The HMD Aura 2 is the most repairable budget phone you can buy by a wide margin, but it lacks any other factor to make it a phone that you should buy, even at its low price.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Inexpensive | Very slow performance across the board |
| Repairable | Ordinary cameras |
| 256GB of onboard storage | Only two years of security updates |
Score: 3/5
In this review
HMD Aura 2 Specifications
HMD Aura 2 Design
HMD Aura 2 Camera
HMD Aura 2 Performance
HMD Aura 2 Battery
HMD Aura 2 Conclusion
Ethical disclaimer: The HMD Aura 2 used in this review was loaned to me by HMD Australia for the purposes of this review. HMD has had no editorial oversight or input into this review beyond loaning me the phone to test out. Ethical disclosure should matter to you if you care about getting quality journalism and not paid-for-hackery… or at least, that’s my position, which is why I put my disclosures upfront straight away. If other sites aren’t doing similar… why? For more on ART’s ethical position, see here.
Design
The HMD Aura 2 retails in Australia for just $169, which means it very much sits in the true budget category – and if you’re spending less than $200, you have to accept that you’re getting a smartphone with a few compromises on board to meet a low price point.
In design terms for the HMD Aura 2, that’s most obvious with the display, which is just a simple 6.52 inch 1280×576, which in 2025 is definitely well below the pace. At just 460 nits of peak brightness, it’s also not particularly bright, which can make it challenging in direct sunlight pretty much all of the time. It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve tested out a phone with a “teardrop” style notch at the top to house the front-facing camera too, though that’s totally a matter of taste around your own preferences.
This is not a phone that presents well in direct sunlight.
For $169 you do at least get colour choices, with the HMD Aura 2 selling in Australia in either Midnight Black or Icy Blue finishes. HMD sent me the Icy Blue variant. It’s not a stunning looking colour, but at least it’s better than just a single choice of black, as you often find with these cheaper handsets.
On the control front, you get a standard volume button array above a combination power/assistant and fingerprint reader. The thin nature of the side does somewhat affect its accuracy, but that’s true for every sensor of this type, and I can’t say it’s been any worse than any other side fingerprint reader I’ve tested recently. Like a lot of budget phones, you also get a proper 3.5mm headphone jack if wired headphones are your passion. It’s also rated IP54 for water and dust ingress, which essentially means that a little dampness isn’t likely to be an issue, but going swimming with it would kill it outright. Again, so far, so standard.
Where the HMD Aura 2’s design does stand out is in the fact that it’s part of HMD’s commitment to selling phones that are more easily repairable, even potentially repairable by consumers in their own homes.
Being able to repair a phone with relative ease is very cool — but who’s actually going to do it?
HMD’s been on this track for a while now with phones like the HMD Skyline and HMD Pulse Pro for example, making guides to repair and parts available through iFixit.
Have I smashed the HMD Aura 2’s display just to see how easy it is to repair?
No, I haven’t.
That would be wasteful, and mostly just destruction for destruction’s sake.
I’m still a little torn here about whether this is genuinely useful in a real world way.
On the one hand, it’s eminently laudable that HMD is leading the charge here, because far too often we treat technology as a replaceable medium, ignoring its environmental impact even if some of the parts of phones may be recyclable. Using devices for as long as possible is far more environmentally sound than buying new ones, which is why I still own an Atari 2600… but I digress.
The issue I have here is that I’m not too sure that the market of buyers for a $169 phone are going to be all that keen on repair for such an inexpensive device in the first place.
If you had to swap out the battery and screen, that’s nearly half the price of the phone again not including shipping costs, and it’s likely by the time you needed to, the HMD Aura 2 would probably be much cheaper again given the way Android phone prices tend to drop.
It’s a great and principled position for HMD to take, and I wish more phone manufacturers did likewise.
Cough. Hello Apple – when are we getting self-repair for iPhones in Australia? Oh, no comment? This is my shocked face… but I really do digress there.
The problem that remains, however, is that I’m not convinced that many HMD Aura 2 buyers are going to bother. Got a different thought on this? Let me know below!
Camera
Common wisdom says that true budget phones don’t get good camera modules, partly straight from cost, but also because the processors they tend to use cap out pretty low when it comes to supporting better photographic options.
The HMD Aura 2 does not buck that trend in any way.
At the rear it features a 13MP single wide sensor, while the teardrop notch at the front houses a simple 5MP selfie shooter.
Both are quite basic, and exceptionally slow. This isn’t surprising at all – it’s totally par for the course at this kind of price point – and you’ll be left waiting for the camera to load, waiting for shots to be taken and generally left with mediocre results even in good conditions.
If you need better photographic results, you’re definitely going to have to pay more than the HMD Aura 2’s asking price.
HMD Aura 2 Sample Photos
Performance
HMD made some interesting choices when it came to building out the HMD Aura 2.
Not so much on the processor front, where the Unisoc 9863A runs the entire show, backed up with just 4GB of RAM, but definitely on the storage front.
The HMD Aura 2 packs in 256GB of storage, quite a bit more than you’d typically expect to see in true budget phones. It also supports microSD expansion cards, although only up to 128GB in size, which means that it’s the truly rare phone that supports storage expansion that’s substantially less than its onboard storage.
That’s a weird choice, though I’m not really going to complain about having more storage on a phone.
What I will complain about is the speed of the HMD Aura 2, or lack thereof. The combination of a basic Unisoc processor and just 4GB of RAM is not one that leads to performance that’s anything beyond glacial.
To an extent that’s to be expected; this is a low cost phone. However, even within that grouping, the HMD Aura 2 doesn’t do much to stand out. Here’s how it compares using Geekbench 6’s CPU test:
It’s a similar story when we look at GPU performance, by way of 3DMark:
HMD is clearly aware that it wasn’t building a rocketship when it designed the HMD Aura 2, which is why it’s running on Android Go, the version of Android designed for lower power devices. The catch here is that it’s Android Go 14, already now two Android versions behind, and the promise is only for two years of security updates.
The experience of using the HMD Aura 2 is certainly one that will test your patience, even with Google’s own apps that should respect the Android Go platform a little more. To an extent of course this goes with the budget territory, but you can get phones that are a little more responsive than the HMD Aura 2 is for around the same asking price.
Also read:
Motorola Moto g05 review
Battery
The HMD Aura 2 packs in a 5,000mAh battery, exactly on par with most other Android phones right now. HMD’s contention is that this should be good for up to 50 hours of phone battery life.
Lots of budget phones running on low-power processors can extend out their battery endurance, so will this be the HMD Aura 2’s secret superpower?
Not… quite.
Naturally, battery life will ultimately depend on how you use a phone – I’ve got a full guide to how I test phone batteries here — but using my standard YouTube battery test as a comparative guideline, while the HMD Aura 2 has performance that suggests that a single day’s moderate usage should be fine, it does rather peter out after that.
Here’s how it compares:
Given that the HMD Aura 2 isn’t even pushing out a 720p video there, it’s having an easier processing time all around, but still, that battery life dips after that first hour to a degree that isn’t particularly encouraging.
There’s no charger in the box, just a simple USB-A to USB-C charger, so you’ll have to provide your own. Charging tops out at 10W, so it’s also not particularly fast to recharge when it needs more power.
HMD Aura 2: Alex’s Verdict
The HMD Aura 2 does have a few unique selling points, even within the constraints of a budget handset. Packing in 256GB of storage at this price is quite remarkable, and producing a phone that’s designed to be reasonably straightforward to repair is at least theoretically sound, even if I have my doubts as to how many people will bother.
However, that’s where the good news for the HMD Aura stops. I can totally accept and respect that budget phones are going to be slow, and there’s no doubt that there’s a market for people who want either a very cheap phone, or just a very simple one. It’s just that the HMD Aura 2 falls below the standard that you could get even at this price – and that’s problematic.
Was this review useful to you?
Support independent media by becoming a sponsor or buying me a coffee!
[kofi]
Donate via PayPal
Find out more about how you can support Alex Reviews Tech here.
HMD Aura 2: Pricing and availability
The HMD Aura 2 retails in Australia for $169.
Was this review useful to you? Support independent media by dropping a dollar or two in the tip jar below!
[kofi]
About the Author
