CMF Phone 1 (by NOTHING) Review

With NOTHING’s sub-brand CMF announcing its very first smartphone, the CMF Phone 1, we’re seeing a fresh and unique approach that we haven’t seen in the smartphone market for quite a while.

In a very saturated and competitive market, the CMF Phone 1 makes the a good case you don’t need to look far and wide to come up with a new concept that’s fun but not over-the-top, and still able to make it within reasonable budget.

In any case, NOTHING is making it clear though that the CMF Phone 1 will set the stage for future smartphones under this sub-brand.

Design and Construction

With the hundreds of phones we review each year, very few would excite us as much as this one. The CMF Phone 1 isn’t really modular like the LG G5 or the Moto Z2 Play, but more customizable.

When was the last time you were able to take off the back panel of your phone and replace it with a new one? The CMF Phone 1 allows you to exactly do just that.

Simply take off the screws at the back, twist and remove the key cap, peel out the plastic back cover and slap a brand new one in its place. You can even pick another color if you want. And they have plenty of options for you to choose from.

You can do this every day and if you have all the available colors, you can even match it with your outfit for the day (our kit came with all 4 color options).

Despite the plastic build and removable back cover, the phone is actually relatively slim at just 8mm (9mm for the vegan leather option) but weighs on the heftier side at 197 grams.

The power button is on the right side and the volume rocker on the left. Up top, we have the noise-canceling mic and at the bottom, we have the USB Type-C charging port, primary mic, mono speaker and SIM card slot.

At the back, we have the polycarbonate panel that can be removed with the 4 screws and that large circular thumbscrew at the bottom right corner. It may take a while to pry out the back cover on your first try so you will need to use the plastic screw driver that came with the box. You will soon get used to it and eventually find it easier to replace in succeeding attempts.

And that’s not all. CMF also added a selection of screw-in attachments as well. Like this nifty kickstand — so you can watch your favorite videos or stream movies with ease.

Or this magnetic card holder that converts the back of your phone into a nice little wallet for your credit cards.

Or how about hooking it up to a matching lanyard? Like this one!

The trick behind this customization is actually pretty simple. Aside from the four screws that came with each alternate back panel, there’s a screw cap at the bottom right corner of the phone. This allows you to easily switch out and attach a new module to the phone. And it’s quick and easy!

That’s a lot of custom attachments to start with and we’re hoping that CMF will come out with new ones very soon. We also have a few ideas in mind to make this setup more useful.

Display, Biometrics and Audio

The phone has a fairly large 6.67-inch full HD+ AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1080 by 2400 pixels and a variable refresh rate of either 60Hz to save on power or 120Hz for smoother graphics. You will immediately notice those thick bezels which is a result of its inherent ability to have the back cover removable.

The display looks good, though, and colors are great. You get deep blacks and high contrast. Again, those bezels though are as thick as bacon chops but you’ll get used to it.

There’s an under-display fingerprint sensor, which is fast and accurate; or you can switch to face unlock if you want it quicker. There’s a 16-megapixel punch hole camera up front for taking selfies but we’ll get to that later.

For audio, you only have a single down firing speaker at the bottom end, along with the USB Type-C port and the SIM card slot.

Sound quality is okay or average, if you will; quite loud actually but nothing to write home about.

Camera

Speaking of the camera, don’t be fooled with those two lenses. That’s just one single camera in there – a 50MP Sony sensor at the top with a dedicated 2MP portrait sensor at the bottom. They’re both protected by an aluminum enclosure at the top left corner.

The main camera takes really good photos although some are a little on the more saturated side. As you can see in our sample shots here, the photos has good detail, great contrast and on the more vibrant end.

Check out some of the sample shots below:

We noticed though that some photos have software-assisted blurring to give you a sense of depth. However, the sensor made a mistake in identifying the subject so as you can see in the examples above (columns of the building), some parts of the building were unceremoniously blurred out which should not have been.

I think a simple software update will fix this bug in a future release.

The camera can also record videos of up to 4K @ 30fps or 1080p at 60fps. Recorded videos are good and stabilized, clean and crisp, although you can a little over-saturation in the colors and some details are lost around the corners.

The front camera is a 16MP selfie shooter with fixed focus and 1080p video recording capability.

OS, Apps and UI

As mentioned earlier, since CMF is under NOTHING, the phone ran on the latest Nothing OS 2.6 based on Android 14. Pretty much the same monochromatic look and feel as the ones we’ve used in the Phone Phone 1, 2 and 2a. Props to CMF for skipping the bloatware on this phone.

Nothing also promises up to 3 years of major Android update and 4 years of security updates for the CMF Phone 1.

Nothing OS is a pretty clean and simple UI. The interface is fluid, fast and snappy. It is also very customizable with native or custom Nothing widgets and even the lock screen allows you to add system shortcuts and widgets.

During the course of this review, we recorded two software updates on the phone and immediately applied them. As of writing this review, we think they’ve already addressed that bug with image effects we experienced earlier.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the CMF Phone 1 is a Mediatek Dimensity 7300 chipset with an ARM Mali-G615 MC2 GPU. This is paired with 8GB of RAM plus up to 8GB of RAM extension, and 256GB of internal storage.

