok and Instagram and whatever
             | else likes to run in the background all the time, it'll
             | certainly be bogged down, but HMD phones themselves are
             | normally clean when you buy them*
             | 
             | *=unless you buy them through a carrier which customises
             | the OS, like people in the US often seem to choose for some
             | reason. But that's because the carrier loads those phones
             | with bloat, not because HMD does.
        
               | hooli_gan wrote:
               | Interesting, which HMD models have you used and have you
               | used Spotify or Youtube with bluetooth headphones on
               | them? I wonder how they perform.
        
           | TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
           | The Cortex-A53 is certainly a respectable processor within
           | its design constraints. It is from 2012, and I think it is
           | either the smallest or the second-smallest implementation of
           | AArch64 that Arm have designed. It is very power-efficient,
           | and that was the design goal. You definitely _can_ make an
           | SoC that _only_ has "efficiency" cores, and it can even run
           | Android, but putting it in a smartphone indicates that pure
           | manufacturing cost is your only design consideration.
        
         | mherkender wrote:
         | The cores aren't slow so much as software was designed for more
         | powerful devices. It's a shame, really.
        
         | bobmcnamara wrote:
         | Like a raspberry pi 3?
        
         | usrusr wrote:
         | What happened to RAM use? Ignoring gaming (which a large
         | sunbset of the market never ever does), phones these days are
         | doing exactly the same things they were doing back when 512MB
         | was considered a generous amount of RAM. It feels as if Google
         | deliberately ended all RAM frugality in platform updates to get
         | ever bigger ad delivery machines into pockets.
        
           | jeroenhd wrote:
           | Most of my phone's RAM is going towards Firefox and maybe a
           | few messengers that stay resident. The rest is all cache just
           | in case I want to switch back to an app I opened yesterday.
           | 
           | Running Android on 512MB is a thing of the past but if
           | websites could stop bloating themselves up with Javascript
           | modules and megabytes of images, this phone would probably be
           | fine as a daily driver for someone who doesn't use their
           | phone all that often.
        
       | pbhjpbhj wrote:
       | HMD is a mobile phone brand; "Key" is a line of phones.
       | 
       | I thought it was something like a YubiKey, but it appears instead
       | to be a really cheap phone running Android Go.
        
         | datenhorst wrote:
         | HMD is Nokia's successor-in-spirit
        
           | CalRobert wrote:
           | Seemed like a successor in all but spirit when I owned one of
           | their godawful pieces of crap. I weep for the old Nokia.
        
             | robocat wrote:
             | The HMD phones I bought before 2020 were really great (e.g.
             | 7+) - I kept needing to replace because got stolen or I
             | broke screen. After Covid I bought an underpowered HMD
             | which was really terrible - maybe they had trouble sourcing
             | good CPUs?
             | 
             | With Android I find my choices are either buy a cheap
             | shitty phone, or pay too much. It's hard to find a good
             | value Android. At least the battery can last 2 days on some
             | Androids (my favourite feature).
        
           | bossyTeacher wrote:
           | HMD is jut a random company that bought the Nokia brand. They
           | are entirely different companies AFAIK.
        
             | skrebbel wrote:
             | HMD was founded by a bunch of ex-Nokia people. They're
             | based in Finland, like Nokia. I _assume_ plenty ex-Nokia
             | people work there now, would love to know how true this is
             | if anyone knows.
        
               | hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
               | There's a smattering of old Nokia hands at HMD, but in my
               | experience you're likely to find at least a few ex-Nokia
               | people in almost any tech company of note out here. For
               | all its faults as a company it birthed a generation of
               | truly exceptional electrical and embedded engineers, and
               | they in turn have birthed a metric ton of startups in the
               | last decade all over the place.
               | 
               | It looks like HMD Global's headquarters are in Espoo,
               | which is kind of like the Long Island of Helsinki if that
               | makes sense. So they definitely have access to a lot of
               | that human capital if and when they need it.
        
         | Jarmsy wrote:
         | I was expecting a head mounted display that somehow unlocks
         | things
        
       | noncoml wrote:
       | Android? Meh...
        
         | zweifuss wrote:
         | Android Go, actually.
         | 
         | Teams, Slack, etc. won't work well (or at all). WhatsApp, Skype
         | only in a limited mode.
        
