Her poor handling and low quality armor contributed to a short career, spent almost entirely as a stationary training ship.

She was briefly activated in 1897 during the Greco-Turkish War, but she was already in bad condition just three years after she entered service, as was the rest of the ancient Ottoman fleet.

The Ottomans embarked on a reconstruction program after the incident humiliated the government, but Hamidiye was in too poor a state by 1903 to warrant rebuilding, and she was accordingly decommissioned that year, placed for sale in 1909, and sold to ship breakers in 1913.

Hamidiye was one of a handful of ironclads to be ordered from the Ottoman Imperial Arsenal; her design was based on preceding, British-built Mesudiye-class central battery ships, albeit reduced in scale to the size of the earlier Osmaniye class.

[7] The ship was powered by a single horizontal, two-cylinder compound steam engine manufactured by Maudslay, which drove one screw propeller.

Steam was provided by four coal-fired box boilers manufactured by the Imperial Arsenal, which were trunked into a single funnel amidships.

The engine was rated at 6,800 indicated horsepower (5,100 kW) and produced a top speed of 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph) on sea trials.

Hamidiye's armor proved to be poor quality, being described in Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships as "very spongy and flaky".

[11] Work proceeded at an extremely slow pace, and she was launched or on 4 January 1885 and the following day, she was found to be filling with water, the result of a missing rivet in her keel.

[9] By the time she entered service, she had been surpassed by the rapidly changing warship designs of the 1880s and 1890s, first by the turret ships such as the Italian Duilio type,[13] and then by modern pre-dreadnought battleships like the British Royal Sovereign class, which began to enter service the year before Hamidiye was commissioned.

[14] Moreover, Hamidiye was equipped with poor quality armor and was difficult to handle, so she was employed as a stationary training ship for torpedo boat crews.

On 19 March, Hamidiye and the ironclads Mesudiye, Aziziye, and Necm-i Şevket and three torpedo boats departed the Golden Horn, bound for the Dardanelles.

On 15 May, Hamidiye and the ironclads Mesudiye, Necm-i Şevket, Osmaniye, and Aziziye, along with several other vessels conducted a major training exercise under the supervision of von Hofe, where severe deficiencies in the level of training were revealed, particularly with the men's ability to operate the ships' guns.