HMD Skyline review: Reaching for the stars

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I never would have guessed in 100 years that the first Android smartphone in Australia to support the Qi2 wireless standard would be from a smaller brand like HMD.

I would have put money down that Samsung or Google or even Oppo would be racing out of the gate to offer a viable alternative to Apple’s MagSafe. But instead, it’s the HMD Skyline.

That’s no bad thing. The Skyline is a solid enough mid-range smartphone. In addition to Qi2, it has a triple camera array and a self-repairable design, so you can replace a busted screen or a faulty battery on your own.

The Qi2 implementation also doesn’t impress in the same way MagSafe does.

But it’s a reasonable device with strong ambitions. Let’s take a closer look.

What is the HMD Skyline offering?

Looking at the spec sheet of the HMD Skyline, and it appears this is a phone that punches well above its weight.

With an $899 RRP, the Skyline sits alongside mid-range devices like the Galaxy A55, the Nothing Phone (2) and the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion. Yet it offers a triple camera array, a self-repairable design and Qi2 wireless charging.

Plus there’s the promise of 48 hours battery life, a secondary “Action” button on the side that can be customised to quickly launch different functions and the fact it has a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 display and an IP54 rating.

Of course, there is some level of compromise there. The 6.55-inch display is only a 1080 x 2400 FHD+ resolution pOLED, while the processor is a Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, which makes it quite dated in the context of its contemporaries.

The battery is also a bit smaller than I would have expected at 4,600 mAh. Somehow, the phone still manages to push through for 48 hours though, so the smaller battery doesn’t really hurt the phone’s performance.

The fact that the phone is self-repairable is a big focus for HMD. On the bottom of the phone alongside the USB-C charging port and the SIM-card slot is a tiny screw.

If you do smash the screen, or have issues with the charging port or battery, you can order a repair kit from iFixit, which comes wth all the necessary components to repair the device yourself.

This does mean that there are some unique design choices. Like the sharp corners of the phone’s frame, which wrap around the Skyline’s display. I tested the pink version of the phone, and it made the corners stand out significantly.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not as sleek as a premium phone would look, that’s for sure.

What does the HMD Skyline do well?

Battery life on the phone is fantastic. I unplugged the phone at 11pm on Friday night, used it over the weekend to take photos of my kids sport, play some Call of Duty Mobile, scroll through social media and send a bunch of messages, and it was still running at 11pm on Sunday night.

Under 10% battery, but still running.

The cameras are also pretty decent. It is never going to compete with an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, but you get quite detailed shots with nice colour reproduction, particularly in good lighting.

The processor is definitely a bit on the slow side here, but it still handles day to day tasks quite well. It stuttered when I was taking photos a couple of times, but I had no dramas playing Call of Duty Mobile on it.

From a benchmarks perspective, it sits roughly in line with the likes of the Pixel 7 and Galaxy A54 smartphones in terms of GeekBench 6 CPU performance, though GPU Vulkan scores are significantly lower.

What could the HMD Skyline improve?

The feature I was most excited to test with the HMD Skyline unfortunately turned out to be its most disappointing.

Qi2 promises to bring the magnetic faster charging of Apple’s MagSafe functionality to Android. By aligning the wireless charging points through magnets, you can deliver faster charging speeds, as well as introduce cool accessories and mounting options.

Except the Skyline’s magnets were either too weak or not placed in an ideal spot of the phone.

To test out the Qi2 charging, I connected the Skyline to the Belkin BoostCharge Pro Qi2 magnetic power bank onto the back. It started charging the phone no problems, but the charger hung over the bottom of the phone by about a centimetre.

It also didn’t feel secure. Using the charger’s kickstand, the phone slowly rotated until the top corner of the phone rested on the bench.

Now, the Belkin charger fits the iPhone 15 Pro perfectly, and I imagine was designed for that rather than any Android Qi2 chargers. But to better test the strength of the magnet on the Skyline, I popped it on the Belkin BoostCharge 2-in-1 MagSafe stand.

Where the iPhone will sit rock solid on that stand in a horizontal position, the HMD rotates slowly until it rests upside down. I get that it’s a MagSafe stand rather than Qi2, but it’s a clear demonstration that there’s something not quite right in the Skyline’s Qi2 magnets. They are either too weak, or placed too far down the phone so that the weight of the camera array is too much for them.

The other potential frustration with the phone isn’t so much in the design, as it is in the ethos.

HMD has made the decision to make this phone repairable should you break anything, yet only promises two years of Android updates. So in three years time, you will need to replace your phone anyway to get the current version of Android.

Few people are going to buy a repairable phone on the off-chance they need to replace the screen in two years. It’s a decision made for the long term. So why not offer a long term software solution as well?

Verdict

All told, the HMD Skyline is a good mid-range phone. But it’s not a great one.

There is a lot of promise, from the repairable nature of the phone, the introduction of Qi2 and through to its cameras.

But the phone doesn’t really nail any of those features. It is the most easily repairable phone out of the competition, but that isn’t going to sway you to buy it over a different phone with a better camera and faster processor.

As a brand HMD is still inits infancy so I expect to see a lot of growth from here. I would love to see them push into the slightly more premium space – Not competing the S24 Ultra, but more up against the S24.

That extra boost to performance, coupled with the brand’s commitment to repairability, could be an exciting addition to the top end.

Buy the HMD Skyline online

HMD Skyline

The HMD Skyline has a whole heap of unique features to make it worth consideration, though its Qi2 support underwhelms.

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