The HMD Aura is secretly going on sale in Australia as a cheaper alternative to the Pulse

This is as big a surprise for us as it must be for HMD: the company’s latest phone is now on sale at Australian retailer JB Hi-Fi. It’s called the HMD Aura and it’s similar to the HMD Pulse, except it’s cheaper. There’s no information about it on HMD.com, at least not yet.

The Aura has a 6.56-inch display, and while it runs at just 60Hz, it has a higher resolution of 900 x 1,600px (compared to the Pulse’s 720 x 1,612px). No fancy punch-holes here though, instead it uses a notch for the 5MP selfie camera.

The rear camera is also quite simple 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 Aura HMD is powered by the Unisoc SC9863A1, which features eight Cortex-A55 cores (four at 1.6 GHz and four at 1.2 GHz), as well as a PowerVR GE8322 GPU. Unisoc advertises it as its first AI-accelerated 4G chipset, but the 28nm node doesn’t exactly promise high performance.

Anyway, the chipset is connected with up to 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, expandable via the microSD slot up to 256GB. And before you ask, yes, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

HMD aura

The phone ships 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. Keep in mind that this is a dual SIM phone, however, the hybrid tray allows you to choose between a second phone line and additional storage. Additional connectivity includes Wi-Fi 4(n), Bluetooth 4.2, and GPS.

The 5,000 mAh battery has a fairly high capacity, but the USB-C port only supports 10W charging. According to tests, the battery should retain 80% of its original capacity after 500 cycles.

HMD Aura colors: Glacier Green • Indigo Black

The HMD Aura is priced at AUD 180. For comparison, a Pulse with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage costs AUD 230 on JB Hi-Fi (note the additional storage). Converting to US dollars, the Aura costs $120, although we don’t know if and when it will be available outside of Australia. In fact, HMD’s Australian site doesn’t show anything about this phone, so an actual announcement hasn’t happened yet, but we’ll keep our ears to the ground.