Nokia G22: HMD bets on DIY repairs that won’t void warranty

The company’s latest smartphone offers a DIY repair kit, after Telstra revealed customers are holding onto their devices for longer.

Nokia's G22 is built to be repaired by its owner with screen, battery and charging port kits available for under $100.

HMD is running a major of trial of DIY repairs on its newest Nokia smartphone, and the company is so confident it’ll be successful that repairs completed by customers won’t void the brand’s three year warranty.

The company introduced three new Nokia handsets at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, with its star device arriving with a self-repair partnership with iFixit.

The G22 sports an impressive 50 megapixel camera, 4GB of ram and a 6.5-inch screen. It retails for $349, and appears to be one of the best cameras in a phone of that price.

All three of HMD’s new Nokia smartphones were in the sub $500 market, a space where Australia and New Zealand country manager Brenden Folitarik anticipates the most growth.

“Right now I think the purse strings have never been under tighter with inflationary pressures. By offering our customers more affordable options, we think that that’s a great market for us to be in to continue our growth,” he told The Australian by the Nokia stand at MWC.

On the repair front, the G22 offers low-cost repair kits in partnership with iFixit, with screen repair kits costing $89.99, battery kits at $49.99 and charging port for $42.99

Mr Folitarik said the company knew almost 40 per cent of Australians had their mobile phone repaired last year, and that the screen repairs were the number one issue. The second was poor functioning batteries.

“What Vicki Brady and Telstra said about consumers holding onto devices longer is absolutely true,” Mr Folitarik said, adding he believed that giving customers low-cost repair options would help win new customers.

“One in six consumers are actually having a crack at repairing their screens themselves, pardon the pun. We think having an affordable repairability option is another feather in our sustainability cap,” he said.

The self-repair push without voiding warranty is a far cry from the usual mobile phone warranties which often limit any repairs to a licensed agent.

HMD’s other two devices included two further additions to the Nokia C Series, including the C32, which sports the same 50 megapixel camera as the G22 but comes in slightly cheaper at $249, and the C22.

The C22, which appears to be the tougher but lower spec sibling in the C series, arrives with IP52 splash and dust protection, a toughened 2.5D display glass and rigid metal chassis and polycarbonate body.

Nokia C32.

Nokia C22.

The device sports a 13 megapixel dual camera, 2GB of RAM, a 64GB memory and 5000mAh battery.

There’s no price guide for the C22 or an update on its arrival other than it’ll arrive in the second half of the year and it’s coming in two colours; midnight black and sand. The G22 will open for pre-orders in late March and the C22 opens for pre-orders in May.

Finnish telco Nokia used MWC as a chance to distance itself from the mobile phone range it originally owned.

The company, which now operates in B2B market and provides network infrastructure, sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft in 2014 who later sold it to HMD in 2016.

Nokia changes its logo to signal it’s not the same brand behind mobile phones anymore. Picture: Josep LAGO / AFP

The company told attendees of MWC that the new logo, which consisted of shapes positioned to spell Nokia, reflected the B2B technology company it had become rather than the mobile phone brand.

“This is Nokia, but not as the world has seen us before,” Nokia chief executive Pekka Lundmark said.

Joseph Lam travelled to Barcelona as a guest of Verizon.