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HMD might not be a name you'll be familiar with, but they're carrying on the famous legacy of Nokia phones, with a cheaper, modern alternative to your smart phone.
"Hello everyone and welcome to another Gamereactor Quick Look.
You might know HMD as the global conglomerate that has kind of carried on the legacy of Nokia and has been launching Nokias, vigorously utilizing that old brand, even though that it technically isn't the Nokia of old that put out like the 3310s and other sort of legendary phones back when these phones were beginning to come to mass market and the mobile phone became sort of part of everyday culture."
"HMD has put out Nokias for the past couple of years, they've decided now that they want to have their own brand of phones, they want to have their own lineup that is known for specific things.
And those things are pretty cool."
"So I should stress that this, the Skyline, is I think 549 Euros starting, which makes it a cheaper smartphone, but not the cheapest that you can go.
There are some things here that are really freaking cool that I thought that I wanted to show you."
"Basically, what the eye is immediately drawn to is this pink colorway, and it is striking and will possibly appeal to some users that just want to pink over everything, those people do exist and all power to you, but it also comes in a much more subdued black if that's the kind of stuff that you want."
"It's two very polarizing colors, I would have loved to seen a wider array, but those are the two available, this and over the pink one, and it does feel good to hold.
I mean, there's heft to it, it's large, so if you like large phones, this is going to be right up your alley, and the color is nicely implemented, I will say."
"It has a frosted finish all around, and it does mean that it doesn't pick up fingerprints as easily, so it's nice, but that's not the cool thing about it.
So the first thing is that this has Gorilla Glass 3 on the front and a glass back, but the most cool thing is that down here, you'll see a tiny screw."
"The reason for that is that while this carries an IP54 rating, meaning that you can both count on dust not ingressing into the frame of the phone and ruining it, or take it out in a rainstorm and expect it to work afterwards, this is a repair-it-yourself phone.
Yes, these are slowly coming to market now, and it's great to see."
"That means that it's very easy to order in parts from HMD, and you can very easily, without specialized tools, swap the display, the back cover, the battery, and the charging port, all by utilizing these small, industry-standard screws.
Now, will this come to iPhones and Samsung phones in the near future?
That's very hard to say, but it does feel like that there is a wave of audience focus on sustainability, meaning that you have to have your phones to carry on for longer by swapping out parts yourselves, as you would with a lot of other consumer electronics."
"That is very good to see.
Now, it's €549, but you're not skimping on that much.
This screen here is 6.5 inches.
It's a P-OLED that runs at 144 Hz, so basically on par with flagship Motorolas."
"It's 1000 nits peak brightness, which is great, and it runs in 1080p, which is fine, I think.
Inside, we have Snapdragon 7S Gen 2, which is kind of like a mid-range smartphone SoC, which is fine.
You can get it at either 128 or 256 gigs of storage, and either 8 or 12 gigs of RAM."
"I'm sure this will run fine.
Back here, there's even more good news, because you actually do have a triple camera setup.
The one main sensor is a 108-megapixel main sensor.
It might have trouble."
"It might focus hunt.
It might be bad under poor lighting conditions and low-light photography, but 108 megapixels does give you some wiggle room with just the sheer file size and the amount of detail that it's able to capture."
"It also has a 13-megapixel ultra-wide and a 50-megapixel telephoto.
Sure, it's only 2x in optical, but these are the traditional three-camera lenses that you would expect out of a flagship.
The battery is 4,600 mAh, so it should last all day."
"It's one of the first Qi 2-enabled smartphones on the market, meaning that it wirelessly charges at 15 watts, and it should be able to do that MagSafe-like magnet charging that we're expecting to see from Qi 2 phones in the weeks and months and years to come.
So that is really cool."
"All of this is really cool.
One big problem.
The reason you would have a repair-it-yourself smartphone agenda is that the phone should last."
"If you break the screen, you don't buy a new phone.
You buy a screen replacement and you swap it yourself.
Now, that would be great if they could offer a competitive amount of platform upgrades for Android, but they only promise two."
"That's not a lot.
Remember, there are major platform upgrades every year, meaning that after two years, you're out, basically, at least as far as what they guarantee you.
But you would want to keep swapping out the battery, for instance, and hopefully have this run you six years, seven years, or something along those lines, maybe less."
"But still, two platform upgrades is not enough.
That would probably make the phone more expensive, but that's just the way of the world.
So that, I think, is the major downside to this device.
But we're going to test it fully to see if it lives up to that moniker."
"Maybe we'll even try to open it up to swap something out.
And we'll tell you all about it in a full written review.
Thank you so much for watching.
See you on the next one."