       | hddherman wrote:
       | > Another key area this device hasn't cut back on is its
       | security. Quarterly security updates for 2 years2 will help keep
       | everything safe and sound.
       | 
       | That's a criminally short support period, and a great way to
       | produce even more e-waste.
        
         | asadhaider wrote:
         | Agreed, this would be a hard no and makes me think if feature
         | updates will be on an even shorter lifecycle.
         | 
         | The about us page even states "We make phones that last for
         | years" as their company quest[0].
         | 
         | [0] https://www.hmd.com/en_int/about
        
           | TeMPOraL wrote:
           | Well, if they last exactly two years, they're not even lying.
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | > That's a criminally short support period,
         | 
         | No. Sincerely, GCHQ.
        
         | politelemon wrote:
         | Expensive devices turns to ewaste in shorter time frames for
         | reasons other than support. This is a poor metric to pick on.
        
           | TeMPOraL wrote:
           | Devices? Yes. Expensive? Only if you fail in picking them.
           | Buy an iPhone or something. I'm in Android camp, but I only
           | buy flagships (after some bad experiences with cheap end of
           | the phone spectrum) specifically _because_ I can rely on them
           | to work for 3+ years, getting updates over that period, and
           | importantly, still being performant enough relative to
           | contemporary software as to not be annoying to use.
           | 
           | I agree with GP here. In the current security-obsessed
           | zeitgeist, 2 years of security updates is criminally low,
           | pretty much designed to generate e-waste.
        
             | f1shy wrote:
             | In my experience, I had to give about 100/yr to havea
             | relatively good device foor my needs. I could choose to buy
             | a cheap thing every year, or 600 every 6; for similar
             | Performance. I prefer to change device no so often. 2 years
             | is just too short.
        
             | danieldk wrote:
             | Something like a Samsung A55 will also get 5 years of
             | security updates. This line usually converges to around 300
             | Euros halfway the yearly product release cycle. There are
             | cheaper Samsung models with long support periods, but last
             | time I looked, they would only get quarterly security
             | updates. The Pixel _a_ line usually also has pretty good
             | pricing, but they tend to have weird issues/bugs.
             | 
             | (I'm an iPhone user, but just to point out that there are
             | also more affordable options with longer support periods.)
        
             | szundi wrote:
             | iPhones have very good resale value even after 3 years,
             | financially not that expensive! Easily good for 5 years and
             | even then you can have decent money for it. Of course they
             | can become pretty expensive suddenly - just when you drop
             | them.
        
           | craftkiller wrote:
           | There is a middle ground. I spent $94 total after taxes/fees
           | getting a Pixel 6A in August 2023. Its security updates end-
           | of-life is July 2027. That's 4 years of security updates for
           | only $23 more (assuming the PS59 is taxes and fees included)
           | and my pixel 6a specs blow this thing out of the water.
        
           | nonplus wrote:
           | It seems like a valid metric to pick on. Premium devices are
           | refreshed early/short cycle their lifespans because they are
           | purchased by customers with disposable income. Budget devices
           | should be sold to last as that's what's important to the
           | customers buying them.
           | 
           | As a counter though, I would say with 2gb of ram this device
           | just won't be fast enough for most of its users in 3 years
           | anyway; so although I find this a valid argument to make, a
           | new issue pops up immediately (for me at least).
        
         | madeofpalk wrote:
         | And it's even worse
         | 
         | > 2From the global launch date of HMD Key.
         | 
         | So if you buy it in 12 months time it'll only recieve 1 year of
         | security updates.
         | 
         | How long do you reckon this will be on the market for?
        
         | exe34 wrote:
         | would be nice if the EU would mandate something like lineage os
         | being available from day 1 for a device. manufacturer would
         | have to provide resources to make sure it works before release.
        
           | pzo wrote:
           | I wish EU at least make mandate that from the moment someone
           | stop providing security updates they have to provide some key
           | to unlock bootloader etc and even for those iPhone that are
           | not supported anymore. Those devices like e.g. iPhone X are
           | still super powerful and they could be used for other
           | purposes if we could install linux on them. They could be a
           | much powerful version or raspberry pi with nicer form but
           | with touchscreen, gps, 4g, wifi, bluetooth, cameras,
           | microphones, imu, speakers, battery, audiojack/connector.
        
