Your phone can do more than phone calls, and the latest mid-range HMD phone aims to show that using special accessories made to suit.
Everyone may well use their phone as a phone, but that doesn’t mean that’s all it’s used for.
Phones have lots of purposes these days. They work as media players, as digital wallets, as social media powerhouses and web surfers and email writers and book readers and gaming gadgets and more, and often our accessories protect these multi-faceted devices from falling to a broken glass-riddled death.
But they don’t have to just do that.
A line of accessories designed for a new phone by HMD aims to let you get a little more out of the phone, with a focus on expandability that goes together, all while keeping the price for the phone down.
Fresh from the work on its high-end mid-range phone, the Skyline, HMD’s Fusion takes a different tact, building a mid-range model for less with enough of the bits to make it formidable, and readying a way to expand the handsets using special accessories.
The phone itself is definitely mid-range, sporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 Gen 2, between 4 and 8 GB RAM depending on the model, and up to 256GB storage, with Android 14 and two years of operating system updates.
There’s a 6.56 inch HD screen, so it’s big but not necessarily high-res, while the phone sees support for 5G, WiFi 6, Bluetooth, GPS, and Near-Field Communication (NFC) for Google Pay.
At the back, there’s a surprisingly large 108 megapixel sensor, just like the camera found on its big brother in the Skyline, sitting alongside a 2 megapixel depth camera for portrait shots. The combination will essentially act like one camera, though, with the depth just for portraits, though there’s also a 50 megapixel camera for selfies.
Perhaps the most interesting feature is a new connection port on the back, a six-pin flat port called “Smart Pins” that allows the HMD Fusion to connect to accessories for extra functionality.
You’ll still get USB-C, but it can connect to a dedicated gaming controller accessory using those Smart Pins. Snap the phone in and it will work.
It’s a similar setup for a photo case, which will let you snap the phone into the “Flashy Outfit” case to trigger a ring light around the camera, or to fire an LED flash above the camera itself.
They’re effectively interchangeable outfits to make the HMD Fusion stand out, and there’s even one to bring wireless charging and another to boost the protection, bolstering it to IP68 resistance from nothing.
“By being able to mix and match outfits that suit your personality, all surrounding an incredible and affordable new smartphone, we are delivering absolute self-expression,” said Brendan Folitarik, General Manager of HMD across Australia and New Zealand.
“More broadly the HMD Fusion joins an exciting Australian range which is growing quickly and collectively offers incredible choice in features and pricing to Australian consumers,” he said.
The accessories are definitely an interesting play, though HMD hasn’t revealed pricing just yet. And the gaming accessory may come with the caveat that the HMD Fusion isn’t a high-end gaming device like some other phones.
However, it may win points with parents due to its $499 price, and its ability to be repaired, thanks to support for self-repairing with a kit from iFixit, much like the Skyline and previous HMD-made Nokia handsets.
You can expect to find the HMD Fusion in stores across Australia now, available at Amazon, Big W, Harvey Norman, JB HiFi, and Officeworks for $499.
