HMD Key – A lightweight, affordable smartphone
67 comments
·January 12, 2025Tepix
saagarjha
2 GB of swap. I don’t think RAM was mentioned.
yoavm
The specs mention 2GB of RAM: https://www.hmd.com/en_int/hmd-key/specs?sku=1GS009MPG3001
saagarjha
Ah, neat. Well not neat this sucks but thanks for sharing.
jpc0
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.
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pbhjpbhj
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.
Jarmsy
I was expecting a head mounted display that somehow unlocks things
datenhorst
HMD is Nokia's successor-in-spirit
CalRobert
Seemed like a successor in all but spirit when I owned one of their godawful pieces of crap. I weep for the old Nokia.
bossyTeacher
HMD is jut a random company that bought the Nokia brand. They are entirely different companies AFAIK.
seanalltogether
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
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
I think they licensed the brand out to another manufacturer.
cyp0633
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.
hddherman
> 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.
madeofpalk
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?
flas9sd
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
politelemon
Expensive devices turns to ewaste in shorter time frames for reasons other than support. This is a poor metric to pick on.
TeMPOraL
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
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.
craftkiller
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 £59 is taxes and fees included) and my pixel 6a specs blow this thing out of the water.
asadhaider
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].
TeMPOraL
Well, if they last exactly two years, they're not even lying.
hulitu
> That's a criminally short support period,
No. Sincerely, GCHQ.
exe34
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
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.
Retr0id
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
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.
pzo
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.
Retr0id
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
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.
mtmail
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...
mjburgess
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.
saidinesh5
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...
commandersaki
Strange to see they're marketing virtual memory swap space like it's a good thing.
mkl
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
It sounds like it. What a piece of shit.
unsupp0rted
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
I do miss having a turbo button on my computer.
I wonder if they plan to monetize the boost button.
scrlk
Probably better value to buy a used or refurbished phone, rather than a new phone at the extreme end of the budget category.
quitit
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.
YoooThere
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.
throwaway519
A Redmi 13C with 6G RAM (+2G), Octacore 2.2 GHz, 5G, costs £65 new. Charger included.
That's a budget phone. Seems a better bang all around for the extra £6.
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Havoc
Why is a budget android phone the #2 post on hn?
This doesn't feel organic at all.
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 £99. 6GB of RAM means you can use your phone for a couple of years without it getting super slow.