         | flas9sd wrote:
         | after june 2025 producers cannot sell a phone in the EU market
         | with such a short software support timespan
         | 
         | https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/...
         | 
         | > availability of operating system upgrades [..] at least 5
         | years from the date of the end of placement on the market of
         | the last unit of a product model
        
         | ptx wrote:
         | Maybe they expect the flash wear out after 2 years, since
         | they're using it for swap.
        
       | KeplerBoy wrote:
       | weird targeted regions. I thought those phones would be mostly
       | sold in the poorest of the poor regions, not the richest nations
       | of the Commonwealth.
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | > not the richest nations of the Commonwealth.
         | 
         | Aren't there any poor in Britain ?
        
           | KeplerBoy wrote:
           | Sure, but I'd guess even poor people allocate slightly more
           | money than that for smartphones.
        
         | fuzzfactor wrote:
         | >just PS59 from the 2nd of January in the UK, Australia, and
         | the New Zealand
         | 
         | That's a pretty low price but outside of UK and AU, only
         | available in the "newest" of Zealands ;)
        
       | manojlds wrote:
       | Maybe a first phone for kids?
        
         | CalRobert wrote:
         | A dumbphone might be a better choice if you don't want them to
         | turn in to screenkids.
        
           | whitehexagon wrote:
           | My recent hmd/nokia disappointment was a flip dumb-phone.
           | Annoyingly it has a facebook app that cant be deleted, and
           | some games that auto-charge your phone bill after a few
           | plays. If they really try to ban smart-phones for kids, then
           | we are going to need a better definition of a dumb-phone.
           | Bring back the old Nokia!
        
       | Retr0id wrote:
       | It's a shame we haven't figured out how to do "modular"
       | smartphones where the motherboard can be swapped out, like with
       | framework laptops. I'd be happy with a phone from 10 years ago on
       | all axes except CPU/GPU/RAM and corresponding security updates.
        
         | suprjami wrote:
         | Google's Project Ara was this. A modular smartphone where you
         | could swap any component out with plug-in modules.
         | 
         | I met a Google employee at a conference in 2016 and he let me
         | play with his Ara for a bit. It felt fantastic. I'd have bought
         | one in an instant.
         | 
         | Google cancelled the project.
         | 
         | I do wonder about the longevity of such a device. I still have
         | all my Android phones from the very first HTC G1 and anything
         | with a removable component feels pretty rattly now.
         | 
         | When Nokia 5110 were on the market and you'd owned one for a
         | while, you needed to pack the battery with double sided tape so
         | the contacts didn't disconnect, causing the phone to power off.
         | 
         | I guess that sort of thing is why Google binned the idea.
        
           | Retr0id wrote:
           | I'm envisaging something slightly less plug-and-play, more
           | like "take your phone into the shop to get it upgraded" -
           | which would allow for things like maintaining the waterproof
           | sealing we've come to expect from modern phones.
        
           | quitit wrote:
           | I recall Nokias which eventually let even a modest drop send
           | the battery off in one direction and the phone in another.
           | With the 7110-style nokias turn into e-sprinklers flinging
           | the sliding cover off too.
        
           | pzo wrote:
           | I liked the concept for also the reason that such 2nd hand
           | market for modules would be great for DIY and arduino and
           | raspberry pi like projects. Such phones could have a second
           | life for other purposes or at least some parts could have
           | second life.
           | 
           | They mentioned some difficulty and bulkiness but then I wish
           | such concept has been applied for tablets that we change less
           | often and have more space.
        
         | saidinesh5 wrote:
         | Let alone user swappable soc and ram.. we even lost the
         | modularity that came with micro sdcards and user replaceable
         | batteries in so most phones these days...
        
         | mjburgess wrote:
         | I think modularity made more sense in an area where significant
         | performance gains happened in hardware every 6 months. It makes
         | very little sense with a 6+ year horizon -- at that point
         | you're upgrading everything anyway.
         | 
         | Now, modularity is really a right-to-repair issue, not anything
         | that provides a meaningful benefit to upgrading. And for that
         | things just need to be "modular" enough to repair by a
         | specialist.
        
