HMD Barbie Phone review: Why?

As a bearded, 47-year-old, fat bloke who dresses like a 90s grunge troll and likes geeky technology, hockey, beer and rock, I don’t think HMD’s new phone is really meant for me. It’s called Barbie Phone and it’s been released in partnership with the Barbie brand owner Mattel.

It looks like a mobile Barbie had in the film that came out last year, or that came as an accessory if you bought a Barbie doll around the turn of the millennium. It’s bright pink, of course, with Barbie-themed embellishments on the details and a charming flip design that you can open or close with a wrist snap.

The £100 basic phone comes with a plethora of accessories, from Barbie stickers and glittery, self-adhesive ‘crystals’, two extra Barbie-designed shells, and a wristlet-style carrying strap, on which you can hang more of the included Barbie-themed knick-knacks. So you can take your Barbie mobile and easily double the Barbie factor.

Not much under the pink surface

As a mobile phone, it is highly uninteresting, really. It’s one of HMD’s so-called feature phones, unsmart mobile phones with classic keypads instead of touch, a proprietary system without access to extra apps, minimal memory, and not very many functions or connectivity options.

In fact, it looks to be the HMD Nokia 2660 flip phone from 2022, but with a new shell and a couple of extra Barbie-angled features in the system.

By Barbie-angled, I mean a pastel-coloured lock screen with a Barbie-B in the background, custom-designed pink icons in the function menu, a fake “missed call from Ken” message at startup, beach-themed “Malibu Snake” instead of the usual Snake as the only game, and a comically mistranslated “Barbie mediation” that’s supposed to be a mediation tool. It’s a timer, you get a gong sound when it counts to zero. That’s about it.

The range of functions in the phone is otherwise the same as in most of HMD’s simpler feature phones. Calls, contact book, SMS, calendar you can’t sync with anything, clock with alarm, calculator, converter for units of measurement and currencies, voice memo app, FM radio, picture gallery for actual photos and video player for actual films.

Simple and substandard camera

The problem with the photo features is that the camera is downright lousy. at 0.3 megapixels, it produces 640 x 480 pixels at best. And even those pixels are distressingly blurry, smeared in detail and both pale and mottled in colour. Filming becomes even more depressing.

You only get one camera, on the back. So taking a selfie means turning on a ten-second timer, folding your phone, turning it over and hoping for the best. There’s a glossy mirror on the outside to help you aim, but it’s probably most useful for checking that your lipstick and eyeliner are in the right place. The mirror is actually semi-transparent and has a small screen built in that shows the time and date. It’s kind of cool, anyway.

You can actually access the web via a 4G connection (wifi not available) with an Opera Mini browser. Some sites actually load in them. I can Google, read some news sites and check the weather. But trying to access my email through it, for example, is nigh on impossible. It’s for advanced and active types of sites.

What is the point?

How Barbie does this feel? In everything but the surface, not very Barbie at all. Mattel’s own dolls are, nowadays at least, supposed to give girl power vibes with Barbies in successful professional roles, but this is a mobile that wasn’t even good enough to be used for that at the beginning of the millennium.

Last year’s film was an unexpectedly enjoyable satirical comedy about gender roles and consumerism, but it seems HMD didn’t see it, or misunderstood it completely. Even Barbie deserves to be taken seriously, but this one feels made by a misogynistic Ken. Surely it should at least be possible to take a decent selfie and post it on social media, in 2024. And read a bloody email.

Is this just me hating on feature phones? Most of us abandoned dumbphones when the iPhone came along and paved the way for today’s era of smartphones, with real screens, qwerty keyboards, connectivity and apps. But some have found their way back to these more feature-poor phones, for nostalgia or to escape the stress of being constantly online.

HMD also sells them as a ‘relaxation’ option. “A phone without distractions”. But there goes the nostalgia factor of the Nokia classics, and I’m more distracted by the fact that I can’t even comfortably type a short text message without wanting to throw the phone at the wall, glitter and all. Is there anything else that can make a simpler mobile a winner? Maybe battery life, but it’s only long because there’s not much to do actively that can drain the battery. Call time on most smartphones is actually clearly better.

The price tag also takes its toll

For example, I’m frantically looking in settings menus, in the accompanying manual and online (on another mobile) for some way to set the text input from a frustratingly misinterpreting auto-corrector to multi-press mode, without success.

The tediously spongy buttons don’t make me happy either. There is actually a better HMD Barbie, with a faster processor, more memory, Wi-Fi, 5Mp camera and a smart system of apps. But only in the US which is a shame.

HMD wants £100 for this mobile, a price you can get a proper budget smartphone for instead. HMD’s Nokia 2660 which is basically the same mobile but not Barbie-branded, costs just £64.99.

Is a pink shell and some bling worth almost double that? Hardly. Even many slightly cheaper smartwatches today can handle text input, messaging and communication in a significantly better way than HMD Barbie. And they don’t cost any more.

And I doubt any kid will be happy about this mobile that can’t do what a mobile should be able to unless they are a Barbie superfan. You can’t take decent pictures, listen to music without file transfer via USB, or send a message to the family WhatsApp group.

If you’re thinking about a feature phone to keep your daughter safe from online threats, there are great parental control tools for real smartphones instead. For example, HMD’s excellent Skyline, which is also available in cheery pink.

If I feel like I want to affirm my or someone else’s inner Barbie, I’d rather get one, go to the nearest store and get a bunch of my own Barbie stickers to print there, and download an Android launcher with a pink princess theme. Is it available? I’m sure there is.

Specs

• Manufacturer: HMD
• System circuit: Unisoc T107, Cortex-A7 1 GHz
• Memory: 64 MB
• Storage: 128 MB, microSD slot
• Display: 2.8-inch LCD, 240 x 320 pixels
• Camera: 0.3Mp with rear LED
• Connections: USB-C 2.0, 3.5 mm headset
• Communication: 4G, Bluetooth 5.0, FM radio
• Operating system: S30 with Barbie UI
• Other: Dual sim, shell and carrying strap
• Battery: 1 450 mAh, about 10 hours of talk time
• Size: 10.84 x 5.51 x 1.89cm
• Weight: 124g