Home » CMF (by NOTHING) Phone 1 Hands-On

CMF (by NOTHING) Phone 1 Hands-On

Written By Abe Olandres
Published • July 8th, 2024
Hands-onSmartphones
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Short URL: https://www.yugatech.com/go/59p1

The CMF Phone 1 is is the very first smartphone released by sub-brand under the consumer electronics manufacturer, NOTHING, maker of the Nothing Phone 1, 2 and 2a. It is quite obvious that CMF is positioned in the affordable segment of the market (around $250PHP 14,671INR 21,187EUR 238CNY 1,820 or thereabouts).

Right out of the box, the CMF Phone 1 has that similar vibe to the Nothing Phone line — unique and funky, a bit fun and playful in the colors and tones, simple and youthful polycarbonate body with that signature monochromatic user interface.

Our review unit comes in this black color but the CMF Phone 1’s back cover is actually user-replaceable! The replacement case some with screwdriver-sim ejector, 3 companion screws and matching SIM tray. You simply uncrew them from the back, twist off the rotating lock on the bottom right corner and peal off the cover. Takes about 3 to 5 minutes to change the covers.

We have three more replaceable covers in orange, dark blue and sky blue. The textured back panel has a good grip and grainy feel that resistant to smudges or fingerprints. While the entire body and frame are all made of plastic, it’s well-made, very polished and looks nice. We really enjoyed changing the back covers!

: CMF Phone 1

: CMF Phone 1

: CMF Phone 1

At the front, the phone sports a 6.67-inch full HD+ AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels and 120Hz refresh rate. We’re not sure what glass protection is used here but we’ll update this part once it becomes official and more details come one.

: CMF Phone 1

: CMF Phone 1

: CMF Phone 1

: CMF Phone 1

On the right side, we have the power in a silver plastic material; on the left, there’s the volume rocker. There’s a lone noise-canceling mic up top and at the bottom, we have the USB Type-C port, primary mic, speaker grill and the SIM card slot.

The CMF Phone 1 is powered by a Mediatek Dimensity 7300 chipset and is paired with 8GB of RAM (+2GB RAM extension) and 256GB of internal storage. There’s no microSD card slot to speak of, but 256GB seems fairly enough for a phone in this category. This is the same processor used by the OPPO Reno12 5G and Reno12 Pro 5G that will also be released on July 12.

The phone is powered by Nothing OS 2.6.0 with its signature monochromatic user-interface. This is an update the version 2.5.3 from the Nothing Phone 2a we review but we will have to look deeper into that.

The chipset has a fairly good performance and scored a decent 648,563 points in Antutu benchmarks. Here are the rest of the benchmark results:

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)

The phone has a 5,000mAh Li-Ion battery with a 33W charger. Based on our limited use of the phone, it’s pretty efficient and we did some tests as well for battery life.

In our video loop test, the device managed to last 30 hours and 14 minutes. In our PCMark 3.0 Battery test, the unit scored 16 hours and 8 minutes. In both tests, the phone was set at 50% brightness, zero volume and in airplane mode.

The main camera has a 50MP shooter with f/1.8 aperture. It can capture fairly good photos that are slightly on the more saturated side. Some shots are great while some are a miss.

We also noticed that there are some miscalculation on the depth of some areas of the photo and the software ends up blurring them, just like this building.

We originally though this was just a speck of dust in the camera lens but another photo with a similar treatment showed it detected the depth of the subject and intentionally blurred it. This is just a software glitch and should be fixed in future updates.

The camera can also record video of up to 4K @ 30fps or 1080p @ 60fps. Here are some clips:

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.

For connectivity, we have support for WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.4, GPS and 5G from the dual nano SIM card.

We’ll go thru our usual testing process first before we can publish our full review so watch out for that soon!

CMF BY NOTHING Phone 1 specs:
6.67-inch FHD+ AMOLED display @ 1080×2400 pixels
120Hz refresh rate
Mediatek Dimensity 7300 (MT6878)
4x ARM Cortex-A78 @ 2.5GHz, 4x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 2.0GHz
ARM Mali-G615 MC2
8GB LPDDR4x RAM (+8GB RAM Extension)
256GB UFS 3.1 internal storage
50MP f/1.8 main camera, 26mm
5G, Dual nano SIM
WiFi 6E
Bluetooth 5.4
GPS, BeiDou, Glonass, Galileo, QZSS, NavIC
5,000mAh Li-Ion battery, 33W wired charging, 5W reverse wired charging
NOTHING OS 2.6.0 (based on Android 14)

CMF Phone 1cmf phone 1 philipinescmf phone 1 reviewcmf phone 1 specs

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Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.