Review: HMD Fusion

I have probably tested close to 100 cheap phones over the past 9 years, and I've never really had to worry about bringing a backup in case things go awry. Budget phones are usually sluggish but work well enough. But I almost immediately regretted not bringing a spare smartphone when I took the HMD Fusion on a short trip to another state.

The first sample of this Android phone kept freezing and restarting itself on the way to the airport. Then, further fueling my panic, it would boot up the home screen but my passcode wouldn't work. “Passcode is incorrect.” What? Thankfully, a forced restart would set it back to normal. However, for the entirety of the weekend of my friend's wedding in Kentucky, the Fusion would restart itself constantly. It also refused to launch Slack—though that may have been a blessing as work was off my mind that whole time.

HMD said it could not replicate my issues, so the company sent me another unit. It's been perfectly fine. It's hard to suddenly shift gears after being so frustrated at this black monolith, but this is a decent $300 phone. It also has a trick up its sleeve that no other phone has today: mods.

Return of the Modular Phone

HMD might not be a name you're familiar with, so to recap quickly, it's a Finnish company that licensed the Nokia brand to churn out Nokia Android smartphones and feature phones (aka dumb phones). It began doing this in 2017, but earlier this year, the company announced that while it would still make Nokia phones, it also plans to craft phones under its namesake (which, by the way, stands for Human Mobile Devices). Its feature phone business continues too, with bigger collaborations like the Boring Phone and the Barbie Phone.

The HMD Fusion is one of those devices (there was also the Skyline and the Vibe). It has a focus on repairability—just remove a handful of screws and you can replace many of the parts, from the battery to the screen, and the company plans to carry these parts for seven years. (Much of this is needed to adhere to upcoming laws in the European Union.)

But what makes it really stand out are the pogo pins on the back. In fact, the whole back of the phone looks as though it's incomplete. That's because you can attach Outfits, as HMD calls them. These modular components can change the phone's look with different color backings. They don't magnetically stick like iPhones and MagSafe. Instead, these Outfits are like cases, and the pogo pins don't just transfer power but data as well.

Included in the box is a transparent case that doesn't do anything else; these “Casual Outfits” are the only mods available right now. Soon, there will be a case mod (Flashy Outfit) that has a ring light surrounding the camera module. You can flip this out to light up your face for selfies, or you can use it as a fill light with the rear camera.

Other Outfits in the works include a Wireless Charging Outfit that enables wireless charging, and a Gaming Outfit that turns the phone into a gaming handheld like the BackBone One. Unfortunately, HMD wasn't ready to send me any of these, but I did get a demo of the Flashy Outfit. It worked as advertised, and since it draws power from the Fusion via those pins, it's certainly a better solution than existing cases with ring light attachments that require separate charging. You can even tweak the colors of the LEDs in the camera app.

I have to say, the outfits are a little uninspired. Remember Moto Mods? These were magnetic mods that snapped to the back of Motorola's Z line of smartphones, and they could share power and data via pogo pins just like the Fusion. The company stopped making them after a few years but the mods were varied. There was a Hasselblad True Zoom Camera for physical camera buttons and 10X optical zoom, a JBL SoundBoost Mod that added a full-blown wireless speaker, and the Insta-Share Projector Mod, which turned the handset into a mini projector. Other fun additions were the Polaroid Insta-Share Printer Mod that printed your phone photos immediately, and much more interesting “Style Shells” to change up the look. It was a crazy time.

That kind of fun is missing in HMD's initial lineup of mods, and it doesn't help that the phone looks quite drab too. That said, the company seems to have an enterprise play. It mentioned making Barcode Scanner Outfits, which companies can slap onto Fusions when needed rather than purchasing dedicated scanners.

Good news though. HMD has open sourced this system, so anyone can 3D print and make an Outfit for the Fusion. The company may help some folks bring their ideas to market, but it's unclear whether there will be an open marketplace for these outfits. Still, the company showed me some concepts its community on Discord has drummed up, and there was an E Ink Outfit that added a black and white display on the back of the phone, not to mention a Projector Outfit. We'll have to wait and see if they ever come to fruition.

Frankly, that's the big question here. Motorola effectively stopped its Moto Mods program after just two to three years. Eventually, it stopped releasing Moto Z smartphones, so the mods were useless when you inevitably upgraded your phone. Who's to say the same won't happen with the Fusion? Will newer phones maintain the same dimensions so that older mods will remain compatible? The company only supports its phones with two to three years of software updates.

Fusion Disillusion

Despite the issues with my first Fusion unit—chalk it up to a software defect—my second unit has fared significantly better. This is a $300 phone, so measure your expectations accordingly. Performance is solid thanks to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 chipset and the 6 GB of RAM. Yes, there are some jitters here and there and apps can take a little longer to load, but I've been able to do all the things I usually do on a smartphone just fine.

The 90-Hz LCD screen is OK. The high refresh rate is nice, but the screen isn't particularly vibrant, and it doesn't get very bright outside on sunny days. I frequently went to the brightness slider, only to find it was already at max brightness.

HMD does a marginally better job with the cameras. Marginally. The 108-megapixel rear camera is joined by a 2-megapixel depth sensor, and it can produce passable photos. Colors can be a little odd here and there. In low light, you need to be very still. I thought a few of my shots came out OK, but when I looked at them on a bigger screen, they were all blurry, including my selfie. It's not very inviting, and I didn't feel the urge to take a lot of photos with it. (In between my first and second unit, I swapped back to the Pixel 9 Pro and took lots of photos in that time.)

The 5,000-mAh battery capacity is underwhelming. I typically get a full day out of the device, with 20 to 30 percent left by bedtime. Fine to get you through a busy day, but I expected a bit more. There's no wireless charging natively (get the Wireless Charging Outfit!), but it supports 33-watt charging speeds. There's NFC for contactless payments via Google Wallet, a headphone jack (!), and a microSD card slot to bump the internal 128 GB up to 1 TB should you need it. It's only IP54 water resistant, so it'll be OK in the rain, not so much in the pool.

It runs Android 14, which is already outdated because Android 15 arrived not too long ago. And because it will only receive two Android OS upgrades, that means this phone won't get Android 17 in 2026. At least it gets three years of security updates. I don't have much to complain about the software except for the preinstalled bloatware, which you can thankfully uninstall. Oh, and the native weather app refuses to let me change Celsius to Fahrenheit. I'm in America, darn it!

There's stiff competition in this price bracket. The Moto G 5G Power (2024) is an excellent $300 phone that's now often on sale for $200, and it includes wireless charging, sports better performance, and a nicer 120-Hz screen. Also consider the Nothing Phone (2a), which costs $350 and has a more unique design, longer software support, and an excellent software experience.

I would choose either of those phones before the Fusion, but you never know, the mods could pick up steam and get more inventive. Maybe there'll be an Outfit I actually want to wear.