TL;DR: Repairable, but no long-term OS support and not easy to load an alternative OS on.

The specifications pages for the HMD Fusion and HMD Skyline explain the phones are only guaranteed to receive two major Android operating system updates and three years of Android OS security patches. There’s no guarantee of a release schedule for security updates on the Skyline, while the Fusion will get two years of monthly updates and quarterly updates for the last year.

I think it’s a valid criticism. I was a longtime Android user (at least a decade) but my last Android was a Pixel 2 that I bought at launch. That was the first Android phone I’d had that I wasn’t dying to replace after 2 years. I made it to 3 years and then the phone stopped getting security updates, a Qualcomm problem as much as a Google problem at the time. Meanwhile I looked at my stepdaughter using my wife’s old iPhone, which was 6 years old at that point and still receiving updates and still easy enough to take to a local shop for repairs when she would break it. That was my largest reason to make the switch.

I’m glad to see Google is now promising much longer support on its phones, 6 to 8 years on more recent Pixels, and it seems fairly easy to put an alternate OS on. Other Android brands should really try to follow that lead.