HMD Skyline Review – The most repairable phone you can get, and it’s a great phone too!

At just $899 the HMD Skyline is a stunning looking phone, with great specs and a hidden feature that no major smartphone brand can even come close to matching. Repairability.

Critical to the future of Smartphones after the European Union announced consumer technology repairability legislation that comes into force in 2027, the HMD Skyline is the best example yet of how that can be pulled off in a smartphone without any major compromise on design.

Why does what the European Union do affect any of us? Well, ask yourself why the Apple iPhone now has USB-C and it all becomes clear – we’re in a global marketplace, it’s really as simple as that.

The look of this phone is somewhat jarring, in a good way. It’s stunning, but different, we’ve all seen someone like that across the room at some stage in our lives haven’t we? The HMD Skyline is this way because of the square pointed corners.

We’re so used to the rounded off corners on all smartphones that this just looks so different.

But in the hand, it’s remarkably comfortable to hold with a nice rounded frame – it’s really just the extra corner piece that’s different to anything else out there.

The screen is bright, and vibrant, really impressive to use day to day.

On the back is a huge dominant camera island which has those big circles around the lenses – I’m convinced smartphone companies do this to give the impression of a stunning camera.

And this is a good camera. On the front it’s a 50mp with some great gestures to initiate the shutter.

On the back is a 108MP main camera with Autofocus and Optical Image Stabilisation along with 13MP ultra wide and 50MP Telephoto.

I found the main lens to be the winner, and still a bit of work to do in low light, but all round it’s a strong camera for a mid-range phone, however at this $899 price point Google’s Pixel will smash it in a head to head on photos alone.

(Apologies, My HMD Skyline was not backing up to Google Photos so I’m unable to share right now as I’m travelling, but I’ll update in the near future with some examples!)

We’ll do a head to head with examples in the future.

Digital Detox! A big marketing win, looking to give people the option to switch off, and for the phone to manage that, locking you out until you’re due back. Sadly, not available in my review unit, so hard to judge.

The real feature here is repairability.

If you break the Screen, Charging Port, Back Cover, or Battery, you can order a new one from HMD and it will come with an iFixIt repair kit.

It looks like a screen will cost you around $100, while everything else is far less. They ship it to you and you follow the instructions!

I did this. Yep, I cracked it open.

One single screw gets the back case off. So simple.

Then there’s a heap of little screws all around, indicated on the guide to take off.

After that it’s pretty simple really – peeling off the battery is a weirdly forceful thing, but just do it.

And the screen just pushes out.

Very very cool.

All the pieces taken out and ready for swapping if needed. Easily a 30 min job at most for any one item.

But, with caution because one slip and you’re damaging a part of micro pins so it is a delicate matter.

I really don’t know how many people need this, or would desire this, but I’m glad it exists. Let’s put it that way.

It’s the ideal phone for parents to get their teenagers. Not only do they need to learn responsibility, but you break it – you fix it! New rules at home perhaps?

At $899 it’s a great price, but you’re then competing with older model iPhones and Google Pixel devices which will fair well on a head to head – so just how important is repairability?

Frankly, the design and look of this is a winner in many ways – however, HMD need to prove their Digital Detox software in the real world, and show there’s demonstrable demand for this, and at the same time start pushing toward much longer software support cycles as we’re seeing from Samsung and Google.

For repairability, it’s 11 out of 10.