HMD Crest Review: A Smartphone That is Finally Priced Right

After nearly five years, I finally got a chance to test a budget smartphone priced under Rs 15,000. A few years back, this segment used to be the most crowded, but due to recent consumer shifts toward higher-priced devices, many brands have left this segment largely unexplored.

However, HMD announced two new smartphones under its own HMD brand in India: the HMD Crest, priced at 14,499/- (available for 12,000/-with the discounts), and the HMD Crest Max, which comes with a better camera setup and is priced at 16,499/-.

Before we get into the review, here’s a brief background if you’re unfamiliar with HMD company. For starters, HMD Global made a deal to use the Nokia brand on their smartphones. Since then, the company has announced several smartphones under the Nokia brand. The first smartphone they launched under the Nokia brand was the Nokia 6 in 2017. In 2023, HMD announced the launch of its own brand and has since released several smartphones under this new brand.

I have been using the HMD Crest base model (it only comes in 6GB+128GB variant) for two weeks now. At this price, the smartphone offers an OLED display, a 50 MP camera, a cleaner software experience, and support for self-repair. But do all these features make the HMD Crest the best pick, or is it just another overpriced smartphone from the brand? Let’s find out.

HMD Crest 5G Specifications

HMD Crest 5G Unboxing: What’s Inside the Box?

HMD Crest package contents include:

• Smartphone
• 33-watt fast charger with type C to type C cable.
• Transparent Silicon case
• A sim ejector pin, other paperwork, and seed paper.

HMD Crest Design: Subtle Elegance With Solid Build

Let’s start with the design of the smartphone. As always, the design is subjective; it doesn’t have the eye-catching design that you find on most smartphones, even budget smartphones in this price range. But it doesn’t look cheap either; it’s minimalist, and again, design is subjective. When I took the smartphone out of the box, it immediately felt solid in my hand. The phone weighs about 210 grams and is about 8.4 mm thick.

It is available in three color variants: Midnight Blue, Royal Pink, and Lush Lilac. I have the Midnight Blue variant. The color is not quite solid but has a white crystalline effect on the back that appears when you hold the smartphone at a certain angle. It has a glass back. A square camera hump on the back houses two cameras with a silver ring around them, which looks pretty. The flash on the right side has a unique silver metal texture that you can recognize if you look closely. You have 50-megapixel branding and an AI camera label on the side.

There is no information about the protection of the glass back, but it held up well in the two weeks I used the smartphone without a case. I put the smartphone in my scooter’s front pocket and used it with my keys. It has withstood everything well.

You get a 6.7-inch display with a punch-hole camera on the top. It has an aspect ratio of 20:9, and the bezels are slightly noticeable at the bottom. However, the overall look is symmetrical, even if the frame and the camera cut-out on the front are slightly noticeable. The punch-hole display has an additional black layer that is easily noticeable when the display is switched on. This layer takes up some space on the display and does not look particularly good.

As for the buttons, the sides are made of plastic. It comes with a large SIM card ejector, which I haven’t seen on any smartphone recently. However, there are some downsides to the SIM setup. It supports dual SIM or a single SIM, which can be used with a micro SD card with expandable storage of up to 256GB. Most phones use nano SIMs, but fitting a nano SIM in this phone requires an extra SIM tray to place the trim. Additionally, the phone is protected by an IP52 water resistance rating. As for connectivity, the smartphone supports 5G and dual-band Wifi (2.4GHz + 5GHz).

On the bottom, there is a headphone jack, a type-C port, and a speaker grille. On the right side, you get the volume up and down buttons and the power button, which also works as a fingerprint sensor. It is easy to access, but it has some issues. There is a slight delay with the fingerprint sensor. It is slower and sometimes doesn’t even light up the screen. You have to press the power button to light up the screen manually.

Overall, the phone feels solid in hand. It doesn’t have an attractive design but feels solid in hand. In the box, you also get a case, which slightly increases the overall thickness of the smartphone.

It comes with a 6.67-inch display on the front protected by Dragon Trail glass. It also doesn’t come with a pre-applied screen protector. In my two weeks of use, I have noticed a small scratch on the screen. If you are getting this smartphone, use it with a screen protector. The smartphone is not too wide or too tall. It is compact for my hands. However, I noticed slight discomfort after holding it for a few minutes because of the weight. It feels heavy, and using it for longer periods might cause discomfort.

The biggest advantage of the HMD smartphone is its self-repairability, which is achieved by using a self-mobile repair kit, which you can buy separately from HMD. You can replace the display, back cover, battery, and charging port. I have much more to say about this, especially how HMD implements it. You can check the self-mobile repair section for more information and my experience.

