HMD Pulse

The HMD Pulse has a standard candybar form factor — it neither folds nor carries a rugged build rating. It measures 163.2 mm tall, 75 mm wide, and 8.5 mm thick, with a total volume of 104.04 cm³. At 187 g, it sits in a fairly typical weight range for a phone of this size. Notably, it offers no water resistance of any kind, so exposure to moisture should be avoided.

The HMD Pulse uses an IPS LCD touchscreen measuring 6.65″ with a resolution of 720 x 1612 px, which works out to a pixel density of 265 ppi. The panel runs at a 90Hz refresh rate and reaches a typical brightness of 480 nits. It does not feature branded damage-resistant glass, an Always-On Display mode, or support for HDR10, HDR10+, or Dolby Vision, and there is no secondary screen present.

The HMD Pulse is driven by the Unisoc T606 system-on-chip, built on a 12nm process with an octa-core CPU running all eight threads at 1.6 GHz using big.LITTLE and HMP architecture, alongside integrated LTE and a TrustZone security environment. Graphics are handled by the Mali G57 MP1 GPU, which has one execution unit, 64 shading units, and a clock speed of 650 MHz with DirectX 12, OpenGL ES 3.2, and OpenCL 2 support. The chip is paired with 6GB of DDR4 RAM at 1600 MHz and a maximum memory bandwidth of 12.8 GB/s, with the platform supporting up to 14GB total. Storage sits at 64GB via eMMC 5.1, and the cache hierarchy includes 128 KB of L1, 2 MB of L2, and 1 MB of L3 cache. Benchmark results place the chip at 1391 multi-core and 371 single-core on Geekbench 6, 1175 and 313 respectively on Geekbench 5, and a PassMark score of 2663 with a single-core result of 988, while the SoC carries a thermal design power rating of 10W.

The HMD Pulse features a single-lens 13MP rear camera with a CMOS sensor, supported by phase-detection autofocus for stills and continuous autofocus during video recording, though optical image stabilization and laser autofocus are absent. Video capture tops out at 1080p at 30fps, with no slow-motion, HDR10, or Dolby Vision recording on offer. The rear flash draws on two LED units, though they are not dual-tone or RGB. Manual controls cover exposure, focus, and white balance, while burst mode, touch autofocus, HDR mode, and in-camera panoramas are all available; raw shooting, timelapse, manual shutter speed, and 360° panorama are not supported. On the front, there is an 8MP single-lens camera without a dedicated flash or an under-display placement, and it does not support 3D photo or video capture.

The HMD Pulse ships with Android 14, bringing a solid set of privacy controls that include clipboard warnings, location privacy options, camera and microphone access management, and the ability to block app tracking, though cross-site tracking blocking and Mail Privacy Protection are not present. On the personalization side, the OS supports dynamic theming, theme customization, dark mode, and an extra dim mode, while focus modes and app offloading are not available. Everyday usability is well covered through customizable notifications, a media picker, split-screen multitasking, Picture-in-Picture, full-page screenshots, sharing intents, home screen widgets, a child lock, and the ability to play games while they download. The system also includes on-device machine learning, offline voice recognition, voice commands, Live Text, multi-user support, device tracking, and a battery health check, and it is free and open source. Direct OS updates from the vendor are not supported, and Quick Start is absent.

The HMD Pulse is equipped with a 5000 mAh rechargeable battery that is non-removable. It supports fast charging at 10W, and a charger is included in the box. Wireless charging is not available. The device features a battery level indicator, making it straightforward to keep track of remaining charge.

The HMD Pulse includes a 3.5mm headphone jack, making it compatible with standard wired audio accessories without an adapter. The device has a single microphone and relies on a mono speaker setup, as stereo speakers are not present. There is no radio tuner built in, and Bluetooth audio codec support is limited — aptX, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless, and LDAC are all absent.

The HMD Pulse supports 4G LTE but not 5G, and connects wirelessly via Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) and Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) as well as Bluetooth 5.0. It accommodates a single SIM card and has a USB Type-C port running USB 2.0, with no HDMI output available. The phone includes NFC, a fingerprint scanner for biometric security, and an external memory slot for storage expansion. On the cellular side, download speeds reach up to 300 Mbit/s and upload up to 100 Mbit/s. Location is handled by GPS with Galileo support, complemented by a compass and accelerometer, though a gyroscope, barometer, infrared sensor, heart rate monitor, and motion or optical tracking are all absent. Security is limited to the fingerprint scanner, as 3D facial recognition and an iris scanner are not included, and there is no satellite SOS, crash detection, ANT+ support, DLNA certification, or built-in projector.

The HMD Pulse includes a video light, which can be used to illuminate scenes during video recording. The display is flat rather than curved and uses neither sapphire glass nor an e-paper panel.