Meet HMD Fuse: The phone that grows with your child

Protect and guide your child’s journey through the digital world

So, you’ve began your journey into deciding whether your child needs a smartphone, whether you want to give them a smartphone or which smartphone is the best choice for them? Meet the HMD Fuse, a smartphone designed for your child and beyond. The HMD Fuse grows with your child’s smartphone journey, with levels of parental controls that can be added or removed – allowing you to be there with your child, even when you’re not. The HMD Fuse isn’t just a new smartphone for kids, it’s a child smartphone that is in its own, brand-new category. The HMD Fuse is the first phone of its kind that actively blocks nude content using AI.

Smartphone designed with children in mind: Why do they need it?

The online world remains unpredictable and complicated, especially for parents when deciding when or if to allow their child to navigate it. Recently, HMD released the HMD Fusion X1, a phone intended to be a steppingstone towards trying to solve the problem of being unsafe online. To further understand the issue at hand, we conducted The Better Phone Project, sessions where we heard from experts, teens and parents about the issue as well as how they would want to see a solution. Alongside this, we also conducted a global study that involved almost 25,000 parents and children worldwide. Participants from the UK, Germany, United States, Australia, India and the UAE answered questions and provided some shocking results¹:

• 51% of children have been contacted online by strangers.
• One in three has been encouraged to take conversations to private chat rooms or messaging apps.
• 56% of kids report being insulted or made to feel small online.
• 40% have been sent sexual or violent content.
• 52% of children feel addicted to their screens

Based on these findings, we’ve listened to parents and experts and created the HMD Fuse. The HMD Fuse is committed to being an extra step in the right direction of making smartphone introduction a safer environment.

The phone that grows with your child

At HMD we know that every single family is unique, and The Better Phone Project helped prove that. We know there is no one-size-fits all solution when it comes to keeping children safer online. The HMD Fuse allows parents and guardians to choose their own rules and change the boundaries over time. As your child grows, the same first-phone limits may be too restrictive or not suit the lifestyle they are currently living, that’s why it’s important to have a smartphone that grows with your child, like the HMD Fuse.

Prevent nudity from being shown, shot and stored

Keeping your children safer online is most likely one of your priorities when looking to introduce a smartphone to your child’s life. While your child navigates the unwritten rules of the internet and smartphones, they have a risk of seeing explicit content. The HMD Fuse has implemented the HarmBlock+ service to protect your child. HarmBlock+ consists of parental controls and pre-trained HarmBlock AI that is consistently scanning on-screen activity, ready to block out naked content from any app or website, including the camera. HarmBlock+ also scans files stored on the phone and deletes images and videos featuring nude content, this also means preventing nude photos and videos being taken through the phone’s camera by blocking it completely.

Apps only when you’re ready

With the HMD Fuse, protections are activated right out of the box. Once the device is turned on and linked to the parent smartphone during setup, all protections are on by default. Almost every feature is blocked until the parent device enables it, meaning no social media, no internet browser, not even a camera until the parent clicks ok. Everything is managed through the HarmBlock+ app, which gives parents and guardians full control over how and when access is granted.

As part of our anti-one-size-fits all mentality, HarmBlock+ also includes helpful tools like School Mode and Bedtime Mode, allowing parents to quickly limit access to just a few essential apps during certain times of day. When access to an app is restricted, it sampling disappears from view. But once permission is granted again, the app returns just as it was.

Data stays private

You and your child’s privacy matter to many as much as their protection. That’s why HarmBlock+ includes a fully self-contained, pretrained AI system, HarmBlock AI, that works entirely on the device only. It doesn’t collect user data. It doesn’t share user data. It doesn’t ingest user data. HarmBlock AI does what it’s supposed to do, locally on the device. HarmBlock AI is deigned to do one thing: prevent nude images and videos from appearing on screen or being captured by the camera.

Contact whitelisting: Know who your child is talking to

Teaching your child to communicate safely starts with guiding them to make safer communication choices. The HMD Fuse includes a great feature called secure message, allowing children to call and text only those contacts approve by the parent smartphone through a whitelist. Unknown numbers can’t get through, so parents stay in control while their child remains connected to those who matter. As children become more confident, parents can decide when to loosen restrictions by removing the whitelist and potentially allowing them to download external messaging apps.

Know where they are

As children start gaining independence, whether heading to school alone or connecting with friends, parents often look for ways to stay involved without being overbearing. The HMD Fuse offers peace of mind for parents with real-time location tracking, showing where your child is and where they’ve been previously. You can set Safety Zones for trust locations like home, school or a family member’s house, and get alerts if your child enters or leaves them. With updates every 24-seconds and three-day location history available, a world with constant calls and text messages becomes visible.

How good is the HMD Fuse?

The HMD Fuse is a great choice as your child’s first smartphone. With protections like the HarmBlock AI and other incredible features like location sharing, contact whitelisting, app permissions and screen time controls, it really is a phone that can grow with your child and still allow you some peace of mind. The HMD Fuse can be customised to be the perfect phone for your child with cases that act like an outfit for your phone.² Whether your child is into gaming or getting to take a fun selfie with friends, there is a phone outfit perfect for them.

If your child is prone to breaking things and cracking screens, the HMD Fuse has an affordable fix. The smartphone is self-repairable³, meaning that any cracked screen, worn-out battery or charging port can be fixed in the comfort of your own home with the approved repair kits. This helps extend the life of your child’s smartphone while also being an affordable option for any accidental mishaps.

The HMD Fuse also has so many other incredible features including:

• Android™ 15 with three years of quarterly security updates⁴ 6/126GB⁵ of storage
• Up to 56 hours of battery life⁶
• 108MP main camera and 50MP back camera

You can find out more about the HMD Fuse and our other phones in the HMD family range here: https://www.hmd.com/en_int/hmd-fuse