HMD Crest Display: OLED Display in a Budget Smartphone

Next, coming to the display, you get a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display, the only smartphone to offer this at this price point. The display looks great for the price. The colors are slightly muted but, overall, appear good. The display is sharp. I faced a few issues during my two weeks of use. First, the colors are unsaturated. There is no option to set the display tone to a more vivid setting in the settings, which is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. Whether consuming media, reading in browsers, viewing, or taking pictures, the colors look pale.

Another issue is the display tone and white balance. Almost every time, the tone shifts to either warmer or cooler tones. For example, if you read a webpage, the display tone shifts to warm. If you’re watching YouTube, it sometimes shifts to warm and other times to a cooler tone. Additionally, if you tilt the smartphone to the right, left, or any other angle, the display shifts to warmer color tones.

On the positive side, the display is sharp. I had no major issues while reading websites or watching content, except for the slightly muted colors during media viewing. The refresh rate comes with 90Hz support, set to 90Hz by default. You can switch to a standard from the settings. You can also adjust the white balance. If you don’t like warmer colors, you can adjust them, which helps fix the issue of the display becoming warmer.

The display also comes with Widevine L1 support and HDR support. It supports HD content on popular apps like Netflix and Amazon. Overall, segments first have an AMOLED display, an advantage of this smartphone. However, the display color tone issues and the ability to adjust colors on the display would be a great addition.

HMD Crest Performance: UNISOC T760 Processor in Action

The smartphone uses a UNISOC T760 processor, which offers decent performance considering its price. It delivers performance similar to the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, commonly in this price range. Speaking of the processor’s capabilities, I tested the benchmarks with the smartphone.

The day-to-day performance is generally good, but there are slight lags and delays when switching apps and opening high-resource apps, which happens with most budget smartphones. I also played games on the smartphone, including BGMI, which can handle HD graphics and a high frame rate. I had no issues while gaming, but the phone gets slightly warmer if you play for over an hour. This leads to CPU throttling, which becomes more noticeable after prolonged high-intensity use.

It has 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage with UFS 2.2 storage. I had no major issues with multitasking, except for a few lags while opening apps. The app switching is smooth, and apps open quickly without major issues. It can hold up to 5 apps in the background, but in my testing, it could not keep the BGMI game running when I switched to WhatsApp to send a message and then shifted back to the game. The game restarted from the beginning. However, this doesn’t happen every time; it only happens when other apps run in the background. The phone also comes with expandable storage, which you can expand up to 256GB using a microSD card.

Overall, the smartphone’s performance is fine for what it offers at this price. I experienced minor lags in day-to-day performance, but the gaming experience is good. I had no major concerns, but there is a slight CPU throttling issue when gaming for over an hour. Apart from this, I had no issues using the smartphone for regular use, like browsing, watching videos on YouTube, and general video playback.

HMD Crest Software: Clean Stock Android, A Double-Edged Sword

Remember the Android One smartphones that were top-selling because of their software experience? Well, you get a similar software experience on the HMD Crest with clean Android software. There are seven pre-installed apps, most helpful, except a block blast game. The software experience is clean and straightforward. Currently, no other phone under 15,000 offers such a clean software experience.

Considering the smartphone is now available for 12,000, I’d say the clean software experience is a major selling point. I have tested many smartphones; even those costing 35,000 have built-in ads and dark patterns. You don’t get any of those on this smartphone. The smartphone setup is also free from dark patterns that trick you into enabling unnecessary apps. You get a cleaner, more straightforward software experience.

First, when you enter a PIN to unlock, most smartphones are locked into a specific PIN length. However, with the HMD Crest, it doesn’t limit to pin length, making you enter more numbers than you are intended to, leading to more incorrect pin errors. Another frustrating issue is that there is no search bar for finding apps. You know how annoying this can be, considering that almost every single day, you might need to open your smartphone and search for an app. In the two weeks I used the smartphone, I had a terrible experience finding apps. There is a search bar, but it is a Google search bar, which directly takes you to the internet instead of searching within the apps. The default search engine is based on your app selection; for me, it’s Bing.

The stock Android experience also offers cleaner animations. The software is both a major advantage and a significant drawback. If they fix these minor issues, it could be a huge plus point for this smartphone.

One more thing I like about the device is the HMD Device app. It shows you the device’s health directly within the app instead of burying it somewhere in the settings like most other smartphones. You can see the battery health, memory usage, available internal storage, free external storage, and device temperature. The app also shows battery health status, though it doesn’t display the percentage, only whether it’s good or bad. Additionally, it displays signal strength, data usage, and more, all within the app. A support tab provides access to the user manual and FAQs and even supports a chat feature. The software experience could be much better if HMD could fix those two annoying issues.

HMD Crest Camara: 50MP Camera Falls Short

The camera results are a little disappointing, especially in low light. It comes with a 50MP rear camera and a useless 2MP depth sensor on the rear. Practically, you only get a single camera on the rear. I have mixed opinions on the camera performance. It takes decent photos in the daylight with decent color production and details. On the front, it comes with 50MP that delivers more warmer pictures. The front and rear cameras produce sub-par results with extremely heavy noise in the photo ( Look at the 5th image below).

