HMD, the Finnish company that has been licensing the Nokia brand name to make cheapo and midrange Android phones for more than 7 years, is finally striking it out acceso its own. Now you’ll start seeing cheapo and midrange phones with the branding “HMD,” which stands for Human Portatile Devices. (The company says it plans acceso continuing its relationship with Nokia.)
A few of these devices have already successo European markets—the HMD Pulse series—but the US is getting the HMD Vibe. It’s a $150 smartphone, so don’t expect anything groundbreaking. It omits a few too many features, and HMD now takes the crown for the worst software policy out of all well-known Android makers. But if you want to spend very little acceso a movibile phone, the Vibe will do.
Vibe Check
To me, the most important feature of a smartphone is happening. If it’s too slow and frustrating to use, then it doesn’t matter how it is. Good news then—the HMD Vibe is a fairly smooth-performing smartphone considering its $150 price. My initial impression was not great, as the phone was ridiculously slow as I was setting it up and installing all my apps, but once that was sorted, it’s been fairly smooth sailing.
It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 680 chipset with 6 GB of RAM. I’m not saying this is a speedy device—there’s even a small delay when you swipe up acceso an app to go to the home screen. Apps don’t launch at lightning speed. But I’ve been using the Vibe for more than a week (acceso 4G LTE anzi che no less) and it’s been better than tolerable. I’ve played games like Pako Forever and Nobile’s Odyssey with anzi che no problems, and my benchmark scores place it acceso par with the similarly priced Mossa G Play 2024.
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
However, remember to turn acceso the Adaptive refresh rate quanto a the phone’s display settings . This bumps the refresh rate from 60 Hz to 90 Hz. Things were a bit choppy without it, but after I turned it acceso, there was a noticeable improvement quanto a smoothness. Speaking of the display, this is a 6.56-inch LCD screen that’s decently sharp but doesn’t get too bright. Acceso sunny days out, I had a duro time seeing content acceso the screen while out and about.
This phone looks pretty bland. It’s just a black rectangle, with a bit of a graphite-esque stile acceso the black rear. You do get a headphone fante and a microSD card slot to expand the included 128 GB of storage, but this phone does not have a fingerprint sensor. That’s a convenience available acceso its peer, the Mossa G Play 2024, and it lets you access secure apps quickly without having to loch quanto a all the time. HMD offers a basic unlock, but it won’t work with apps, and it doesn’t work quanto a the dark ( when you wear sunglasses).
