Love it or hate it, this is one of the most interesting new phones in the world at the moment, what if we tried to make an average budget phone, but with a focus on software and design?

And it kind of worked.

Those phones are pretty good.

And so now CMF is the budget sub-brand of Nothing, and they've come along and said, hey, well, what if we did the same thing, but even more?

So that's how you end up with this.

This is a $200 Android phone that, on paper, doesn't really stand out specs-wise in the $200 Android phones that you can get, but it absolutely does stand out with its software and design.

And I just want to start with the design first, because that's the most interesting thing about this phone by a mile.

So this is the CMF Phone in black, and on the surface, it's nothing too crazy, right?

It's got flat sides, pretty average bezels all the way around, this big AMOLED display, and dual cameras up in the corner on the back.

But then you realize two things.

First, there's a knob, like a dial down here at the bottom corner of the phone.

And second, there's also a bunch of these metal screws all the way around the outside.

And that's because this plastic back is completely removable and replaceable in a couple different colors.

There's black, there's also orange, there's a blue, and there is a light blue, which also kind of has a little green hue to it, depending on who you ask.

So right off the bat, this idea is pretty unique, like for any phone, especially at this price.

I remember back in the Moto Maker days a while ago, you could sort of customize your phone, but that was also much more permanent.

And it's been many years since we had removable backs on phones.

And even though nothing else comes off and the battery isn't removable, and the back still feels super cheap and flexible, because it is, but once it's on the phone, it feels pretty rigid and sturdy.

And it's still cool to see the ability to change the color.

And it's a convenient little upsell for the company that's selling the phone itself for so cheap.

So then in the box for the cover, you also get this little orange combo SIM ejector tool and flathead screwdriver, since you'll need this tool to remove the SIM card tray and all of the screws to get the back off.

And then it comes with a matching SIM card tray and dial to pop on the back so that everything matches up.

But you can also totally mix and match if you want.

It kind of makes the phone maybe feel a little bit more like your own.

So the color changing back is one thing, but then there's also this knob I keep pointing at down here in the corner, and this is a separate feature.

So I remember when they first started teasing this on Twitter, we were trying to figure out like on the Waveform podcast, like what is this going to be?

Is this a volume knob?

Is this going to be just like a fidget toy or is it a mappable thing with the software?

Like what's the knob?

And it turns out it's a mounting attaching point for some accessories.

So it's not like something that spins freely.

It's kind of just a fancy thumb screw with a colorful cap.

And if you take it off, you can replace it with one of three accessories that they've made so far.

There is a kickstand, which lets you prop up your phone on like a flat table or a surface.

There's also a card holder wallet, which lets me put up to four cards in the back and then And there's a lanyard.

Not sure how many people are going to put their phone on a lanyard, but you now at least have the option to.

You can securely attach it to the corner of the phone.

So is this a gimmick?

I'm going to vote no.

I think that kickstand is the one thing that I would actually want to have on my phone or at least the option to have on my phone whenever I want.

It's kind of nice that that's available for it.

But in general, it's just the main point of it is it's one more useful thing to separate it from other phones at 200 bucks in the design department.

I was going to say it feels kind of like an ultra budget version of MagSafe, where instead of having magnets, you literally have to screw the thing onto your phone.

But then I realized, wait, this magnet accessory, which is the plate that you screw onto the back of your phone for the wallet, connects with this suspiciously familiar looking ring of magnets in the middle.

So just for kicks, I slapped a MagSafe mount on there and it stuck like really well.

So I actually think if you want to buy like a car mount or some accessory to attach to this phone, I actually think you could buy a MagSafe one.

This is the Moment MagSafe puck and it will hold the phone from the back.

So the more, you know, now it obviously takes a bit of work, several screws, the SIM card ejector tool and the twisting and all that to take these accessories off the back of the phone and then put a new one on.

So this isn't something you'd probably do every day or multiple times per day or anything like that, but it works.

You have the ability to.

And then when there's nothing on the back of the phone, this dial actually kind of protrudes the exact same amount as the camera bump in the opposite corner.

So it prevents it from rocking back and forth at all.

Well played CMF, well played.

So they've got lots of neat little hardware customizations, but the other important thing about a phone is what it's actually like to use.

So I've been using the CMF phone one for the better part of about a week now.

And to be honest, it feels just like I'm using a nothing phone, which is a compliment.

Matter of fact, it's literally running nothing OS 2.6.

