HMD Is Bringing Back Nokia's Asha Phones — With a Cloud Twist

There was a time when “Asha” meant affordable, colorful phones that sold by the millions across India, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Nokia’s Asha line was everywhere — until smartphones ate the feature phone market. Now, more than a decade later, HMD Global is reviving the brand.

A certification filing for a device labeled “HMD Asha 305” (model TA-1779) appeared on HMD’s website, spotted by Nokiamob. The phone carries HMD’s own branding rather than a Nokia logo, but the name alone is a clear nod to the company’s pre-smartphone roots.

Details are sparse. The filing confirms LTE support, which puts it above basic feature phones. Given the Asha line’s original positioning and HMD’s recent experiments with hybrid phones like the HMD Touch and HMD Fame — devices that straddle the line between feature phone and smartphone — the Asha 305 likely runs RTOS Touch. That system lets users run “cloud phone” services, accessing browser-based web apps without a full smartphone OS.

For context, the HMD Touch offers a 3.2-inch 320×240 LCD, a 0.3MP front camera, a 2MP rear camera with LED flash, a Unisoc T127 processor, 64MB of RAM, 128MB of storage, and a 1,950mAh battery. The Asha 305 could land in similar territory — enough for calls, texts, basic web apps, and days of battery life.

HMD has leaned heavily into nostalgia over the past few years, re-releasing classic Nokia designs like the 3210 and 6310. But the Asha revival is different. It is not a heritage flip phone for people who miss texting on a T9 keyboard. The cloud phone concept is HMD’s bet on a middle ground: hardware cheap enough for emerging markets, paired with enough software to run modern messaging and lightweight apps through a browser.

Whether that bet pays off depends on execution. But the name alone will turn heads — and for millions of people who owned an Asha 300 or 311, that is already half the battle.