         | mtmail wrote:
         | https://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone-5 has 5 year warranty.
         | Parts are replaceable but there's no choice of parts, with a
         | bit more tools one would be able to do the same replacements on
         | an iphone. https://www.fairphone.com/en/2023/08/30/is-the-
         | fairphone-5-t...
        
           | danieldk wrote:
           | During my last Android excursion, I investigated Fairphone,
           | but people seem to have a lot of issues with them? Like
           | shutting frequently down during the summer due to heat, phone
           | calls often not coming through, etc.
        
       | commandersaki wrote:
       | Strange to see they're marketing virtual memory swap space like
       | it's a good thing.
        
         | unsupp0rted wrote:
         | Just press the "boost" button any time you want your phone to
         | not be terrible. I'm not kidding- that's on their landing page.
        
           | gdjskslsuhkso wrote:
           | I do miss having a turbo button on my computer.
           | 
           | I wonder if they plan to monetize the boost button.
        
         | mkl wrote:
         | And like it's an innovation.
         | 
         | They also have this footnote:
         | 
         | > Using memory extension (virtual RAM) requires enough storage
         | space. To protect the storage, memory extension is
         | automatically and permanently disabled once 90% of the usage
         | limit is reached.
         | 
         | So you get to 90% (of 32GB) one time, and swap no longer works
         | even if you clear space?
        
           | Tepix wrote:
           | It sounds like it. What a piece of shit.
        
           | x-yl wrote:
           | I imagine the usage limit is on flash write cycles to prevent
           | premature failure of the storage, not on how much storage
           | space is used
        
       | YoooThere wrote:
       | I wouldn't want to use this as my main device, but I might get
       | one just to use as the display for a DJI controller. At the
       | moment I'm using an old Samsung S8 with a burnt-in screen and no
       | updates.
        
       | seanalltogether wrote:
       | I tried a relatively cheap nokia android phone a couple years ago
       | and I'll never do it again. The camera would do this thing where
       | you would take a photo, the screen would show that the shutter
       | had snapped, but your actual photo would be whatever was
       | happening a second later. I ended up with 10% of my photos being
       | a blurry picture of the floor.
        
         | saidinesh5 wrote:
         | Yup.. and in some of the cheaper phones I have tried out, there
         | was a mismatch with camera flash timing and when the phone
         | actually captured the image.. it didn't happen in the main
         | camera app but happened in every other app.. so most of my
         | night pictures were just black... It would have been nicer if
         | there were fewer android phones around so the manufacturers
         | actually spend time testing them out..
        
         | brightball wrote:
         | I think they licensed the brand out to another manufacturer.
        
           | bean-weevil wrote:
           | Yes, they licensed it to HMD. Lol
        
       | jpc0 wrote:
       | I think the issue with these low end devices are that the duopoly
       | on operating systems makes it impossible to develop a competing
       | operating system that get's any traction.
       | 
       | I am 100% sure you, as a manufacturer, could develop a very
       | lightweight shim over a linux or BSD kernel that has
       | significantly better performance than Android does. It would
       | however be a universal flop regardless of how useable it is since
       | critical apps like WhatsApp/Telegram/banking would not get ported
       | to that platform ever.
       | 
       | That effectively leaves you with needing a capable web browser
       | and well... Even Firefox with every form of adblocker enable
       | regularly chews up 2-3 GB of ram for me, at least on desktop. And
       | building a competitive web browser to Chromium is an absurd
       | endeavour for a cheap cell manufacturer.
        
         | vhguru wrote:
         | They tried with Sailfish, which is the spiritual successor of
         | the excellent N95 OS, but alas not sufficient traction.
        
           | bsimpson wrote:
           | "They" is an interesting choice here. Two companies spun out
           | of the wreckage of Microsoft's Nokia takeover: HMD and Jolla.
           | HMD was Nokia's old hardware division, and they're making
           | this device. Jolla was the software division, and they're
           | making Sailfish.
        
         | BirAdam wrote:
         | I don't think this would actually be too hard. Ladybird browser
         | is making progress everyday. A browser is harder than an OS. As
         | for market adoption, it would take someone with a ton of money
         | to bribe device manufacturers and press the way that Microsoft
         | used to do. So, I wouldn't say it's hard. Getting the right
         | people involved would be the hard bit. How many S tier devs in
         | the browser space are ready to gamble their futures? How many S
         | tier OSdevs? How many completely batty billionaires are there?
        
