Your smartphone is a multitasking powerhouse these days, from managing your calendar to replacing your camera, while also putting your car’s GPS out of business.
It makes sense, then, that a company has come up with a way of making some of those tasks a little easier, with the HMD Fusion.
The HMD – Human Mobile Devices – brand name may not be immediately familiar to you; you might know it better as Nokia. Or, to be specific, the unit of Nokia that was sold off to Microsoft in 2014, before the company bought it back two years later. Since 2016, HMD has made Nokia-branded mobile phones, including reboots of the popular “dumb” phones that had batteries that would last for weeks and came with only one game: Snake.
Now the company is making phones under the HMD brand. So far, we don’t hate it.
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The HMD Fusion is a new take on an older concept: modular smartphones that you can expand with different accessories, and are a bit more repairable than your average smartphone. In other words, phones that are designed to be used by humans, rather than robots.
Out of the box, the HMD Fusion looks like every other touchscreen smartphone out there: big screen, small bezels, a cut out for the camera. Turn it over and there is the camera bump, with two lenses and a flash; the back of the battery; and a pin connector. It looks a bit unfinished, like someone forgot to put a panel on it.
This is a deliberate choice. HMD calls it “elegant and industrial”, a “raw, no-frills aesthetic”. It is effectively naked; the Fusion is designed to be customised with different “outfits”, as HMD calls the accessories. The kits can be swapped in a few seconds, turning your Fusion from a gaming device to a photo studio as and when you need it. The kits are limited at the moment, but it shows what is possible in the future.
As a smartphone, the HMD Fusion does almost everything you can ask of it
The Fusion reviewed here came with the gaming outfit, which is essentially a gaming control pad that connects to the phone via the smart connector. Getting a good fit here is essential, and it took me a minute of fiddling about with the controller to realise where I’d gone wrong.
The controller itself felt just like a regular games controller, with shoulder buttons and triggers that reacted well to the on-screen action. It’s a nicer way to play games on your smartphone than the on-screen controls, although it will only work with the HMD devices due to the smart connector. That compares with the universal Bluetooth controller that can be used with multiple phone models, manufacturers and operating systems.
As a smartphone, the HMD Fusion does almost everything you can ask of it. It has a decent camera, with extras such as Flash Shot, which is designed for taking pictures of fast-moving objects – pets, kids and so on – a selfie gesture that will trigger a countdown timer, and a preset for skin tones so you can save your personal preference for either a more natural look or a brightened version. It also has the standard Android camera options, such as panorama, portrait mode and a night mode.
In general, the camera takes decent photos. It has a 108-megapixel lens on the rear camper, and 3x zoom; the front-facing camera clocks in at 50 megapixels.
The display is HD+ with a 90Hz refresh rate, it won’t challenge the flagships from Apple or Samsung, but it looks fine, even when gaming.
On the inside, it is powered by a Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 processor, an octa-core chip that is built for power efficiency.
RAM is available at 6GB or 8GB, with the choice of 128GB and 256GB in storage. And in keeping with the phone’s ethos, that is expandable with a micro SD card.
There is one other good thing going in the Fusion’s favour. Aside from the repairability, it is a lot less expensive than the premium smartphones. At €230, unlocked from a network and free to take any sim you want, the HMD phone is wallet friendly but not feature-light. It doesn’t have wireless charging, or the highest-spec screen technology, but it does everything well. And with a few outfit changes, who knows what extra features you will be able to add?
Good
The modular, repairable nature of the phone is welcome. Yes, we’ve gone down this line before but maybe the Moto phones and their mods were ahead of their time. You can add new features quickly, and if the worst happens – a shattered screen, for example – it won’t be an expensive repair because you can do it yourself. Apparently.
The price is the real winner here. For €230, you get a decent Android phone with the potential for expanding its features with the “outfit” accessories.
Bad
You have to take the protective case off – even the HMD one – to fit it into the accessories. Which is fine if they are the “outfits” that can double as protection, such as the soon-to-be-released rugged outfit, or the coloured casual outfits. I am not entirely sure the gaming outfit would provide the same measure of protection should it be dropped in a moment of over-enthusiastic gaming.
Everything else
In the box, you get the phone itself, a USB charging cable and what HMD calls a “transparent casual outfit”. To everyone else, that is a clear protective case.
The system for the outfits is open source, so in theory, people could create 3D print and create their own outfits. That opens up a lot of possibilities for the future of the system.
The verdict
A decent mid-priced smartphone, with possibilities.
