The new HMD Crest and Crest Max are affordable 5G phones with 50MP selfie cameras

HMD has been launching Android phones under its own brand recently – the HMD Pulse trio, the HMD Aura and more recently the HMD Skyline, but none of those are available in India.

The HMD Crest the first HMD smartphone available in India. Even better, it’s the first HMD smartphone that is made in India too. The phone is joined by the slightly more capable HMD Crest Max, which has more memory and an upgraded camera.

HMD Crest • HMD Crest Max

In short, the HMD Crest is an entry-level 5G phone based on the Unisoc T760 chipset. It’s a 6nm chip with four Cortex-A76 and four A55 cores (2.2GHz), plus a Mali-G57 GPU and, of course, a 5G modem.

Unisoc T760 chipset with 6/8GB of RAM

On the Crest, the T760 is paired with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is expandable via microSD.

The HMD Crest Max has more memory – 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage – along with one more improvement.

The phones are equipped with the same 6.67” FHD+ OLED displays. The display is protected by strengthened glass, the back is also made out of glass. The phones are rated IP52 for basic splash resistance.

The HMD Crest and Crest Max have 6.67” FHD+ 90Hz OLED displays

The Crest has a 50MP camera on the back and a depth sensor. It looks like half of the camera budget went to the selfie module, which also has a 50MP sensor. The hands-free selfie feature is a focus in the marketing materials, you can trigger it with one of several gestures (peace sign, thumbs up or heart sign, for example).

50MP selfie camera with hands-free mode

The HMD Crest Max upgrades to a 64MP main camera, adds a 5MP ultra wide and switches the helper module for a 2MP macro. The front-facing camera is still at 50MP.

Both models use the same 5,000mAh battery, which is rated for 800 charge cycles. It's charged using the 33W adapter that is included in the package.

Besides the USB-C port, there is also a 3.5mm headphone jack. Wireless connectivity includes 5G (dual-SIM), Wi-Fi 5 (ac) and Bluetooth 5.0.

The HMD Crest phones have 5,000mAh batteries and are repairable

The duo is coming out with Android 14 out of the box (and it is free of bloatware, promises HMD). The company is only committing to 2 years of security patches, which isn’t much and doesn’t say anything about OS updates.

The Crest models are built with what HMD calls “Gen 1 repairability” in mind. This means that several components are easy to self-replace at home: screen, battery, charging port and the back panel – all you need is a toolkit and a quick tutorial.

The HMD Crest and Crest Max will go on sale on Amazon India during the retailer’s Great Freedom Sale in August. The Crest (6/128GB) costs ₹14,500 ($175/€160), while the Crest Max (8/256GB) is ₹16,500 ($195/€180). That’s their MSRP, anyway, Amazon’s sale will see their prices drop to ₹13,000 and ₹15,000, respectively.

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