Nokia on the back burner, as HMD debuts self-branded smartphones — meet the Pulse, Pulse Plus and Pulse Pro

HMD has previously confirmed that its self-branded “original” devices will come to India.

The brand licensee of Nokia mobile phones, HMD, which is short for Human Mobile Devices, just launched its first batch of “self branded” smartphones. The HMD Pulse, HMD Pulse Plus, and HMD Pulse Pro are officially making their global debut today, albeit with limited availability info, at least at the time of writing. HMD is kicking off its smartphone journey knocking on the entry-level price segment and the new phones echo that sentiment in hardware right from the get go which is to say, you’re advised to keep your expectations in check.

HMD Pulse series: Full details

All the three phones have the same 6.65-inch LCD display with a 720p resolution and 90Hz refresh rate. The panel tops out at 600 nits. Powering the phone is a Unisoc T606 processor which is paired with 4GB/6GB of RAM in the Pulse and 4GB/6GB/8GB of RAM in the Pulse Pro and Pulse Plus models. The pro and plus models also come with up to 128GB of storage while the regular Pulse gets 64GB. All the phones support expandable storage of up to 256GB via a micro-SD card slot.

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The Pulse, Pulse Plus and Pulse Pro all have 5,000mAh batteries with the plus model getting 20W fast charging support while the regular and plus models make do with 10W charging. Running the show is Android 14 software with HMD committing to up to two major OS updates and 3 years of security patches.

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The Pulse has a 13-megapixel main camera while the plus and pro models have a 50-megapixel primary camera. The secondary camera is a 2-megapixel depth sensor in all the three phones. The Pulse and Pulse Plus have an 8-megapixel front camera while the Pulse Pro has a 50-megapixel camera for selfies.

Connectivity options include — 3.5mm headphone jack, 4G, Wi-Fi 5 (ac), Bluetooth 5.0 and NFC.

HMD has been a strong proponent of smartphone repairability and so, all the three Pulse phones are built to “Gen 1 repairability” which means you can swap the battery and even the screen at home using self-repair kits from iFixit.

The Pulse starts at Euro 140, the Pulse Plus at Euro 160, and the Pulse Pro at Euro 180. HMD has previously confirmed that its self-branded “original” devices will come to India. So an India-related announcement could happen any moment. Watch this space for more updates.

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