CMF Phone 1 Review: A Breath of Fresh Air

Nothing is a master at hype. When’s the last time you were so excited for a budget, or say, a mid-range phone? That too for Nothing’s, a relatively new brand’s cheapest phone.

Nothing strategically teased the CMF Phone 1 bit by bit before its launch on July 8, 2024, and on the same day, it was also announced in Nepal by CG Mobile, Nothing’s official distributor in the country.

One reason the phone generated such excitement among tech enthusiasts is its unique design. You can open up the back panel, swap it, and add accessories — something you can’t do with your run-of-the-mill smartphones.

For those unfamiliar with the brand, Nothing is a company founded by OnePlus Co-founder Carl Pei. Nothing products are really interesting because of its signature transparent design.

CMF is Nothing’s sub-brand company and the CMF Phone 1 is its first phone. The CMF Phone 1 launched in Nepal at Rs. 36,999 for the 8/128GB storage and Rs. 41,499 for the 8/256GB storage. However, a month after its launch in August 2024, CMF Phone 1 received a massive price drop of Rs. 5,000.

At this price, how’s the phone? Should you buy it? I’m Pranish Khadgi, and this is my CMF Phone 1 review, where I’ll try to answer all those questions.

ALSO READ: Nothing Mobiles Price in Nepal (October 2024 Updated)

CMF Phone 1 Review

Design

• 164 x 77 x 8.2 mm
• 197 g
• Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)

How could this be a CMF Phone 1 review if I don’t talk about its design? You can easily tell that it’s not a phone with a generic design. There are screws on the back and an unusual, interesting knob.

The screws and dial aren’t just for decoration — they’re functional. The phone features an interchangeable back. You can unscrew the screws to remove the back panel and install a new one with different colors or materials.

By the way, the bank panel is made of polycarbonate material, so the phone doesn’t feel very premium. But it has an industrial look, and the device feels rigid.

I have the black version, which has a polycarbonate back as I just said, but there’s also an orange one made of vegan leather. If you want, you can buy the orange back panel and swap it with the polycarbonate one. CMF sells the back panels in four colors, so you can choose your preferred color or texture. This is a unique feature that the phone offers.

The dial in the bottom right corner of the back panel is also a screw. You can attach additional accessories to it, such as a lanyard, phone stand, or cardholder.

However, there’s one major drawback in Nepal. Although the main selling point of the CMF Phone 1 is its interchangeable back and the accessories you can attach, even months after the launch, CG Mobile still hasn’t made any of the back panels or accessories available in Nepal. This is disappointing.

Anyway, moving on to the back panel: the black one I have shows fingerprints and grease, which doesn’t look great. It’s not instantly noticeable, but you’ll see it when looking from certain angles.

I also noticed that the printing quality on the back panel is poor. The panel has ‘CMF by Nothing’ branding and a few certifications, but the writing started fading within a week or so. It’s certain that, over time, it will completely wear off.

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Now, coming to the buttons, the placement of the buttons is similar to the iPhone. The power button is on the right side, while the volume buttons are on the left and they are of very good quality. They’re metal, which I don’t think any other phone in this price range offers. The buttons are also relatively wide and tactile.

The front design is great too, with minimal, symmetrical bezels. Plus, the phone is rated IP52, meaning it’s protected against some level of dust and water.

The bottom side has a SIM card tray, microphone, USB-C port, and speaker. The phone supports two SIM cards, but one of the slots is hybrid, meaning you can either insert a microSD card or a second SIM card.

The CMF Phone 1 doesn’t support stereo speakers. It only has a bottom-firing mono speaker. Besides the microphone, the top side has nothing else. It would’ve been better if CMF had included a secondary speaker, but they haven’t.

The speaker is decent for a mono setup; it’s loud and clear, but not the best.

