HMD may not be a brand you’ve heard before, but you know the phones it made: yep, those Nokia smartphones and feature phones (or “dumb phones”, colloquially). Now, the Finnish company is officially entering Malaysia as itself, selling Android smartphones branded as “HMD”.
HMD Enters Malaysia With Two New Smartphones
All of the Nokia phones you’ve seen in recent years are made by them – since the company’s establishment in late 2016, HMD has acquired the licensing needed to produce phones on Nokia’s behalf. The former phone giant exited the business permanently to fully venture into advanced telecommunications technologies, but its phones lived on, some of which includes remakes of the greatest hits such as 3310, 8110 “banana phone”, and so on.
So what is HMD bringing into Malaysia, sans Nokia? You’re looking at the new HMD Skyline and Pulse series. For the Pulse lineup, the company puts such emphasis on repairability that it has given it a generational number, and the current lineup are designated as ‘Gen 1 repairability.’ Spare parts can be obtained via iFixit, which then can be replace broken parts at home – so your phone’s lifespan will less likely be at the mercy of planned obsolescence.
As for the HMD Skyline (available this September), the smartphone was advertised with things like “inspired by the ‘Brat Girl’ trend of this summer,” “cheeky, mischievous, and unafraid to break the rules.” Showers of adjectives aside, this mid-range smartphone packs a 50-megapixel front camera, plus a 108MP OIS main shooter paired with a telephoto and an ultrawide lens at the back. It also comes with something called “Detox Mode”, which is a digital detox feature that prevents you from doomscrolling your feeds.
Currently, only one model will be sold here, which is the HMD Pulse Pro (available August 30). It will be available in Black and Purple for the price of RM739, which includes 8+8GB RAM and a 256GB storage. Other HMD-branded phones will be introduced at a later date via its existing distributor for Nokia-branded devices, Zitron Fulfilment Sdn Bhd.
One more thing: HMD assures while it introduces its own brand to the smartphone market, it will “continue to sell” Nokia devices – so nothing is changed on this part. According to the company, this is “part of a multi-brand vision,” which likely mimics the business models of Chinese smartphone giants, including Xiaomi (with its Redmi and Poco sub-brand), Oppo (realme and OnePlus), and vivo (iQOO).
Pokdepinion: A huge win if we can get spare parts here as well. About time smartphones get user-repairable!
