Repair-Friendly Tech: Discovering the Exceptional Durability and Fixability of the HMD Skyline

HMD Global has been making phones and tablets with the Nokia name for years, but now it’s trying to sell phones with its own brand. The HMD Skyline is the company’s latest device, and it’s one of the most repairable smartphones you can get.

HMD announced its fourth repairable HMD smartphone today, following the release of the Pulse, Pulse+, and Pulse Pro. Those earlier models required a prying tool to take off the back cover, which can easily cause damage to the casing if you’re not careful. The Skyline has a new Torx screw that releases the back cover, allowing you to easily pull off the rest of the case with a prying tool (or the edge of a plastic card).

The screen is held inside the phone using a foam gasket, instead of the glue used by most other smartphones. The battery still uses glue for positioning, but HMD said in a blog post, “we’ve carefully considered the strength of the adhesive so that a gentle pull is enough to get it free.” The HMD Skyline earned a repairability score of 9/10 from iFixit, coming close to the 10/10 score from the Fairphone 5 , and far better than most mass-market smartphones.

The rest of the hardware and specifications are typical for an upper-midrange Android smartphone. It has a Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset, a 6.5-inch 144Hz OLED screen, 128 or 256 GB internal storage, 8 or 12 GB RAM, a 4,600mAh battery, 33W wired charging and 15W wireless charging, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2 with LE audio. There are three rear cameras: a 108 MP main lens, a 13MP ultra-wide camera, and a 50MP telephoto lens. The front-facing camera is 50MP.

The IP54 rating for water and dust resistance is lower than the IP68 rating for many other modern phones, but that might be the result of the more repairable design, at least in part. It’s easier to keep water out of a phone that’s totally glued together.

HMD Global is promising two major Android OS updates and three years of security fixes, and the phone ships with Android 14. That’s not great, especially with some budget phones delivering five years of security updates or more. Repairability is important for keeping a device functional over time, but so is software support.

You’ll be able to buy the HMD Skyline starting in August for $499, in either “Twisted Black” or “Neon Pink.”

Source: iFixit , HMD Global