HMD Skyline Review: Less than the sum of its repairable parts

The HMD Skyline combines a lot of interesting approaches to smartphone design and features… but sadly it doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Pros	Cons
Easily repairable	Only two years of OS upgrades makes repairability feel moot.
Striking design	Mediocre app performance
First Qi2 wireless Android phone	Light magnetic attachment to some Qi2 chargers

Score: 2.5/5

 

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In this review

HMD Skyline Specifications
HMD Skyline Design
HMD Skyline Camera
HMD Skyline Performance
HMD Skyline Battery
HMD Skyline Verdict

Design

HMD Global has held the rights to produce Nokia phones for a number of years now, but it’s only been this year that it shifted to producing Android handsets that it sells in its own name.

Still, clearly the design language it picked up from making “Nokia” phones hasn’t completely escaped HMD just yet, with the HMD Skyline rather closely resembling the kinds of mixed angular and rounded designs found on the classic Nokia Lumia phones.

It’s definitely different, and I can’t quite decide if that’s a good or bad approach. The HMD Skyline’s 6.55 inch pOLED display sits almost floating above its metallic body, available either in Blue Topaz, Twisted Black or the Neon Pink variant HMD sent me for review.

This does give it a distinct look, but it also gives it rather pointy edges at the corners which are just a little bit uncomfortable to hold, especially in landscape mode if you’re taking photos. It also means that it’s the rare to phone to have not just one set of bezels, but two. I’m not usually that fussy about the presentation of bezels on smartphones, but I know a lot of my readers are – and it’s particularly noticeable all of the time on the HMD Skyline.

HMD’s unusual design decisions don’t end with pointy corner and bezels, either. The HMD Skyline features a side mounted fingerprint sensor/power button on the right hand side, beneath a standard set of volume controls, but it’s a power button that sits indented on the phone body, rather than extruded.

On the left hand side, there’s a customisable quick action button that sits mostly flush to the side as well, though it’s a little easier to pick out from muscle memory thanks to an engraved diagonal pattern on it. I do like the ability to set activities to a side button. While some might cry foul that this has been borrowed from the iPhone’s Action Button, it’s a nice inclusion.

On the durability side, the HMD Skyline’s screen features Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and is IP54-rated for water and dust ingress. That’s a step below what I might expect at the HMD Skyline’s $899 price point, but here HMD has an ace up its sleeve.

Like so many of its recent phones, the HMD Skyline is designed to be user repairable, right down to the use of a tiny torx screw on the bottom right hand edge that can be turned to allow easy removal of the back of the phone. That’s almost certainly why it’s only IP54, but the benefit here should be considerably easier repairs. There’s a range of guides available on iFixit for the HMD Skyline specifically and that’s also where you’re meant to be able to order replacement parts. I say “meant” there, because at the time of writing, iFixit’s page for actual HMD Skyline parts ordering leads to a 404 error page.

That’s not helpful, but hopefully it’s an error that will be quickly resolved, because the easy repairability of the HMD Skyline is definitely a huge plus.

Camera

The HMD Skyline packs in an interesting array of camera choices, with a 108MP wide, 13MP ultrawide and 50MP 2x Telephoto lens at the rear, as well as a 50MP front-facing selfie camera. It’s still pretty common to see these higher mid-range phones ship with just wide and ultrawide lenses, so the inclusion of telephoto had me excited… until I started using the HMD Skyline’s cameras.

I do love the flexibility of the triple lens approach, because it technically allows for just about any shot, but the problem here is that the HMD Skyline’s output and camera app are really inconsistent.

On zoom shots, for example, I very much expected the maximum zoom range to be pretty awful – and it was.

Impressionist art? Maybe. A good 20x photo? No, not at all.

The problems don’t stop there, however, with really noticeable shifts in colour representation and detail in many shots. I also just struggled to get some shots working as the default camera app would either randomly crash on me, or shift to completely different lenses when trying to switch from one lens to another.

That’s hopefully just a question of software bugs needing ironing out – but as always, I can only review what’s in front of me at the time of review, and I was left distinctly unimpressed with the HMD Skyline’s output in this regard relative to other phones in the $899 price range.

HMD Skyline Sample Photos

 

 

Performance

The HMD Skyline is built around a Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 processor, paired up with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That’s an interesting mix at this particular price point, and one that did give me some concerns about overall performance, given that this is the kind of money that (for example) Google wants for the Pixel 8a.

So how does the HMD Skyline compare against similarly priced smartphones? Let’s take a look, first using Geekbench 6’s CPU benchmark:

Admittedly, the Samsung Galaxy A35 isn’t a similarly priced handset; it’s quite a bit cheaper than the HMD Skyline, but I’ve included it to rather point out where the Skyline is falling below the line I’d like to see at this price point.

 

Do matters improve if we take in the graphics capabilities of the HMD Skyline by way of 3DMark’s Wild Life benchmarks?

