HMD Barbie Phone Hands-on

When I first saw the HMD Barbie Phone at the office, it felt like a blast from the past seeing the flip phone. Amidst the sea of smartphones with touch screens and huge camera islands, this one is a unique device to arrive this year.

So, if you clicked this article, chances are you’re curious about the HMD Barbie Phone and how it fares in this modern time and age. Well, we got you here at YugaTech as we talk about it in this hands-on article.

You get a small flip phone weighing at 123.5 grams when you open the box. Along with it, there are different rear shells for you to customize the back of the Barbie Phone. It also has some charms and a beaded lanyard for you to attach to the phone to ensure its safety (or to feel like you’re back in the 2000s). You also get a microfiber cloth, stickers, and a USB-C cord to charge the device.

The box is pretty cute along with the accessories it comes with. I felt like a kid again seeing their first flip phone and all that it comes with.

The front of the Barbie Phone acts as a mirror for you to not only see yourself, but also help you when you try to take your selfies with the phone. We will talk about that in a moment. Meanwhile, you have the 3.5mm audio port and USB-C port on the left side, the volume buttons and a button to toggle the external screen on the right side, and the mono loudspeaker at the back.

With the HMD Barbie Phone, you get a 2.8-inch internal display when you flip the phone open. It has a 240 x 320 resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio. There’s also a 1.77-inch external display that tells you the time and date when the phone is closed. Pretty neat to have when you just need to know what time it is in the day.

It was able to show its content when you use the phone while it’s bright outside. Just make sure to increase its brightness as it does come out a bit dim when you first turn on the flip phone. Still, it was fun to go out and show the device to my friends who were equally as amused with it.

What surprised me is how loud the HMD Barbie Phone is. Its little speakers will surely let you know if you have a notification or if you want to listen to some tunes on the device. Kudos to HMD for that one. It does come with a 3.5mm audio jack for you to use your wired earbuds when you want to listen to your music.

At the back, we have a 0.3MP camera on the Barbie Phone. I hope you weren’t expecting any great quality photos with this gal because it really felt like they came out back in the 2000s.

Photos come out very pixelated especially when you aren’t in a bright environment. You aren’t getting that much out of it, but I can see the appeal to those who want their pictures taken more than a decade ago.

You can check out our sample photos and video below!

For OS, the HMD Barbie Phone comes with a Series 30+ OS. It doesn’t come with your usual bloatware and has the basic essentials you need in a phone: contacts and the call history, gallery, alarm clock, music, calendar, calculator, and other stuff like a stopwatch, converter, and countdown timer.

For you to add music, I had to connect the device to my laptop and add a handful of them. Computers would recognize the HMD Barbie Phone as if it were a USB flash drive, letting you ‘eject’ the phone safely when disconnecting it. With most smartphones nowadays, it would know that you connected a smartphone or tablet to your computer.

Some unique apps are Digital Balance Tips that gives you advice on staying online and offline, and Barbie Meditation that lets you decide on a time to meditate. There are also mental health notes that the phone provides every now and then.

The flip phone uses predictive text at first which caught me off guard with how it acts like auto-correct. I was able to figure out that you can change this typing style back to the old T9 keyboard where you have to tap on a button to reach the letter you need. This can be changed by pressing the lower right button that has the # on it.

For storage, you get 64MB of RAM and 128MB of internal storage with microSD card support of up to 32GB. It is powered by a UNISOC T107 chipset and the only game you have in the Barbie Phone is Malibu Snake. Imagine the old Nokia 18 3310’s classic Snake game but with a Barbie touch. There are different game types it provides to spice up your Snake gaming experience. They add different kinds of barriers that will immediately trigger a Game Over screen when they are touched.

If you thought you could play modern mobile games like Genshin Impact or Mobile Legends on an old phone like this, I am here to break your dreams and inform you that it is not possible at all. My apologies to my Barbie girls and Dream Kens out there.

Let’s talk about connectivity. It comes with an unspecified Bluetooth version and allows you to connect up to two nano-SIM cards. In our review device, I could not find a way to connect to WiFi other than having a SIM card where you connect to your data. This made me not try to connect to the internet because of that, but with how it loads, it does take a bit of time to show what you are looking for.

What’s keeping the HMD Barbie Phone alive is a 1,450mAh battery with an unspecified charging speed support. Sure, it took around 2 hours to charge the phone all the way up to full, but the flip phone was able to survive around a week. This may be because I did not get to use it as much compared to a smartphone, but it still lasted for a longer time than I expected it to.

So, to conclude, the HMD Barbie Phone is a novelty phone especially for those who are fans of the Barbie franchise and want a trip down memory lane. If you want to reduce your time online and need a phone just for the basic necessities like calls, the Barbie Phone isn’t a bad choice for that.

The HMD Barbie Phone is available here in the Philippines for PHP 7,290USD 124INR 10,531EUR 118CNY 905 in HMD’s official Shopee and Lazada store.

What do you think of the HMD Barbie Phone? Would you grab it? Let us know in the comments!

HMD Barbie Phone specs:
2.8-inch internal display (~143 ppi)
240 x 320 resolution, 4:3 aspect ratio
1.77-inch external display
UNISOC T107
64MB RAM
128MB internal storage
microSD card support (Up to 32GB)
0.3MP camera
LED flash
Mono loudspeaker
Microphone
3.5mm audio port
Dual nano-SIM
4G LTE
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth 5
GPS
FM Radio
MP3 Player
USB Type-C
Series 30+ (S30+ OS)
1,450mAh battery
108.4 x 55.1 x 18.9mm (folded dimensions)
201 x 55.1 x 10.9mm (unfolded dimensions)
123.5 grams (weight)
Power Pink