         | 43920 wrote:
         | > I am 100% sure you, as a manufacturer, could develop a very
         | lightweight shim over a linux or BSD kernel that has
         | significantly better performance than Android does
         | 
         | I'm not sure why this would be true, unless you're willing to
         | cut back significantly on features. Google already spends quite
         | a bit of effort on performance improvements, and most
         | manufacturers aren't exactly known for being able to produce
         | high-quality software.
         | 
         | There have been a couple projects that have tried to make
         | phones based on pure Linux (Librem, Pinephone). Their
         | performance is limited a lot by not having good CPU options,
         | but it doesn't seem like they've been able to achieve much
         | performance improvement on the software side either.
        
           | jpc0 wrote:
           | > I'm not sure why this would be true, unless you're willing
           | to cut back significantly on features.
           | 
           | Sorry for not making it clear but I was implying exactly
           | that. There are a ton of features that are really nice but a
           | person spending that little on a phone probably doesn't need.
           | I would likely even put "big touchscreen" on that list...
           | Really a phone that:       - makes phonecalls       - has
           | support for WhatsApp/Telegram etc even without video calls
           | - has a real keyboard       - has my banking app       -
           | commits to long term support and repair(5+ years preferably
           | 10)
           | 
           | Would be number one on my list of things to buy because thats
           | exactly what I want. I would absolutely still own an iPhone
           | that I use day to day. But that cheap phone is exactly what I
           | want when the iPhone needs to sit in a drawer for two weeks
           | and I'm using a burner number out of town.
        
         | fractallyte wrote:
         | There's a simple solution for that: Jolla's AppSupport
         | (https://jolla.com/appsupport/). It enables a Linux device to
         | run Android apps, and it's part of Jolla's Sailfish package.
         | 
         | Someone else already pointed out
         | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42674279) that HMD and
         | Jolla are both spin-outs from Nokia, so it would seem to be a
         | natural fusion...
         | 
         | Also, it bears repeating: Sailfish is a _far_ better mobile OS
         | than either Android or iOS. It 's simple, consistent, and looks
         | great.
        
         | jbosh wrote:
         | Would a project similar to wine/proton help to cover that gap?
        
         | com2kid wrote:
         | > I think the issue with these low end devices are that the
         | duopoly on operating systems
         | 
         | Evidence going back over 30 years now points to the consumer
         | computing market as only being able to support 2 platforms.
         | 
         | The dev costs otherwise are just too high. Heck as it is cross
         | platform toolkits are a huge deal, because hiring 2 dev teams
         | for 2 very different platforms is too much of a cost for most
         | companies to bear.
        
       | scrlk wrote:
       | Probably better value to buy a used or refurbished phone, rather
       | than a new phone at the extreme end of the budget category.
        
         | quitit wrote:
         | At this level of saturation it's not unusual to receive a
         | pretty good one when a friend, family member or coworker
         | upgrades. Giving the device further life and keeping it out of
         | eWaste.
         | 
         | In my opinion these bottom-tier phones are just eWaste.
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Why is a budget android phone the #2 post on hn?
       | 
       | This doesn't feel organic at all.
        
       | voytec wrote:
       | Low-end phone with "AI Camera" on the cover? Yeah, no.
        
       | throwaway519 wrote:
       | A Redmi 13C with 6G RAM (+2G), Octacore 2.2 GHz, 5G, costs PS65
       | new. Charger included.
       | 
       | That's a budget phone. Seems a better bang all around for the
       | extra PS6.
        
         | danieldk wrote:
         | But probably even worse update-wise and most likely backdoored?
         | Security should not be exclusive to the rich.
        
       | ReptileMan wrote:
       | Is that a satire or parody site? Definitely feels like it.
        
       | Tepix wrote:
       | This is a phone with a limited version of Android (Android Go)
       | and only 2GB of RAM which isn't enough. It has a slow CPU, it
       | lacks 5G connectivity which is more and more important just to
       | have good reception. It comes with at most 2 years of security
       | updates. It has 32GB of storage which quickly fill up if you take
       | pictures every now and then.
       | 
       | If you can afford it, get something like the Samsung A52 5G with
       | 7 years of updates and 6GB or 8GB of RAM. If that's too
       | expensive, get one from the list when it's on sale:
       | https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=umtsover&v=e&hloc=uk&sort=p&bl1...
       | 
       | These are recently released phones with 6GB RAM or more and
       | Android 14+ starting at PS99. 6GB of RAM means you can use your
       | phone for a couple of years without it getting super slow.
        
         | saagarjha wrote:
         | 2 GB of swap. I don't think RAM was mentioned.
        
           | yoavm wrote:
           | The specs mention 2GB of RAM: https://www.hmd.com/en_int/hmd-
           | key/specs?sku=1GS009MPG3001
        
             | saagarjha wrote:
             | Ah, neat. Well not neat this sucks but thanks for sharing.
        
         | _heimdall wrote:
         | Its limited for sure, but that may not be a problem for
         | everyone. I've been using a Cat S22 flip phone without any real
         | issue. It has a Snapdragon 215 and 2GB of RAM.
         | 
         | Don't get me wrong, the S22 is limited for sure and that's part
         | of what I use it for (I need a rugged device to carry around
         | our land, I don't need a glass slab). Android is noticeably
         | slower than a more recent Pixel device but its totally usable.
        
         | thisislife2 wrote:
         | You are ofcourse right that there are better specced devices in
         | this price band. And HMD is one of the better respected mobile
         | brands. Two GB is also good enough for basic telephony (calls,
         | messaging, video chats etc.) and for various kinds of
         | "consumption" (music, youtube, browsing etc.). Many popular
         | older apps can run fine on it too. Honestly, when Android 5 - 8
         | could run on 1 GB or less, on single or dual core cpus, quite
         | well, I don't frankly understand how we've come to this point
         | that we now need a new OS (Android Go) to run on "limited
         | resources" devices that have _more_ ram and cpu (cores) ...
        
           | Kwpolska wrote:
           | > And HMD is one of the better respected mobile brands.
           | 
           | [citation needed]
        
             | FireInsight wrote:
             | All thanks to the Barbie phone.
             | 
             | https://www.hmd.com/en_int/hmd-barbie-phone
        
           | BirAdam wrote:
           | Probably because Google, Facebook, Insta, and TikTok need to
           | constantly observe where the phone is, what and who it's
           | near, what's being said, what's being done on device, and so
           | on. That's a lot sensor access, a lot of compute, and a lot
           | of bandwidth relatively speaking. The average phone with
           | Facebook and without has noticeable battery differences even
           | if both phones are left untouched (personal testing, I don't
           | have formal numbers for that last bit).
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Maybe it is perfect for people who want to limit their
         | smartphone use?
        
       | cyp0633 wrote:
       | A Redmi 14C offers 4GB RAM, MTK G81 SoC, for 499 CNY (about 66
       | EUR, slightly more expensive than the HMD one) in China. It would
       | be a strong competitor if it's that cheap in Europe as well, but
       | sadly no. The price is almost doubled. That said, it's still a
       | phone you shouldn't buy if you can afford a better one.
        
       | lifestyleguru wrote:
       | My current smartphone has "cloud camera". I'll wait for
       | smartphone with "blockchain camera", thanks.
        
       | throwaway55479 wrote:
       | Affordable yes, but not sustainable.
       | 
       | FYI, You can now have 6 years of major android upgrades for 200$
       | with the A16 [1]
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=13346&idPhone...
        
       | wormik wrote:
       | I don't understand why people who are clearly not the ICP have
       | the urge to comment. I think that market will prove whether it's
       | a good thing.
        
         | szundi wrote:
         | Actually this is a place that is open to anyone's opinion - and
         | that makes sense. People from border areas with the one of the
         | discussion can give alternative insights. Of course digging
         | relevant ones out of 1k comments are a challenge.
        
         | beefnugs wrote:
         | I don't often trust tech opinions, but when I do, it is those
         | from the insane clown posse
        
       | Retr0id wrote:
       | I suspect most people here aren't going to daily-drive one of
       | these, but there's another use - testing how your app runs on
       | low-end devices.
        
       | butz wrote:
       | Where did all small budget phones had gone? I don't need a tablet
       | that does not fit anywhere and has huge camera bump that does not
       | lie flat on the table.
        
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