Budget phone with gimmicks

Review: Nothing CMF Phone 1 - Cheap, Good, and Fun

It's the interchangeable covers and accessories that first capture interest in the Nothing CMF Phone 1, but it's also an incredibly affordable budget phone.

Published 9 December 2024 - 11:11 Modified 24 January 2025 - 17:17

Nothing is a British manufacturer of mobiles and accessories founded by Carl Pei, who was also involved in starting the Oneplus brand. CMF by Nothing is, in turn, Nothing's name for a series of slightly cheaper products with standout design, and now they have made the first mobile under the name CMF by Nothing.

CMF by Nothing Phone 1, or Nothing CMF Phone 1 as it is also called, is a cheap mobile, with 8 gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage, it costs 2600 kronor. With 8/256 GB, it costs 300 kronor more. But it is anything but anonymous. The color choices and the clearly visible screws on the back make the design stand out. In one corner, there is a button you can unscrew to instead attach accessories, and you can also replace the back with one in a different color. Nothing releases the phone along with a whole portfolio of accessories and CAD drawings so that those who want can create their own accessories. All of this, of course, contributes to making CMF by Nothing Phone 1 a significantly more fun mobile than budget mobiles usually are.

Replace the back

If we start with the color choices, the phone is available in black, orange, and mint green, but you can also get it in dark blue if you buy it as an extra back cover, the replaceable covers cost 380 kronor each. The black and mint green back are made of hard plastic with a bit of texture that provides reasonably good grip. The dark blue and orange are in what Nothing calls vegan leather, which might be an exaggeration, but it's slightly softer plastic with texture that provides even better grip.

To change the back, you unscrew five screws, a screwdriver is included with the extra cover, and snap off the back without much trouble. The back cover comes with matching screws and even a SIM card slot, so you really get a completely new color option when you replace the back.

This is also practical, that you can replace the back if it has cracked or become ugly, but it might not have mattered if the CMF Phone 1 had been a bad phone. Fortunately, it is a good phone, in fact so affordable that one might suspect that Nothing has negligible margins on the phone to price itself into the market. As a customer, you can only be grateful and accept in that case.

In terms of performance, the phone is powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 7300, a popular mid-range chipset we've seen in many phones this year. It stands out for delivering solid performance that is naturally not at top model level, but sufficient so that you rarely get annoyed by the phone feeling slow. The Mediatek Dimensity 7300 also seems to have the nice property of giving its phones good battery life. We've seen this in other phones with the chipset, and we see it with the CMF Phone 1 as well. For comparison, the CMF Phone 1 delivers performance tests at about the same level as Samsung's mid-range models Galaxy A35 and A55, which cost 4500 - 6000 kronor.

Unusually good screen for the price

The same can be said about the screen. It is of the OLED type with full HD resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate. The only thing that really reveals that the screen is not in a phone four times as expensive is when you use it in direct sunlight. The screen is still bright, but not as bright as new top models, so in that situation, it has to struggle a bit. Otherwise, it is an excellent screen. The fingerprint reader is also located in the screen, which may not necessarily be a plus but is something that normally marks more expensive phones.

Some missing features still stand out. For example, we don't get stereo speakers, which you can find even in cheaper phones. Even more unusual is the absence of NFC, so you can't use the phone for contactless payments. You also can't have an always-on display so that the phone shows the time even when the screen is otherwise off.

The cameras are also a limitation with the phone. The main camera takes pictures with decent colors but slightly hazy sharpness that doesn't match the camera's resolution. Therefore, zoom is not an option other than digitally, and there's no wide-angle camera either; the second camera is for depth measurement in portrait photos. Portraits are not one of the camera's strengths either. When it comes to photography in low light, the camera does quite well until it gets really dark, then it struggles. Overall, it's still a perfectly okay basic camera with reasonable limitations for the price tag.

Not always practical

Sometimes Nothing's gimmicks are more fun than practical. For example, they have their own user interface for Android 14, where you can choose to have the entire interface in black and white, with widgets in a pixelated retro style. It looks really nice, but when the app icons are in black and white and lack names, you realize how much harder it is to recognize which app is which. Additionally, the interface can't make all icons black and white, so some remain in color, which ruins the impression. But it's completely optional to use the black and white interface in an otherwise fairly clean Android version with few pre-installed apps.

More fun than practical actually applies to most of the accessories besides the interchangeable backs. You can attach a magnetic plate with a plastic box for your cards, but it's a rather ugly solution that makes the phone bulkier, and you wonder why they couldn't just have a magnetic case as an option. If you unscrew the button in one corner of the phone, you can screw on a stand, but it would have been more convenient to snap on the stand because it's very cumbersome when it's in place. You can also attach a loop with the included strap. The loop is somewhat practical, but the strap is almost comically oversized, you could tie a suitcase with it.

But even though these accessories do not provide any real advantages for the CMF Phone 1, they do not detract from the fact that the phone is a real bargain for those who want to stay under 3000 kronor when buying a new mobile. That it's also fun is a pure bonus.

Questions and Answers

Does it come with a charger? No, it does not, Nothing sells chargers separately for 400 kronor, but any standard charger will do really, the phone can charge with up to 33 watts.