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Display

• 6.67-inch Super AMOLED
• 1080 x 2412 pixels
• 120Hz refresh rate
• 700 nits (typ.), 2000 nits (peak)

The CMF Phone 1 has a 6.67-inch Super AMOLED screen with Full HD+ resolution and it supports a 120Hz refresh rate.

The display quality is good, with vibrant colors. Since it’s an OLED panel, the contrast ratio is excellent. It is enjoyable to play games or watch movies on it.

The refresh rate is also well-optimized. Most apps support the 120Hz refresh rate, and when you’re not interacting with the phone, it drops to 60Hz to save battery.

The brightness is sufficient for regular use, and even outdoors, it’s easy to navigate.

One feature I found missing is the always-on display, which I find odd.

Performance

• Mediatek Dimensity 7300 (4 nm)
• Octa-core (4×2.5 GHz Cortex-A78 & 4×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55)
• Mali-G615 MC2
• 128GB 8GB RAM

CMF Phone 1 is equipped with Dimensity 7300 chipset. I have the base model, which has 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. When I first heard about the Dimensity 7300, I thought it would be better than the Dimensity 7200. However, to my surprise — and disappointment — it uses the older CPU configuration of Arm A78 and Arm A55 cores.

To give the Dimensity 7300 credit, it does have two extra performance cores (4x 2.5GHz Cortex-A78 compared to 2x 2.8GHz Cortex-A715), but still, I can’t say it is better.

That said, there are not many powerful phones currently available in Nepal under Rs. 35,000 or Rs. 40,000. So, I must admit that it’s actually a good chipset for the price, especially after the recent price drop.

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Looking at the competition, there’s the Redmi Note 13 Pro with a Helio G99 Ultra, and better than that is the Realme Narzo 70 Pro with the Dimensity 7050. However, both are inferior to the Dimensity 7300.

But, there has been one wild card entry recently, the OnePlus Nord CE 3, which received a massive Rs. 17,000 price drop in Nepal, bringing it under Rs. 40,000. It features the Snapdragon 782G chipset, which offers performance closer to that of the Dimensity 7300.

Real Life Performance

When it comes to actual performance, the phone feels very smooth. It glides through any app you open.

The phone is well-optimized, and I didn’t experience any lag. For regular social media apps, CMF Phone 1 handles them without any issues.

Gaming

The true capacity of a mid-range chipset is only revealed in heavy games. For a mid-range phone, the gaming performance of the Dimensity 7300 is good.

I first tried playing PUBG Mobile at the Extreme frame rate, which is the maximum it supports, with Smooth graphics. The gameplay was very smooth, and the gyroscope worked excellently. I consistently got a stable 60fps throughout the game, with no major lags or frame drops.

However, one feature I missed is the stereo speakers. If it had dual speakers, the sound experience would have been better, even without earphones.

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Similarly, I tested another heavy game, Genshin Impact. By default, the graphic quality is set to the lowest. To test its performance, I set the graphics to low and the FPS to 60. With these settings, it delivered an average frame rate of 51fps.

At times, it jumped to 60fps, but it also dropped to 40fps occasionally. However, the game remained responsive and smooth.

The phone also got hot, especially the top part of the display. I measured it with a thermometer, and it reached 45 degrees Celsius, which is quite hot.

Camera

• Rear Camera: 50 MP, f/1.8, (wide), PDAF
  • 2MP, f/2.4, (depth)

• Front Camera: 16 MP, f/2.0

CMF Phone 1 features a dual setup camera comprising a 50MP main camera and a depth sensor. It is a bummer that Nothing chose not to provide an ultrawide camera on the CMF Phone 1. The front has a 16MP selfie camera.

Main Camera

You can choose between two modes when shooting with the main camera: natural and vivid. Vivid mode uses AI to make the colors more vibrant. I tried both modes but didn’t notice much difference, apart from a slightly boosted yellow in vivid mode.

By default, photos are taken in natural mode, and I shot almost all the photos in this mode.

