The brand behind Nokia’s phone releases is ready with its first officially named phones, as HMD launches the Pulse range under $300.
More budget to mid-range offerings are on the way for phone buyers, as the brand behind Nokia’s phones today offers a few with its own name, and some decent prices and repairability.
The new phones are branded as “HMD” by Human Mobile Devices, the company behind Nokia’s phones released in the past few years, as it tries its own take on phones.
While HMD continues to release a few Nokia phones, such as the reinvented take on the classic 3210, HMD’s first officially-named phones continue some of what we’ve seen from its efforts with Nokia smartphones, keeping prices down and bringing the option to repair your own phone should you choose to.
Those first phones come in the “Pulse” range, a trio of mobiles that keep the prices under $300 (just barely), offering similar designs with changes in the camera options and specs, while keeping the looks colourful and friendly.
At the high end of the range, there’s the HMD Pulse Pro, a $299 phone sporting a 6.56 inch 90Hz HD+ screen, Unisoc’s T606 chip, 128GB storage, 6GB RAM, plus two 50 megapixel cameras, one on the front and one on the back, alongside Bluetooth, NFC for Google Pay, WiFi, and a 5000mAh battery.
Just below this, there’s the $259 Pulse Plus, a phone sporting the same 6.56 inch HD+ screen and 5000mAh battery, and even the same 50 megapixel camera on the back, but reducing the memory to 4GB RAM and cutting the 50 megapixel front camera to an 8 megapixel.
Finally, there’s the least expensive model in the range, the standard HMD Pulse, a $229 phone that will see that same screen and battery, but get 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, and reduce the cameras to a 13 megapixel back camera and an 8 megapixel front camera.
In short, the Pulse range will offer roughly the same template through the range, but with tweaks across the camera, storage, and memory as you go down the pricing.
Most interestingly, the phones will all get two Android upgrades from the global launch of the device, which given they launched with Android 14 only recently, suggests they’ll get updates to Android 16, which is a fair sight better than some of Motorola’s efforts to curb update amounts on budget phones recently.
They’ll all also be self-repairable, much like what we saw on the Nokia G42. Thanks to a partnership between HMD and iFixit, you’ll be able to buy a repair kit and fix things like a broken screen, depleted battery, and even a bent charging port.
“We are here to deliver something new, exciting and different to Australian consumers and to the industry as a whole,” said Brendan Folitarik, General Manager for HMD in Australia.
“Our inaugural Pulse range epitomises what HMD will stand for in the market, reinforcing that Australians no longer need to decide between design or value, features or fashion,” he said.
HMD’s Pulse phones are available now, priced from $229 and found across Big W, JB HiFi, Officeworks, with telcos Telstra and Vodafone set to offer the HMD Pulse+ later on, as well.