And aside from the light up glyph interface, it's not missing a single feature that the more premium nothing phones actually have.

It's got the cloned apps feature where you can have more than one instance of a single app installed.

It's got game mode.

It's got the clever little one handed pull down gesture where you can pull down the notifications without reaching.

And of course, all the aesthetics, you know, the icon pack, the home screen widgets, the dots font, all that fun stuff.

You still have that spot where you can view all of your notification history, underrated feature.

You know, it just, it behaves exactly like a nothing phone.

And using this phone, I can honestly say that there were stretches of time where I'd forget I was using an ultra cheap phone.

Like it's a fairly bright responsive display.

It's typically five to 700 nits, but it's an AMOLED that peaks at 2000 nits.

And it's adaptive between 60 and 120 Hertz with a 240 Hertz touch sample rate.

So it's decently smooth and quick.

So, you know, just flipping around through the daily inconsequential stuff, like scrolling through social media or reading emails or light web browsing for that stuff.

Of course, this phone is totally fine.

Super smooth.

The chip powering everything here is the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 5G.

It's about on par with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 as far as benchmarks.

And they pair it with either six or eight gigs of RAM, depending on what spec you get.

It's really decently well equipped for 200 bucks, but you can definitely get this phone to show its price though.

Like it's not perfect.

These aren't complaints.

These are just facts about the trade-offs you obviously have to make to get a phone to be this cheap.

So like this phone has a 5,000 milliamp hour battery and a really solid battery life, but there's no wireless charging.

And of course there's no charger included in the box.

If you're wondering though, it supports up to 33 Watts, but then this phone also has no NFC.

It has a really crappy cheap vibration motor.

It has a single mono speaker down here at the bottom.

That's surprisingly easy to just block with one finger.

The optical underscreen fingerprint sensor, I actually think that's pretty impressive for this price range, but it's also been noticeably on the slower side for me and sometimes asked for multiple reads before unlocking.

And then these plastic backs, you know, like I said, they feel fine when they're attached to the frame of the phone.

But like a car bumper, when they're not attached to the frame, you can really feel how flimsy they are.

These are plastic.

The buttons in here are, they feel like they're literally held on by elastic that I feel like I could snap at any moment.

I mean, they haven't yet, but they just look like they could.

And of course with removable backs, the whole phone can't be super water resistant.

So it's just IP 52 rated, basically just good for a splash.

And we all know budget phone cameras have never been anything special.

This phone is rocking a Sony sensor.

It's a 50 megapixel primary sensor for the camera.

And it takes, I would say serviceable photos.

They're not terrible.

I would say, you know, it's an IMX 882.

So it's actually the same sensor that's in the Poco F6 and the realme 12 pro and some other pretty budget phones and also the moto edge for some reason.

But anyway, there's also no OIS.

So when the light starts going away, it gets rough pretty quick.

And then that second sensor up at the top, well, that's not a camera at all.

That actually, it almost never really does anything.

Turns out it's just a depth sensor for specifically shooting 2X portrait mode photos to get a bit of a cleaner, more accurate bokeh cutout.

But it didn't also complain much at all when I took photos with it covered or anytime while shooting actually.

So hey, budget phones make sacrifices.

That's not a new concept here.

But I like the set of trade-offs that they made with this one.

I mean, squinting back at it, it doesn't look bad for a $200 phone.

And I think the set of trade-offs that they made in the name of really good design and software, I like it.

Now this phone is mainly targeted towards India.

That's the market that it's supposed to be most competitive in.

And in that market, yeah, there's other cheap phones.

They're a little more expensive than this, but they will also have like the two years of software updates and three years of security updates.

They will also have big screens and relatively thin bezels and MediaTek chips.

They're usually not AMOLEDs though.

So that's good about this one.

And a lot of them will also have micro SD card expansion, which this phone also has.

Probably the only notable missing thing is NFC.

But just the sheer amount of time I was able to enjoy using this phone and not thinking about its price because of how smooth it is, all the software features it has.

That's pretty sick.

It's the $200 phone engineered to look cool, basically.

And CMF has also just introduced a bunch of other stuff as well.

There's a new smartwatch, $69.

Nice.

Also a new set of earbuds, $59.

So to give you an idea of what they're working on.

But let me know what you think.

That's my review of the CMF Phone 1.

Thanks for watching.

Catch you guys in the next one.

Peace.

Peace.