The first thing I noticed in photos taken with the CMF Phone 1 is the color reproduction. It’s true that the colors don’t look completely natural and differ from what the eye sees, but I like how they look. I find them cinematic.

The images have a slight warm tone and pleasing colors. Overall, I like the results. However, as I mentioned earlier, the colors aren’t realistic and may not match what you see in real life, but the way I see is these are the types of photos you see after some editing by a photographer.

As for detail, it’s good, and the photos don’t look over-sharpened. A lack of sharpness becomes noticeable when you zoom in, but the dynamic range and contrast ratio are impressive.

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Portrait

Subject separation in portrait mode is good. There are times when it doesn’t detect the edges of the subject perfectly, but most of the time, it performs well.

The facial tones look pleasing, though in complex lighting, the exposure can be inconsistent and may appear dark. However, in good lighting conditions, the photos turn out great.

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Night

Night mode turns on automatically in low light. The night shots are decent, preserving sufficient detail with relatively low noise. However, they appear soft and lack sharpness, which is normal.

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Front

The front camera takes great selfies with pleasing facial tones. The processing smooths the face slightly.

Faces closer to the camera have good detail, while those farther away appear muddy and lack detail. Despite this, the overall quality of the selfies is good.

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Videos

CMF Phone 1 takes up to 4K videos at 30fps. Although the camera lacks OIS, the EIS does a good job of stabilizing the footage.

I also like the video quality. It has good detail and the dynamic range is impressive.

Battery

• 5000mAh
• 33W wired charging

The 5000mAh battery served me well. In my use case, I was getting around 6.5 hours of “screen on time”. I mostly used YouTube, Chrome, Instagram, and one full PUBG Mobile game. For me, it’s a full day battery life.

CMF Phone 1 supports 33W fast charging. It is fast, taking around 1–1.5 hours, for the battery to charge fully, but it’s not the fastest. You can easily find a much faster charging phone in this price range.

Software

• Android 14
• Nothing OS 2.6

The software experience is another strength of the CMF Phone 1. Out of the box, it comes with Nothing OS 2.6, based on Android 14.

It’s clear that Nothing has invested a lot of time and energy into its software. The phone feels buttery smooth, and the attention to detail in small features enhances the overall experience.

For example, small animations when charging the device, unlocking it, or waking it from sleep look so good.

I want to say here that the vibration motor is underwhelming and makes the phone feel a bit cheap. Better haptic feedback would have made the user experience even more enjoyable.

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The notification panel looks similar to the Google Pixel device, and scrolling through it feels smooth as well. One suggestion I have is to make the brightness slider accessible with one swipe, like on Samsung phones, instead of two.

If you’re wondering about bloatware, it’s non-existent. The CMF Phone 1 only includes Google apps and a few essential basic apps. There aren’t any duplicate apps — so much so that it only has Google Photos, with no other gallery app for viewing pictures. I really appreciate Nothing’s approach to removing bloatware, but when it comes to gallery apps, I prefer having a separate one from Google Photos.

You might consider the Nothing X app as an extra, non-essential app. It’s needed if you own Nothing earbuds, but if you don’t, you can uninstall it.

The widgets on Nothing OS are quite interesting. It offers many interactive widgets, and you can customize them as you like.

You can also use AI to generate new, unique wallpapers.

Nothing OS allows you to change the icon pack design. Nothing’s own icon pack looks aesthetically pleasing, but if it makes distinguishing apps difficult, you can apply it only to the home screen. Additionally, you can download third-party icon packs from the Play Store.

As for software support, Nothing has promised 2 years of major Android upgrades and 3 years of security updates. This is below expectations. Even phones under Rs. 20,000 today offer 2 years of software upgrades.

Samsung is the best when it comes to software support, providing 4 years of upgrades, even for budget phones priced between Rs. 25,000 and Rs. 30,000. CMF should learn from them.

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So, this is my CMF Phone 1 review. What do you think about the phone? If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments!