HMD's Nokia 300 Charge: A $38 Feature Phone That Doubles as a Power Bank

HMD announced the Nokia 300 Charge on August 24, 2026 — a feature phone built around a 3,700 mAh removable battery that can reverse-charge other devices at 10 watts via a dedicated hardware button on the side of the phone (GSMArena). The device is priced at $38 (NokiaMob).

HMD describes the battery as its most powerful phone battery to date (HMD). The cell is removable and supports 10W charging in both directions — the phone charges itself at 10W when plugged in, and can discharge at 10W to other devices (HMD). Nokia's marketing materials claim up to 40 days of standby time (NokiaMob).

The reverse-charging feature is wired, not wireless. Activating what Nokia calls "powerbank mode" requires the included 4-in-1 cable, which ships with adapters for Micro USB, USB-C, and USB-A (Engadget). A dedicated power-out button on the side of the phone turns on the 10W reverse charging (GSMArena). This wired approach avoids the efficiency losses that come with Qi-style wireless reverse charging, where some energy is lost as heat during transfer — though you do need to carry the cable.

The rest of the hardware is firmly in budget feature-phone territory. The Nokia 300 Charge runs on a Unisoc SC6531E — a low-cost processor common in entry-level feature phones — paired with 4 MB of internal storage and MicroSD expansion up to 32 GB (HMD). The display is a 2.4-inch panel with a QVGA camera. A 3.5mm headphone jack is present, and the phone includes a built-in LED flashlight rated as up to 4x brighter than the one in the Nokia 105 (Engadget).

There was no word on a US release at the time of the announcement. If the device does arrive stateside, the expected price is under $50 (Engadget).

The broader context here is worth pausing on. Feature phones have not disappeared from the market; they have persisted at the low end and in specific use cases — outdoor work, emergency backup, digital-detox contexts, and markets where smartphone adoption remains incomplete. What HMD has done with the Nokia 300 Charge is take that persistence and add a secondary utility: the device is not only a phone but a backup power source for whatever else you are carrying. At 3,700 mAh, the battery is comparable to a small standalone power bank, and the 10W output is enough to slow-charge a smartphone in an emergency, though it will not match the 20W-plus speeds most modern phones support for wired charging.

The $38 price point is the part that makes this more than a curiosity. A dedicated 10W power bank with a 3,700 mAh cell and a multi-connector cable retails in a similar range. The Nokia 300 Charge bundles that functionality with a working phone, a flashlight, an FM-capable form factor, and a battery you can swap. For a contractor who already carries a feature phone on site, or a traveler who wants a fallback device that also tops up their primary phone, the value proposition is straightforward.

In this author's view, the more interesting signal is what the design implies about HMD's read of the market. Reverse charging has been a flagship-smartphone feature for years — Samsung and others have offered it as a wireless convenience, typically at single-digit wattage, marketed as a way to charge earbuds or a friend's phone. Porting the concept to a $38 feature phone, doing it over a wired connection for efficiency, and dedicating a physical button to it suggests HMD sees a genuine audience for dual-purpose devices at the bottom of the price ladder rather than the top. Whether that audience materializes at scale is a separate question, and one the verified facts here cannot answer. But the logic is sound: if the phone is already carrying a large battery and a cable, the marginal cost of making it discharge to other devices is modest, and the utility for the target user is real.

The Nokia 300 Charge is a small device with a narrow remit, but it reframes the feature phone as something slightly more than a phone — and does so at a price that leaves little room for buyer's remorse.