The first phone to launch under Nothing’s sub-brand is the CMF Phone 1. Unlike the Nothing line of smartphones, this arrived as a budget offering with value-for-money hardware. More than the specifications, the design of the phone is what caught everyone’s attention. It gets a unique customisable back cover design. We have already reviewed the phone and found it to be pretty impressive.
In this article, we tell you why you should consider buying the CMF Phone 1 and why you should skip it.
Table of Contents
4 reasons to buy CMF Phone 1
Interesting design
CMF Phone 1 misses out on Nothing’s signature Glyph LED light interface. Instead, the phone seeks its own identity. The CMF Phone 1 comes with an interchangeable back panel, something similar to the first-gen Moto G-series. The firmly-secured screws and the rotating wheel screw give it a distinctive look. This allows for 3rd party brands to bring in their own replaceable back panel designs with the same screw hole.
The camera sensors are present on the top-left edge within an oval-shaped metal-like casing. The front of the phone has a flat display with narrow bezels. The CMF Phone 1 has a plastic body but it is built firmly with no creaking sounds or doesn’t bend. We get an IP52 rating for splash resistance.
Customisability
As said, the CMF Phone 1’s back panel can be replaced and the panels are available in various colours: Blue (India only), Orange, and Light Green priced at Rs 1,499 each. The Blue and Orange panels have a vegan leather finish and are 1mm thicker than the regular panels. Besides the back panels, the rotating wheel allows for attaching accessories like a kickstand for vertical or horizontal viewing, a card holder, or a lanyard.
Impressive performance
CMF Phone 1 is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7300. This new chipset from MediaTek is built on a 4nm manufacturing process and has a peak clock speed of 2.5GHz. The chipset sits below the MediaTek Dimensity 7200. Besides that, the handset was able to offer impressive performance in day-to-day tasks like multitasking, GPS navigation, media consumption, and gaming as well. There weren’t any app crashes issues or stutters in the UI. The same is evident from the synthetic benchmark results.
The phone was able to handle BGMI at HDR graphics and Ultra frame rate settings. However, the temperatures slightly shot up but nothing was unbearable. It was able to offer a 37.06 average frame rate per second (FPS), which is better than the competition.
Clean UI
Besides the customisable back cover, one thing that sets apart the CMF Phone 1 is its clean UI. It runs on Android 14-based Nothing OS 2.6 custom layer out of the box. This is the cleanest a smartphone UI can get. There are no bloatware applications or any fishy ads in the UI. The number of pre-installed apps is also significantly lower than the competition. This improves the overall user experience of the phone and is also seamless.
2 reasons to not buy CMF Phone 1
Slower charging speed
The CMF Phone 1 packs a 5,000mAh battery and 33W fast charging support. This is relatively slower than the competition. The adapter needs to be purchased separately at Rs 799 along with the phone.
Moving along, the 33W charger takes over an hour to charge from 20-100 percent. This is marginally slower than the competition. For comparison, the Realme P1 offers 45W fast charging and OnePlus Nord CE4 Lite has 80W fast charging support. These take up to 50 minutes to charge from 20-100 percent. This is a drawback of the CMF Phone 1, especially when you have to purchase the adapter separately.
Lacks stereo speakers and sub-par IP rating
The CMF Phone 1 comes with a single-firing speaker and lacks stereo speakers. This is prominent when you watch to consume content or play games with too much action without headphones. Though it is loud, the single speaker vent is a no match to the competition that offers a stereo audio experience.
The CMF Phone 1 comes with an IP52 rating and this is only good for protection against splashes. In comparison, the lower-priced iQOO Z9 Lite offers an IP64 rating for water and dust resistance.
CMF Phone 1 Images
