It’s been a while since we’ve seen a truly compact smartphone from a mainstream brand. The demise of Apple’s iPhone SE series pretty much symbolized the end of an era, and aside from a few unknown niche brands on the market, people were certain that the age of small sub 4-inch smartphones is certainly over, or so we thought. Enter the HMD Touch 4G, a new compact touchscreen handset which gives echoes of Nokia’s older Asha line of phones.
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That in mind, the existence of the Touch 4G somewhat raises more questions than answers… why does it still use 4G? Who needs a small touchscreen device these days when cheap Android phones offer so much more? According to HMD, the Touch 4G was developed for Indian markets and is essentially a feature phone that provides smart features mainly through cloud-hosted browser apps, a unique approach that’s not usually heard of in a day and age where every new smartphone is equipped with modern AI features.
In terms of hardware, it’s a fairly basic device. The HMD Touch 4G comes with a small 3.2-inch LCD screen with a 320×240 pixel (QVGA) resolution, a definite throwback to the days of budget smartphones back in the early 2010s. Other features include a 3.5mm headphone jack, 0.3MP front camera and a 2MP rear camera with an LED flash, and powering the device is a modest Unisoc T127 chipset supported by 64MB of RAM, and 128MB of internal storage with support for up to 32GB microSD expansion. Finally, there’s a 1950 mAh battery that charges via USB-C.
Under the hood, HMD says that the phone runs on a custom lightweight operating system called RTOS Touch, which comes with a key feature dubbed as the “Cloud phone” service. This allows users to access the browser apps mentioned, while messaging is handled by a pre-installed Express Chat app with support for text, voice, and media uploads, allowing users to chat with friends on Android and iOS who also have the app.
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It’s also pretty cheap, priced at just around $45 when converted. Given its target market, we can’t imagine HMD releasing the Touch 4G in other markets where smartphone usage has become pretty much the norm. It’s available in two different shades of blue over on HMD’s Indian website.
