HMD Pulse Smartphone Review – HMD announced the HMD Pulse on April 2024 alongside HMD Pulse Plus and Pulse Pro. The HMD Pusle is available in some regions and will follow a gradual global rollout. It will expand to more countries in the coming weeks. The new HMD Pulse is a budget smartphone built for those who want a modern smartphone experience at an extremely low budget.
The new smartphone follows the design language of its bigger brothers and looks quite decent. However, the smartphone does not have 5G connectivity, which you cannot expect at this price bucket anyway. 5G hardware is expensive and including it would have increased the price tag significantly, but the company has other goodies in place to impress its users. So, let’s begin with a detailed review of the new HMD Pulse and see if this smartphone is worth purchasing.
Table of Contents
HMD Pulse Smartphone Review
Highlights
- The HMD Pulse has a 6.65-inch IPS display with 90Hz high refresh rate support.
- The SoC inside the smartphone is the Unisoc T606 4G chipset that can reach clock speeds of up to 2×1.6 GHz.
- The smartphone comes with the latest Android 14 for a decent user experience.
- The smartphone has a 13MP rear camera with an 8MP selfie camera.
- The smartphone has a 5000 mAh battery with 10W standard charging support.
Design and Display
The HMD Pulse has a flat design with a matte/frosted finish. The sides and the edges of phones are flat, which gives it a solid grip and the phone shouldn’t slip out of our easily. The overall construction of the phone looks solid and should easily survive most drops and falls. As for the looks, it looks quite elegant and people will probably have a hard time telling that it’s a budget phone.
The phone comes in three colors, Meteor Black, Dreamy Pink, and Atmos Blue. The company also specified that the phone is protected against dust and water splashes, but there’s no mention of a specific IP rating. Let’s take a look at the display, you get a 6.65-inch IPS display with 90Hz high refresh rate support.
Having a 90Hz refresh rate should make the interface smoother and provide a better user experience. The display comes with HD+ resolution, which is understandable at this price point. The display panel also gets adequately bright at 600 nits under direct sunlight, so you shouldn’t have any issues using the smartphone outdoors.
Memory and Internal
The HMD Pulse is equipped with the Unisoc T606 4G chipset. This chipset is capable of reaching clock speeds of 2×1.6 GHz, which is not much but it can probably run any apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and more at a decent performance. Not all apps may run smoothly but most should.
This level of performance is also seen in the gaming side of things. The chipset has Mali-G57 MP1 GPU, which is a low-end CPU, so don’t expect it to run graphically intensive games like CODm and PUBGm. It may run them but the performance may be very satisfactory. However, games like lighter fun games should run fine.
For OS, the smartphone comes with the latest Android 14 out of the box for a better experience. Also, there’s no support for 5G connectivity, which is a compromise HMD had to make this smartphone at this price bucket. For RAM and storage, the smartphone can be purchased with up to 4GB/6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. If you feel the storage is not enough, you can expand it later with a microSDXC Card. Also, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is getting quite rare these days.
Camera
The new HMD Pulse has a 13MP rear camera, which manages to capture some shots that look decent for the price. At this price point, you can’t expect really good cameras or night photography, but what this 13MP sensor has managed to achieve is acceptable. The rear camera also has an LED flash, which may help in extremely dark situations.
For the selfies, there’s an 8MP selfie camera that can take some selfies that can be called good enough for the price tag. It won’t win any selfie award but it’s not half-bad. It manages to capture a decent amount of details with a natural color tone when there’s enough light. An overcast weather will ruin the performance of the selfie camera.
But, at least, both camera supports autofocus, so there’s no need to manually focus every time you take a picture. As for video recording, the rear camera can shoot at a maximum resolution of 1080p@30FPS.
Battery and Others
The HMD Pulse has a 5000 mAh high-capacity battery, which can last 2 – 4 days, thanks to the use of a low-power chipset inside. The chipset consumes very little energy, so the smartphone manages to provide excellent battery life with light to medium usage. So, if your usage includes camera, texting, social media apps, watching movies, and so on, then getting 2 days of better life or even more is probably not that difficult.
But if you play a lot of games, the battery will drain a lot faster. As for charging, the smartphone doesn’t have any support for fast charging. So, you will have to manage with the standard 10W charger, which will take a long time to charge the smartphone fully. Apart from that, the smartphone also has Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, GPS, NFC, and a USB Type-C port. The HMD Pulse starts at $150 (Rs 12,490 in India) approx.
HMD Pulse Specifications Detail
Down below you can see the full specifications of the HMD Pulse smartphone.
| Specifications | HMD Pulse |
| Network | 2G, 3G, 4G |
| Announced | April 2024 |
| SIM | Nano-SIM |
| Dimensions | 6.43 x 2.95 x 0.33 inches |
| Weight | 187 g |
| Size | 6.65 inches |
| Display | IPS LCD 90Hz 480-600 nits brightness 20:9 ratio ~265 PPI density |
| Protection/Others | Dust and splash-resistant |
| Resolution | 720 x 1612 pixels |
| OS | Android 14 |
| Chipset | 12nm – Unisoc T606 |
| CPU | Octa-core 2×1.6 GHz Cortex-A75 6×1.6 GHz Cortex-A55 |
| GPU | Mali-G57 MP1 |
| Card slot | microSDXC |
| RAM | 4GB, 6GB |
| Internal | 64GB |
| Camera | 13 MP (wide), AF Auxiliary lens LED flash, HDR Max – 1080p@30fps |
| Selfie | 8 MP |
| Loudspeaker | Yes |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac |
| Bluetooth | 5.0, A2DP, LE |
| GPS | GPS, GALILEO |
| NFC | Yes |
| Infrared port | No |
| Radio | Unspecified |
| USB | USB Type-C 2.0, OTG |
| Sensors | Side-mounted fingerprint, accelerometer, proximity, compass |
| Battery | 5000 mAh 10W wired |
| Colors | Meteor Black, Dreamy Pink, Atmos Blue |
| Expected Price | $150 (Rs 12,490 in India) approx |
Conclusion
The HMD Pulse is a budget smartphone that is designed to be one of the cheapest smartphones possible. So, don’t expect great cameras or gaming performance. It can take pictures and play some games but that’s about it, and anything beyond that would be pushing the smartphone too far. However, HMD has managed to deliver a decently good display with a decent refresh rate, which certainly elevates the user experience on some levels.
Another thing that’s good on this smartphone is the battery life. This will last you for days on a single charge, which is impressive considering the price tag but there’s no fast charging support.
For example, take the Motorola Moto G34, which provides a better design, display, camera, and way faster chipset. On top of that, it also has fast charging support, and yet it costs less than the HMD Pulse, so the Moto G34 wins our recommendation at this price range. However, the final decision is up to you, so it is better to choose a smartphone based on your needs and requirements.
