HMD Key – A lightweight, affordable smartphone

This is a phone with a limited version of Android (Android Go) and only 2GB of RAM which isn&#x27;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.<p>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&#x27;s too expensive, get one from the list when it&#x27;s on sale: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skinflint.co.uk&#x2F;?cat=umtsover&amp;v=e&amp;hloc=uk&amp;sort=p&amp;bl1_id=30&amp;xf=10063_14.0%7E2607_6144%7E3229_2024" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skinflint.co.uk&#x2F;?cat=umtsover&amp;v=e&amp;hloc=uk&amp;sort=p&amp;bl1...</a><p>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.

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&#x27;s any traction.<p>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&#x2F;Telegram&#x2F;banking would not get ported to that platform ever.<p>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.

HMD is a mobile phone brand; &quot;Key&quot; is a line of phones.<p>I thought it was something like a YubiKey, but it appears instead to be a really cheap phone running Android Go.

I tried a relatively cheap nokia android phone a couple years ago and I&#x27;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.

&gt; 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.<p>That&#x27;s a criminally short support period, and a great way to produce even more e-waste.

Strange to see they&#x27;re marketing virtual memory swap space like it&#x27;s a good thing.

A Redmi 13C with 6G RAM (+2G), Octacore 2.2 GHz, 5G, costs £65 new. Charger included.<p>That&#x27;s a budget phone. Seems a better bang all around for the extra £6.

Probably better value to buy a used or refurbished phone, rather than a new phone at the extreme end of the budget category.

It&#x27;s a shame we haven&#x27;t figured out how to do &quot;modular&quot; smartphones where the motherboard can be swapped out, like with framework laptops. I&#x27;d be happy with a phone from 10 years ago on all axes except CPU&#x2F;GPU&#x2F;RAM and corresponding security updates.

Yet another phone with Android Go edition, four very slow Cortex-A53 cores (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unisoc.com&#x2F;en_us&#x2F;home&#x2F;TZNSJ-9832E-7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unisoc.com&#x2F;en_us&#x2F;home&#x2F;TZNSJ-9832E-7</a>), 2GB of RAM (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hmd.com&#x2F;en_int&#x2F;hmd-key&#x2F;specs?sku=1GS009MPG3001" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hmd.com&#x2F;en_int&#x2F;hmd-key&#x2F;specs?sku=1GS009MPG3001</a>), 2GB of “virtual RAM” (swap space)…<p>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&#x27;s so memory-starved? That&#x27;s extremely common in this segment.<p>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&#x27;s hand to be able to continue selling four very slow Cortex-A53 cores with 2GB of RAM.

I don&#x27;t understand why people who are clearly not the ICP have the urge to comment. I think that market will prove whether it&#x27;s a good thing.

I wouldn&#x27;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&#x27;m using an old Samsung S8 with a burnt-in screen and no updates.

Affordable yes, but not sustainable.<p>FYI, You can now have 6 years of major android upgrades for 200$ with the A16 [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsmarena.com&#x2F;compare.php3?idPhone1=13346&amp;idPhone2=13605#diff-" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gsmarena.com&#x2F;compare.php3?idPhone1=13346&amp;idPhone...</a>

I suspect most people here aren&#x27;t going to daily-drive one of these, but there&#x27;s another use - testing how your app runs on low-end devices.

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.

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&#x27;s that cheap in Europe as well, but sadly no. The price is almost doubled. That said, it&#x27;s still a phone you shouldn&#x27;t buy if you can afford a better one.

Where did all small budget phones had gone? I don&#x27;t need a tablet that does not fit anywhere and has huge camera bump that does not lie flat on the table.

My current smartphone has &quot;cloud camera&quot;. I&#x27;ll wait for smartphone with &quot;blockchain camera&quot;, thanks.

This sounds great, except I don&#x27;t live in those places.<p>Is there a similar product that works in the USA?

Maybe a first phone for kids?

Low-end phone with &quot;AI Camera&quot; on the cover? Yeah, no.

Is that a satire or parody site? Definitely feels like it.

Android? Meh…

Why is a budget android phone the #2 post on hn?<p>This doesn&#x27;t feel organic at all.