HMD’s Touch 4G is a dumb-smart-phone

The Touch looks similar a squat, blocky smartphone from a decennary ago.

The caller HMD Touch 4G — only disposable successful India for now, and unlikely to ever travel to the US — splits the quality betwixt smartphones and diagnostic phones, offering a touchscreen and video calling, but with the tiny size (and price) of diagnostic phones.

Announced yesterday, the Touch costs conscionable ₹4,999 (about $55). It looks mostly similar a smartphone, but oddly smushed down: its surface is conscionable 3.2 inches, and the full happening lone weighs 100g. That mightiness marque it dependable similar the small telephone savior we’ve each been waiting for, but there’s an atrocious batch this telephone can’t do.

It doesn’t tally connected Android, alternatively utilizing a customized OS called RTOS Touch. That means nary Android apps — instead, you tin entree Cloud Phone Service, fundamentally a level for basal HMD browser apps. You bash get smartphone messaging options similar radical chats and video calls, but lone successful a circumstantial app called Express Chat — it’s disposable for Android and iOS too, but you’ll person to transportation smartphone-owning friends to download it.

A headphone jack helps, and astatine slightest it charges implicit USB-C. But you mightiness request to put successful a microSD card, due to the fact that the whopping 128MB of interior retention mightiness not past long.