HMD is on a roll. The last few weeks have seen a flurry of devices from its Nokia and HMD brands break cover.
The latest, HMD Aura, has quietly gone on sale at Australian retailer JB Hi-Fi for A$179.
The launch of this phone came as an absolute surprise since even the HMD website in Australia hasn’t yet been updated with this phone.
Aura is similar to the HMD Pulse, except that the Pulse is priced at A$229.
HMD Aura has a 6.56” display and runs at 60Hz, although it has a higher resolution of 900 x 1,600px (vs. 720 x 1,612px on the Pulse). There’s no punch hole here, though it still has a notch for its 5MP selfie camera.
The rear camera of the Aura has a 13MP main module and a depth sensor next to it. It also has a rear-mounted fingerprint reader.
Backed by the Unisoc SC9863A1, HMD Aura features eight Cortex-A55 cores (four at 1.6GHz and four at 1.2GHz), plus a PowerVR GE8322 GPU.
Unisoc has positioned this as its first 4G chipset with AI acceleration, but the don’t expect high performance from the 28nm node.
The phone has 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage, which is expandable via the microSD slot by up to 256GB. It also has a 3.5mm headphone jack. Other connectivity features include Wi-Fi 4 (n), Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS.
The dual SIM phone ships with Android 13 and comes with a guarantee of two years of security patches.
The hybrid tray that houses the sim card and memory card forces a user to choose between either inserting a second sim card or opting for extra storage instead.
The 5,000mAh battery will return decent battery life, though the USB-C port supports only 10W charging.
The battery should retain 80 per cent of its original capacity after 500 cycles.
The phone is available in Indigo Black and Glacier Green and which markets HMD will debut this phone in next isn’t yet certain.
