“In our seven-year journey, collaboration and support have allowed us to achieve so much. And we plan to do much more as we introduce the new HMD to the world. We want to be a catalyst for positive and profitable change by embracing a multi-brand strategy: creating new original HMD devices, creating Nokia phones, and collaborating with well-known global partners,” said Jean-Francois Baril, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of HMD. “
HMD, as already announced last September, will also start making smartphones under its own brand. At the moment, however, no further details have been revealed yet. According to rumors, there would be at least two devices in development, codenamed Legend and Legend Pro, of which some information on hardware characteristics has also been leaked. Both are expected to use a Unisoc T606 processor supported by 4 GB of RAM in the “basic” version and 8 GB of RAM in the Pro version.
HMD, it should be noted, has absolutely no idea of abandoning the Nokia brand. In fact, the company intends to “bring an iconic phone back to life this summer”, as it has done in the past with the new versions of the Nokia 3310 and Nokia 8110. HMD also reiterated that it is continuing the repairability initiative launched with the Nokia G22 at last year’s MWC and that this initiative will also apply to its HMD-branded devices. The company’s goal is for half of the phones sold this year to be easily repairable.
As for the “Barbie Flip Phone” (the name has not yet been confirmed) made for Mattel, HMD has not given any information on pricing, specifications or features. It’s likely that they could still be feature phones with a clamshell design rather than a smartphone.
“The Barbie Flip Phone is coming this summer 2024. Promising style, nostalgia and much-needed digital detox, this retro feature phone will flip the script of smartphone culture and be the hottest accessory this summer.”
Finally, HMD also announced HMD Fusion, the first version of a Development Toolkit for developers and companies, a device that can be customized according to your needs thanks to pogo pins that will allow the connection of hardware accessories. As for the software, there will be Android with unlocked bootloader.
For now, HMD has only announced the Fusion platform and is releasing initial designs and specs for the device to allow aspiring “geeks” to start thinking about how they might use it. The specifications, however, may change as users begin to provide feedback.
