HMD Skyline review

Proper triple-camera setup

The HMD Skyline features a proper triple-camera with a potent 108MP main camera, joined by a 50MP 2x telephoto unit and 13MP ultrawide shooter. It's nice to see all three focal lengths on board, along with an above-standard ultrawide snapper.

• Wide (main): 108 MP Samsung ISOCELL HM6 (S5KHM6) f/1.8, 1/1.67", 0.64µm, PDAF; 2160p@30fps
• Telephoto (2x zoom): 50 MP Samsung ISOCELL JN1, f/2.0, 1/2.76", 0.64µm, PDAF; 2160p@30fps.
• Ultrawide: 13 MP OmniVision OV13B (OV13B10), f/2.5, 1/3", 1.12µm; 2160p@30fps.
• Front camera: 50 MP f/2.5, AF; 1080p@60fps

We are delighted with the selfie camera too. It's 50MP and offers autofocus - a rare feature around these parts, although we are seeing a rise in mid-range to upper-mid-range smartphones with AF-capable selfies.

Daylight photos

Main camera

The main camera produces nice and clean stills, leaving little to complain about. The samples below show a good amount of detail, good sharpness, and excellent dynamic range. You could say the color reproduction looks natural but we'd prefer a bit higher color saturation.

Daylight main camera samples

Portraits: Nomral • Portrait mode

All in all, daytime pictures look good, although far from impressive.

2x zoom camera

We can go as far as saying the 2x zoom camera takes better pictures than the main camera. We are impressed with the level of detail, sharpness and clarity. Dynamic range is wide and colors are lively.

Daylight 2x zoom camera samples

Portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

3x and 4x zoom

The viewfinder has additional 3x and 4x zoom toggles, which are just zoom crops from the main camera, which is probably due to the fact that the zoom camera lacks OIS and that would make longer focal length tricky to hold stable.

We understand the reasoning, but the 3x and 4x zoom crops are pushing the 108MP main camera a bit too far.

Daylight 3x zoom samples

The 3x and 4x zoom samples have the same rendition like the standard 1x photos, but are fuzzier, noisier in the shadows and with somewhat lower contrast.

Daylight 4x zoom samples

Ultrawide camera

The 13MP ultrawide camera produces decent enough stills. Expectedly, the ultrawide photos are noticeably softer and less detailed, but in the context of an ultrawide, they are more than decent even. Dynamic range is okay, contrast is nice and colors are lively.

Daylight ultrawide camera samples

Low-light photos

Main camera

The Skyline is one of the few smartphones we've tested that doesn't have an automatic Night mode toggle. Nowadays users tend to use their cameras with default settings, without digging too deep into the menus. That's why we think HMD should introduce an automatic Night mode with a future update. Admittedly, a small prompt appears when the software detects low-light conditions and invites you to try out the Night mode.

Low-light main camera samples

Most of the samples we took were in the standard Photo mode. Even though it was evident that the camera software does some frame stacking by default, the results are not very good. Dynamic range is limited (plenty of blown highlights), contrast is low, detail is smeared away and the stills are generally soft.

Night mode main camera samples

The Night mode takes care of most issues by balancing out highlights and shadows, adds much-needed contrast, clears the noise and adds quite a bit of sharpness. However, we feel like HMD went overboard with that last bit as the samples with the Night mode look artificially rendered. We can't say we are a fan of the post-processing.

2x zoom camera

The 2x zoom camera struggles to deliver decent enough images at night, with or without Night mode. Images are soft, noisy and lack fine detail.

Low-light 2x zoom camera samples

Night mode 2x zoom camera samples

3x and 4x zoom

It's perhaps no surprise that the 3x and 4x zoom crops from the main camera are pretty much unusable in low-light conditions.

Low-light 3x zoom samples

With the dedicated Night mode active, however, you can get some okay-looking stills. Interestingly, these ones are crops from the 2x zoom camera, not from the main one.

Night mode 4x zoom samples

Ultrawide camera

Surprisingly, the ultrawide photos look good with our without Night mode. The latter adds a bit of sharpness, contrast and cleans up some of the noise, but in either cases, you should expect above-average ultrawide camera performance at night. Still, we suggest using the dedicated Night mode when using the ultrawide camera.

Low-light ultrawide camera samples

Night mode ultrawide camera samples

Selfies

The selfies, although with good color reproduction and plenty of detail, they seem to be lacking sharpness in general. The wide dynamic range and the autofocus shouldn't be overlooked if selfies are up on your priority list, but we expected sharper stills overall.

Selfies

Video recording

The handset can record 4K videos at up to 30fps using its main, ultrawide and 2x zoom camera. In fact, the ultrawide is locked at 4K, and you can't choose 1080p even if you wanted to.

Stabilization, however, is available only in 1080p mode or when using the dedicated Steady and Ultra Steady video modes which are 1080p too.

It's quite disappointing that the phones does not offer video stabilization at 2160p.

On the other hand, we really liked the 4K footage using a tripod. Colors are accurate, contrast is great, noise is non-existent, while the level of detail, sharpness and the dynamic range are impressive even.

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

The low-light video taken with the main camera needs more work, though. It has clipped highlights, washed out colors, and it's quite noisy too.

The dedicated 2x zoom camera delivers near-identical processing and quality. The only difference we noticed is the slight drop in sharpness and the more vivid colors.

The ultrawide camera delivers more than decent video quality, especially for an ultrawide camera. The footage seems adequately sharp, with nice contrast, lively colors and a wide dynamic range. It's one of the better ultrawide videos we've seen in the price range.