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EU Cellphones

HMD Global Starts Manufacturing In Europe With the 'Made In Hungary' Nokia Phone (techcrunch.com) 32

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: HMD Global, the phone maker and marketer behind the Nokia mobile phone brand, has launched its very first smartphone manufactured in Europe. The news comes some six months after the Finnish company first revealed it was transitioning some of its manufacturing to Europe to meet a growing demand from enterprises for locally produced hardware to address security and sustainability concerns. HMD Global hadn't revealed where, exactly, it was manufacturing in Europe, with the company telling TechCrunch in February that it was keeping the facility under wraps due to security concerns.

"Unfortunately, due to our customers being in various security-conscious industries, we're not allowed to tell anyone which countries we are producing these devices in, simply to keep it as secure as possible," HMD Global chief marketing officer Lars Silberbauer said at the time. However, the company has now seemingly had second thoughts on that, and it has confirmed at least one of its manufacturing locations is in Hungary. A spokesperson told TechCrunch that it still can't reveal where exactly in Hungary the manufacturing facility is, though they did note that they will be adding further manufacturing and assembly capacity to additional locales in Europe.

The first device off the line is the 5G Nokia XR21, which is available for enterprises to buy today. This is pretty much the same as the XR21 that launched earlier this year, except the new variant has been assembled in Europe and HMD Global can offer enterprise customers a "higher level of security assurance through customized software and security features," a spokesperson said, adding that they are working with a number of additional IT security partners. Additionally, the company is making 30 limited edition versions of these devices available to the general public through the online Nokia store for consumers in the U.K., France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Finland, with a sticker price of 699 euros. It also plans to launch a standard (i.e., non-limited edition) of the European XR21 smartphone for consumers, which will be available in black.

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HMD Global Starts Manufacturing In Europe With the 'Made In Hungary' Nokia Phone

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  • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @08:21PM (#63898345) Homepage

    ... of Viktor Orbán giving you a thumb's up

    • Orban is on the list of people that I think should get an ulcer.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Hungary is in that middle value manufacturing sweet spot in EU, where culture of excellence is sufficient to guarantee quality but salaries are low enough to make manufacturing possible without massive inflation. It also helps that their policies to stabilize birth rates and block most of the illegal immigration from entering and de facto encourage what little is forced on them by EU to just pass through to Austria. Which leads to more functional demographic structure that doesn't need as much policing, imp

    • ... of Viktor Orban giving you a thumb's up

      That's not a thumb.

  • *sigh* (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gTsiros ( 205624 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @12:41AM (#63898631)

    When all we had was CRT, we would try to adjust them so that all of the display was visible, because the corners had a radius.

    Then, came LCD/TFT and they had _perfect_ geometry. The entire rectangle area was _by design_ visible and not only visible, but had the exact same clarity.

    Now I see pointless cropping of content from curved corners. Also, there's a hole in the middle of the display. The fuck?

    If they _dedicated_ the top and bottom edges to be explicitly for soft-buttons and status information, that would be cool. But they're not. When in landscape, the softbuttons _do_ remain on the bottom of the phone, near the charger (that is, they do not change position) but the status bar moves to the long side of the display? And now, the right side (the one with the softbuttons, as you hold it in landscape), is nicely properly rectangular... but the _left_ side is cropped _and_ curved? So I lose both the screen estate from the status bar _and_ the screen estate from the black bar on the left

    I miss my Z ultra :(
    (coincidentally, sony is the only major manufacturer that still has a CORRECT screen. That is, no holes, no curves)

  • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @04:28AM (#63898865) Homepage

    I bought a Nokia Tough phone for a car spare. Absolute garbage both hardware - slow - and software: KaiOS, borderline unusable, full of bugs and the occasionally total lockup.

    The best bit was no physical reset button so when the phone did lock up I had to wait for the (non removable without a fight) battery to die in order to be able to use it again. After the 2nd time this happened it went into the cupboard never to be used again.

    Its a shame because old Nokia produced great dumb and feature phones but their current kit appears to be cut to the bone junk.

  • As soon as they will support flashing de-Googled versions of Android as LineageOS or /E/ I will promptily buy one!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke

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