There’s a hybrid microSD card slot together with the SIM2 tray which has a maximum capacity of 2TB, but 256GB seems fairly enough for a phone in this category. The Dimensity 7300 is a fairly new chipset and is the same one that is used by the OPPO Reno12 and Reno12 Pro that’s also coming out in the Philippines this month.

The 8GB + 256GB config is fairly basic but is enough to handle most of your needs. The phone feels snappy and fast, the NothingOS 2.6 feels light and buttery smooth. That signature monochromatic user-interface looks cool but it could take some time to get used to identify the icons and apps. Aside from that, we liked it a lot.

Performance is fairly decent and at par with most other smartphones in this price segment. We’re able to play most of the popular games with ease although the more graphic-intensive ones, like Genshin Impact or Hongkai Star Rail, would require you to crank down of the settings to low or medium. If you’re a Mobile Legends player, you can set this up to Ultra settings and enjoy the game at full graphics.

In our synthetic benchmark tests, the CMF Phone 1 scored a decent 648,000 points in Antutu Benchmark.

The rest of the benchmark results are indicated below:

PCMark Work 3.0 scores were actually above average but the low scores for the UFS 2.2 internal storage is what pulled down the overall performance.

Antutu Benchmark v10: 648,563
Antutu Storage:
Read: 1,042MB/s
Write: 933MB/s
Random: 712MB/s and 475MB/s (R&W)
PCMark Work 3.0 Performance: 12,450
Geekbench 6.3 CPU: 1,046 (Single core), 2,986 (Multi core)
Geekbench 6.3 GPU: 2,505 (OpenCL), 2,499 (Vulkan)

Connectivity and Battery Life

For connectivity, we have support for WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS and dual-band 5G from the dual nano SIM card. Again, that’s two nano SIM cards with the 2nd SIM tray that can support a microSD card up to 2TB.

The phone packs a sizable 5,000mAh Li-Ion battery. You can actually see that battery when you take out the back cover. It also supports fast wired charging of 33W and reverse wired charging of 5W.

The phone is very efficient in terms of battery life. With moderate use, it could last you well over a day and maybe half a day more.

In our proprietary battery test, the phone lasted 30 hours and 14 minutes doing a video loop of a full HD movie at 50% brightness, zero volume and in airplane mode.

With our PCMark battery test, the phone also lasted an impressive 16 hours and 8 minutes running under the same conditions.

As for gameplay battery life, we played a few ranked games on Mobile Legends over WiFi at 50% brightness and 50% volume. The phone lasted way longer than we thought at 9 hours and 58 minutes.

These are all pretty good results for a phone in this category so props to CMF for making this phone as optimized as possible.

Conclusion

When we look back at all of these fancy tricks that the CMF Phone 1 can make, we kinda pause and think, rather, ask the question – are these necessary or practical? Do they add value to the user? What’s the long-term play?

If you asked us. What we can say is – IT IS FUN! We needed something new, even if it’s as simple as having an inter-changeable back cover. As long as these additions and attachments aren’t too expensive, I’m sure it will be a hit.

Perhaps, the only drawback here is that because of the removable cover, the CMF Phone 1 is only rated for IP52, the lowest we’ve ever seen in any modern smartphone. Will that be a deal breaker? We don’t think so.

Mad props to CMF and Nothing for making smartphones exciting again!

The CMF Phone 1 has a pre-order price of PHP 15,490 for the 8GB + 128GB combo and PHP 17,490 for the 8GB + 256GB option. These deals are available in participating Digital Walker stores at SM Mall of Asia, Ayala Trinoma, and SM Megamall. Buyers may also visit the Digital Walker website 125. General availability begins on July 30, 2024.

What we liked about it:
* Decent performance
* Good display
* Removable back cover
* Customizable
* Long battery life

What we did not like:
* Mono audio
* Low IP Rating (IP52)
* Slow UFS 2.2 storage

CMF Phone 1 specs:
6.67-inch FHD+ LTPS Super AMOLED
1080 x 2400 pixels, 120Hz, 395 ppi
700 nits (typical), 2000 nits (peak) brightness
MediaTek Dimensity 7300
4nm, 8-cores, up to 2.5GHz
8GB RAM
128GB, 256GB storage
Expandable up to 2TB via microSD
Dual rear cameras:
– 50MP f/1.8 main
– 2MP depth
16MP selfie shooter (hole punch notch)
Dual nano-SIM
5G, 4G LTE
Wi-Fi 6, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ ax
Bluetooth 5.3
GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS
USB Type-C
Under-display fingerprint sensor
IP52 dust and splash resistance
Nothing OS 2.6 (Android 14)
5,000mAh Li-Ion battery, 33W charging (wired), 5W reverse wired charging
164 x 77 x 8 mm (standard) | 9 mm (vegan leather)
197g (standard) | 202g (vegan leather)
Black, Light Green (+interchangeable plastic back covers)