Nope. While it does outclass the Galaxy A35 there, as you might expect, there’s still a big gulf in performance between it and devices like the Pixel 8a and Galaxy S23 FE – and it still looks likely that we’ll see a Galaxy S24 FE before long, though some reports do suggest it’ll be a tad more pricey.

Still, the HMD Skyline really doesn’t deliver the kinds of performance I’d like to see for this kind of money. It’s not to say that it’s a slow and turgid phone, but if you’re choosing devices it makes sense to get one that’ll provide plenty of power for plenty of time.

Here again HMD irritates me with its approach to the HMD Skyline. It’s great that it’s repairable, but that’s matched up with just two OS upgrades and three years of security updates where competitors such as Google and Samsung are stretching into seven year terms for those kinds of deals.

Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to pack in both a little more power and a touch more Android OS futureproofing into a phone that’s meant to be repaired and used over many years?

One feature I’ve not yet been able to test – because it’s coming in a future software update at the time of writing – is a “detox” mode that’s meant to simplify the available apps on the HMD Skyline, letting you avoid distractions (or endless doomscrolling). That’s a neat idea that ties into HMD’s production of simpler phones like the Nokia 3210 or Nokia 2660 Flip – at least in theory, anyway.

 

Battery

The HMD Skyline has a technically-sealed – it’s repairable and therefore replaceable, but this isn’t something you’ll trivially pop out to swap for another – battery, and a slightly odd one at that.

Most Android phones at this size pack in 5,000mAh batteries, but the HMD Skyline makes do with a 4,600mAh power pack instead. That’s presumably due to its repairable nature, leaving space for consumers to switch out the battery down the line when it starts fading away. That’s technically a good step, as long as the HMD Skyline can last a reasonable length of time.

The question then becomes one of battery endurance. To test this out, I turn to my standard YouTube battery test, running a 1 hour video and seeing which side of 90% battery remaining after an hour the HMD Skyline falls. Here’s how it compares against that same range of similarly priced smartphones:

The HMD Skyline falls on the right side of the 90% mark – phones that drop lower than that typically struggle to last an entire day – but it’s not encouraging to see that pretty much everyone else on the other side of the performance barrier manages even more in the exact same test. Even the broadly similar performant Oppo Reno 12 Pro manages to make the most of slower performance by really upping its battery game.

That’s not the total story of the HMD Skyline’s battery, though. It supports wired USB-C charging at up to 33W – with a supplied pink USB-C cable, but no charger – or wireless charging at up to 15W.

This is where the HMD Skyline should get interesting, because it’s the very first Android phone to come with Qi2 compatibility, allowing for direct and faster magnetic attachment, similar to but not identical to Apple's Magsafe approach.

. I had all but given up on seeing a Qi2 Android phone in 2024 after Google opted not to make it part of the Pixel 9 phones, so seeing HMD innovate here was genuinely a surprise.

Qi2 does work on the HMD Skyline… but annoyingly, not all that well. Maybe I’m spoiled by the way Apple’s Magsafe connection snaps into place, but by comparison the HMD Skyline just sort of slides into vague alignment.

The magnets just don’t seem to be all that strong, and that’s led to more difficulty connecting and getting charge flowing than should really be the case, whether that’s on actual Qi2 chargers or even older Qi ones.

I’m hopeful that’s just HMD’s particular interpretation of the standard for the HMD Skyline only, and that future Qi2 Android phones will have more attraction and work better – but we’ll have to wait and see on that score.

HMD Skyline: Alex’s Verdict

I really, truly wanted to love the HMD Skyline.

While HMD hasn’t often been “innovating” in the sense of having the very latest processors, screen technology or camera tricks, it’s instead chosen a path of environmental responsibility and just being plain different.

I love that the HMD Skyline is meant to be repaired, I adore the fact that finally somebody in the Android world got on the Qi2 path, and I appreciate the boldness of going with a design that isn’t just a plain flat glass and metal slab.

The problem is that while those parts did intrigue me conceptually, using the HMD Skyline showed all of its shortcomings all too quickly.

Repairability is great, but once again HMD has tied it to a phone that’s only really powerful enough for today, not years to come, and you can get more powerful phones for this kind of money.

Camera performance was inconsistent to a level that made me not want to take photos with it, and that’s quite unusual (and not in a good way) in itself.

Finally, while Qi2 is on board, the way that the HMD Skyline only weakly attaches to some Qi2 charges makes me worry about the whole future of Qi2 on Android.

Sadly, all of that adds up to a phone that’s very hard to recommend at this price. A little more power, a few more Android OS upgrades and better Qi2 and it would have been a winner.

Maybe next year, HMD?

HMD Skyline: Pricing and availability

The HMD Skyline retails in Australia for $899 outright.

	Buy The HMD Skyline!	Buy On Amazon

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