This is as big a surprise for us as it must be for HMD – the company’s latest phone is now on sale by Australian retailer JB Hi-Fi. It’s called the HMD Aura and it is similar to the HMD Pulse, except that it is cheaper than it. There is no information about it on HMD.com, though, at least not yet.
The Aura has a 6.56” display and though it runs at only 60Hz, it has a higher resolution of 900 x 1,600px (vs. 720 x 1,612px on the Pulse). No fancy punch hole here, though, instead it uses a notch for the 5MP selfie camera.
The rear camera is pretty basic too with a 13MP main module and a depth sensor next to it. And this is a rare sight these days, but the phone has a rear-mounted fingerprint reader.
The HMD Aura is powered by the Unisoc SC9863A1, which features eight Cortex-A55 cores (four at 1.6GHz and four at 1.2GHz), plus a PowerVR GE8322 GPU. Unisoc advertises this as its first 4G chipset with AI acceleration, but the 28nm node doesn’t exactly promise high performance.
Anyway, the chipset is hooked up to 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage, which is expandable via the microSD slot by up to 256GB. And before you ask, yes, it does have a 3.5mm headphone jack.
HMD Aura
The phone comes with Android 13 and we don’t see any mention of OS updates, but it does come with the promise of 2 years of security patches. Note that this is a dual SIM phone, however, the hybrid tray makes you choose between a second phone line and extra storage. Additional connectivity includes Wi-Fi 4 (n), Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS.
The 5,000mAh battery has a fairly high capacity, but the USB-C port supports only 10W charging. Based on tests, the battery should retain 80% of its original capacity after 500 cycles.
HMD Aura colorways: Glacier Green • Indigo Black
The HMD Aura is priced AUD 180. For comparison, a Pulse with 4GB of RAM and 128GB storage is AUD 230 on JB Hi-Fi (note the extra storage). Converting to US dollars, the Aura is $120, though we don’t know if and when it will be available outside of Australia. Actually, HMD’s Australia site doesn’t show anything about this phone, so a proper announcement hasn’t occurred yet, but we’ll keep our ears to the ground.
