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HMD Global, the Finnish company that licenses the Nokia brand, has unveiled its latest smartphone, the Nokia G22, which is designed to be easily repaired by users in a matter of minutes. The company claims that replacing a broken screen or charging port, or swapping out a flat battery is a much simpler process on the G22, which is set to launch in the UK on March 8th for £149.99/€179 (around $180), and will be sold in select global markets like Europe but not in the US.
To ensure that users can carry out repairs themselves, HMD has partnered with repair specialists iFixit to provide customers with replacement parts, tools, and guides. This follows a trend among smartphone manufacturers to make spare parts more easily available to end customers, with Samsung and Google already partnering with iFixit to sell replacement parts, and Apple launching its own Self Service Repair program.
The Nokia G22’s battery and screen replacements can reportedly be completed in five and twenty minutes, respectively, making the device easier to repair than most competing handsets. However, the Fairphone 4 is currently leading the way in terms of sustainable, repairable phones. While the Nokia G22’s battery is easier to extract from the phone, it still requires tools, whereas the Fairphone 4’s battery can be removed entirely by hand.
HMD has explained that equipping the Nokia G22 with a removable battery at this price point would either limit the battery’s total capacity or its maximum charging speed or result in a thicker phone. The Nokia G22 has a 5,050mAh battery that can be fast-charged at up to 20W and is 8.48mm thick, while the Fairphone 4 is thicker at 10.5mm, has a smaller 3,905mAh removable battery, but can also be fast-charged at the same 20W.
Despite its focus on repairability, the Nokia G22’s specs are less impressive, with a 6.52-inch 90Hz 720p display, an eight-megapixel selfie camera, and a trio of rear cameras. It is powered by a Unisoc T606 processor, comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and has an IP52 rating for dust and water resistance.
In addition to the Nokia G22, HMD is launching two more affordable C-series phones, the Nokia C22 and Nokia C32, priced at €109 (around $115) and €129 (around $137), respectively. Both devices have 5,000mAh batteries and run on Android 13 or Android 13 Go edition. HMD has also announced that it is taking the “first steps” towards manufacturing select phones in Europe to improve the security and sustainability of its devices, although specific details of the initiative are yet to be revealed.
