Reminds me a bit of HMD's KaiOS feature phones but this is apparently Android?
I think that was made obvious by the big thing on the marketing website scroll about checking cricket scores.
They're not even the only country in Asia where cricket's big.
And it is indeed smaller than most smartphones. Apple never made a small smartphone, presumably because they need the big screen for their vending-machine-in-your-pocket to sell more content.
I couldn't find specs for this thing but from the picture it looks to be about the same size as the original iPhone.
I'm not counting people that did upgrade but are spiteful of the forced size increase.
I'd have got one myself but iOS doesn't work for me.. I have several things I need on a mobile phone that are not available on iOS.
For me a phone is really an outside the house thing only. I don't use it at home to poke around on the internet etc, like most people do these days. I still have a real computer with a massive screen and keyboard. So a mini size is great for me.
On Android there's the ones from Unihertz but they take the "small" factor a little bit too far, and also their software support is absolutely terrible. And people often mention the zenPhone, I'm not sure why because it was never smaller than the Samsung S-series. It wasn't really a small phone anyway.
I go to places where there is very little, to no, risk of being robbed. This is good.
Now, if they would only remove the gimmicky touch screen, and replace it with buttons, the phone would be a perfect for those who do not like to have a surveillance device in their pocket. Or at least a "lesser" surveillance device.
Also HMD already sells that other product you're describing. They're on the same website linked above; click "Feature Phones" to see them.
RAM: 64MB LP-DDR2
Flash: 128MB NAND
I think the OS is an update of the Mocor RTOS by the SoC vendor Unisoc.
I am curious if there are 3rd party apps on this device. If nothing else, it would be a fun challenge to write apps for something constrained like this.
On Amazon France, you can buy an "Energizer U506S" for €40.19 with free shipping. And that one has:
CPU: 1.5Ghz 4-core (MT6739 from 2017)
RAM: 2GB
Flash: 32GB
(and has card slot, dual sim)
And it runs Android 13 Go edition (probably not well, but enough to run Whatsapp and such).
So this device is facing some competition at that price point. Probably in India you can get an android device with higher spec at that €40 price point than you can in Europe.
In practice this phone's YouTube reviews show it's running dog slow while lacking basic features, just like pretty much any other recently released feature phones at its price point.
But I would love an android in small form factor like this. Can live without hi-res display and multiple cameras, if they can get the phone down to this size.
IMO, Xperia mini was the perfect phone.
Speaking of which, it is bizarre how the tables have turned. Whatsapp used to support everything under the sun... But now it is all Android and iPhone
If HMD came out with something that was optimized to the nth degree for whatsapp calls, that might be interesting, but even then I wonder how cheap it would need to be to compete with budget androids.