HMD launches its first rugged smartphone, a rebranded Nokia XR21

Finnish company HMD, also known as makers of Nokia phones, has already released its first phones, the Pulse family, which have an interesting selling point besides their low price: repairability.

While HMD isn’t going to enter the flagship market for obvious reasons, we expected the handset manufacturer to come up with some unique models that would make its devices stand out.

Unfortunately, the latest HMD announcement proves the opposite. HMD has just introduced its first rugged 5G smartphone, the XR21 (image above). The issue is that this is not really a new phone, but a rebranded Nokia XR21 (image below).



Design and specifications are the same, which is rather disappointing considering the Nokia XR21 was launched one year ago. What’s even worse is that the newly announced HMD XR21 still comes with Android 13 out of the box instead of Android 14.

As far as price goes, customers can get the HMD XR21 for no less than €600 in Europe, which is rather strange considering that Nokia XR21 is €200 cheaper and has the same specs.

As a reminder, the HMD/Nokia XR21 is a 5G rugged phone that sports a 6.49-inch IPS FHD+ display with 120Hz refresh rate and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus coating.

On the inside, the phone features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G processor, 6GB RAM, and 128GB internal storage. The rugged handset packs a dual camera (64MP + 8MP), a 16-megapixel selfie snapper, as well as a 4800 mAh battery.