First, in my test of daylight photos, the colors look decent, sometimes over-saturated. The dynamic range is decent. The images look softer most of the time and have fewer details. Most of the time, the pale colors make the overall picture dull and less appealing.

Portrait mode doesn’t create a blur effect most of the time. The stock camera app takes a few seconds to process the image, meaning you have to wait before you can take another shot. This issue also affects the selfie camera.

The selfie camera on this smartphone produces warm colors, especially for skin tones. It captures decent details for human subjects but produces washed-out results for backgrounds. You can see this in the attached image. It captures slightly better skin details (Overall, it looks like software unless you notice minor details) but consistently washes out the background on the right side. This happens every time. Below, you can see more camera samples and find detailed information about the process and quality of each photo.

I was less impressed with the camera, especially since it was marketed as the best camera smartphone with a 50-megapixel lens. Unfortunately, the high megapixel count does not translate into good camera performance on this smartphone. It is also the same case with the video quality. It can record full HD videos up to 30 Fps using rear and front cameras. It doesn’t have EIS, which can make overall video footage shaky and is barely watched. The smartphone also disappoints the video.

Multimedia: Mono Speaker With Headphone Jack

As for the sound, it comes with a mono speaker. The speaker quality is good, but it sounds a bit muffled as if you placed it inside a box. The sound isn’t clean or crisp; it has a lot of reverb, and the bass is mixed in with that reverb effect, making the sound mostly flat. The speakers can get loud, but not too loud, especially when watching videos or playing games.

One of the biggest highlights is that it comes with a headphone jack. While this might not be a big deal for some, as most people now use wireless earbuds, it’s still a plus for those who prefer wired headphones. However, it doesn’t support high-quality codecs like Qualcomm aptX for the headphone jack. The audio quality from the headphone jack is decent and good for the price. I haven’t extensively tested the headphone jack, but it should be fine for general use. Additionally, it comes with Bluetooth 5.0.

HMD Crest Battery: Could Have Been Better

The smartphone has a 5000 mAh battery. It offers an overall screen-on time of 5 to 6 hours. Sometimes, it’s even better if you’re browsing or reading. The battery life is above average but not the best, considering the 5000 mAh capacity. Given the performance and the OLED display, the battery should last longer than it does, but it doesn’t. You get a 33W fast charger in the box. Using this, you can charge the device from 0% to 100% in about one hour and 40 minutes.

Self Repair Kit: Innovative But Inaccessible?

Next, this smartphone’s biggest advantage and unique selling point is the self-mobile repair kit. You have to buy self-repair kits separately from the website. Using the kits, You can replace the smartphone’s panel, display, battery, charging port, and other parts. According to the HMD FAQ pages about the mobile repair kit, the warranty for the smartphone isn’t void if you use the HMD kit to repair it.

However, not everyone knows the components, especially people in India. It is not as easy as replacing the battery like the fair phone. You need to unscrew the device and then detach the comments, which is difficult for most people. As far as I know, this is the first smartphone to offer a self-repair option, and it’s a step in the right direction. At least there’s an option to repair most of the essential parts yourself. If the battery stops working, you can replace it on your own. I firmly believe other smartphone manufacturers should adopt a similar, self-repairability approach, but one that is easier.

I received the general mobile kit. You can buy self-repair kits, such as the display self-repair kit and the battery self-repair kit, which you can order from the HMD website. One of the biggest downsides is that these kits are currently out of stock. It’s unclear when they will be available again. It raises the question: what’s the point of offering a self-mobile repair kit if it’s out of stock? In the general kit, you receive all the tools needed to remove parts of the smartphone, which can be especially useful for fixing minor issues, like water getting into the speaker or removing dust from the ports.

HMD Crest Review Verdict: A Good Choice for Clean Android Lovers

I like the HMD Nokia smartphones. In my first year of college, I recommended my friends buy a Nokia 6.1. But later on, HMD continued to bring undervalued smartphones. Thankfully, the HMD Crest smartphone is slightly better in terms of pricing. Still, the device has minor issues that should be fixed to make it a compelling choice, especially for those who want a cleaner software experience.

If you are looking for a smartphone around Rs 15,000, there are plenty of options available in this price range. Here’s a decision matrix to help you decide whether to buy this smartphone.

If you are looking for durability and a clean software experience, HMD Crest 5G is the best option. If you want an overall balanced smartphone, pick the iQOO Z9x. If you want a smartphone for better gaming, pick Poco M6 Plus. If you want a unique design and better cameras, go for CMF Phone 1; finally, if you want reliable performance and good build quality, choose Realme P1.

Buy HMD Crest