CMF Phone 1 is the first smartphone by CMF, the sub-brand of Nothing. Due to the unique design concept, the phone has already created a buzz among consumers and the tech community. But, that’s not enough. The phone should do well in performance as well. I got the CMF Phone 1 to test and have been using it for more than 10 days. Here’s my detailed review of CMF Phone 1.
Let me start with the design. CMF Phone 1 comes with a unique design that stands out. It has a large display with thick bezels but the back panel is interesting. You can see screws on the back panel. Unscrew them, and you can swap out the back plate. The company is also selling different color back plates for 1200 each. So, you can change the look and feel of the phone by changing the back plate.
This dial is called the Accessory Point and is used to add lanyard cable and phone stand. Due to this swappable back plate design, CMF Phone 1 only offers an IP52 rating. The phone looks sleek and is 8.2 mm thick. It carries a weight of 197 grams and feels bulky in hand. Due to sharp edges, it may become uncomfortable to some people and it is also quite hard to use with just one hand.
At the front, it has a 6.67-inch display but bezels are quite thick. The power button is on the right side and the volume rocker is on the left. At the bottom side, it has a single bottom-firing loudspeaker, Type-C port, and SIM card slot. It has a hybrid SIM slot, so you have to choose between a second nano-SIM card or a microSD card. The rear cameras are arranged in a pill-shaped camera module located at the top left corner. The matte finish on the back also makes it look good.
Overall, the design of CMF feels good and it also has a solid design.
The CMF Phone 1 sports a 6.67-inch Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The display offers deep blacks, rich colors, and sharp visuals for an immersive viewing experience. It is an 8-bit panel and has two color modes. There is HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG in terms of HDR decoder support. The 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling through menus, websites, and social media feeds buttery smooth.
The display has a peak brightness of 2,000 nits and a typical brightness of 500 to 700 nights. It is bright enough for most indoor and outdoor use cases.
It has an in-display fingerprint sensor that is quick and accurate. You can also enable Face unlock which works well if there’s enough light to detect your face.
The phone runs Nothing OS 2.6 on top of Android 14. Nothing promises two years of major Android updates and three years of security patches. The UI is clean and snappy. It also has a limited number of preinstalled apps compared to other devices of this price segment. Users also get an option to choose between Android’s Material UI and NothingOS themes
The phone is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 5G chipset. Dimensity 7300 is a 4nm chip and comes with a Mali-G615 GPU. It is not a very powerful chip, but it can handle most daily tasks like web browsing, social media, and video streaming smoothly. I didn’t face any lag during the testing. The phone comes in 6GB or 8GB RAM options. There is also a RAM booster feature for virtual RAM expansion of up to 8GB.
The phone performs well with casual games, delivering a smooth experience. However, it faces challenges with demanding titles at high graphics settings. In these scenarios, you might notice occasional frame rate drops or stutters. During my testing, I played BGMI and CoD Mobile, which highlighted these limitations. There is a liquid cooling system in the phone for thermal management and it works well. It only shows a minimal temperature increase after extended gaming sessions or demanding tasks.
It has 128GB UFS 2.2 storage that provides good read-write speed.
I also ran a few benchmark tests and here are the results.
The phone has a 50-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel depth camera. The primary camera has pixel binning to output 12.5MP photos by default.
In good lighting conditions, the CMF Phone 1 captures decent photos with natural-looking colors, good contrast, and acceptable detail. However, sharpness isn’t good. It also provided overexposed photos of people under direct sunlight. The phone handles portrait photos reasonably well. Subject detection and background separation are mostly accurate, and skin tones appear natural in good light. But this becomes average in low light where it struggles with skin tone and sometimes captures very bad photos.
There is a 16MP front camera for selfies and video calls. Image quality is decent for social media photos and video calls, but details appear soft, and the dynamic range is also limited. In broad daylight, it captures good photos. But becomes average in low light and indoors. In low light, the skin tone was faded and the photos look really dull. It also has beauty mode, but that’s not aggressive. So, selfies with beauty mode look natural.
Note: After I wrote the review, CMF Pushed a major software update that had several camera improvements.
The main camera can record up to 4K videos at 30fps. You can also record 1080p at 60fps. In proper light, it captures good videos with acceptable amount of details. But sharpness isn’t that great. There is also an action mode for even better videos and the difference is noticeable. In low light, noise becomes an issue and videos look grainy. Front camera recording is fine in proper lighting but average in low light.
If I summarize the video recording experience, it is fine. The camera records acceptable videos and is good for casual users. But people who want to make videos for YouTube and other social media platforms seriously, shouldn’t consider this phone.
CMF Phone has a single bottom-firing speaker. Although it is not impressive, but loud enough for daily usage. It is a dual SIM device with two Nano-SIM slots. It has 5G support on both SIM slots. The phone also has dual-band Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3. There is no NFC or FM radio receiver. All these connectivity options work fine. I didn’t face any problems,
The phone packs a 5,000 mAh battery that can easily offer a full-day battery backup. I was getting around 6 hours of screen on time and this can be even better with power saving mode. It supports 33W fast charging, but you will have to buy the power adapter separately. I didn’t have the CMF power adapter, so I tried the 68W universal adapter to charge it. In 30 minutes, the phone reaches from 0% to 50%.
CMF Phone 1 starts at Rs. 16000. Considering its price, this phone seems a good option. It has an attractive design, good display, nice performance, and good battery life. I am not impressed with the overall camera performance, but that’s still acceptable because you aren’t paying much.
There are plenty of other options including Moto G85, Redmi Note 13, Infinix Note 40, and OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite in similar price segments. If you want a better camera phone, you should also check other phones to find out what is better.
