CMF Phone 1 Review: A Phenomenal Budget Smartphone

I'm coming up connected 10 years of covering mobile phones, and aft immoderate clip with the CMF Phone 1, I don't deliberation I person utilized a much cleanable telephone for the money. CMF is a sub-brand by Nothing, founded by Carl Pei of OnePlus fame. It's been dabbling successful ultralow-cost devices, similar smartwatches and earbuds, but the CMF Phone 1 is its archetypal Android phone. And it costs $199.

I marque it a constituent to reappraisal cheap smartphones—I retrieve the days erstwhile I scrounged each penny I earned to bargain my archetypal smartphone, the $200 Samsung Galaxy Captivate successful 2010. It's important to assistance steer radical connected a constricted fund to good devices. This twelvemonth alone, I've tried the $150 Moto G Play and the $199 Galaxy A15—the second of which I recovered to beryllium a disappointing successor to the fantabulous Galaxy A14 from 2023. But nary of these phones clasp a candle to the CMF Phone 1, which blows its peers away.

Phenomenal Value

CMF's plan connection for the Phone 1 is its archetypal win. This instrumentality is acold much visually absorbing than immoderate different $199 handset successful the US. The concern look comes live erstwhile you clasp the $35 swappable backmost covers. Use the included screwdriver to popular disconnected the screws and you tin alteration the backmost to a antithetic color. My prime was orange.

The screwdriver is simply a spot short, and truthful it's a small hard to region the screws—I can't ideate changing the backmost often. This besides doesn't mean you'll beryllium capable to commencement repairing worldly yourself oregon swap retired the battery—CMF urges customers not to region the artillery without authorization (there's a informing statement connected the battery). There's disappointingly not overmuch present to marque repairs easier, unlike HMD's caller Skyline.

Part of the amusive is the Accessory Point, the small instrumentality astatine the close country of the phone. Remove this thumbscrew and you tin affix different accessories, similar a lanyard, kickstand, oregon wallet. My favourite of the batch is the kickstand, and I situation accidental it doubles arsenic a fidget spinner of sorts. Functional, fun, and nifty! CMF is adjacent encouraging customers to 3D people accessories for it.

But each of these plan tricks, portion unique, aren't what makes the CMF Phone 1 special. No, that's the existent hardware, build, and specs. Instantly, my archetypal content aft booting it up was its speed. In the clip I spent with it, I don't deliberation I noticed immoderate lag oregon stutters, which is uncommon connected a $199 smartphone. That's acknowledgment to the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 wrong with 8 gigs of RAM, but it besides has a batch to bash with the optimizations betwixt the hardware and software, which is Nothing OS. (It's inactive Android, but Nothing's furniture connected the apical offers a circumstantial aesthetic with immoderate tweaks, similar the wholly monochromatic taxable connected the location screen.)

OK, truthful nary lag. Next, the artillery beingness impressed. I made this my superior instrumentality arsenic I traveled to Paris to screen Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event, and I went to furniture immoderate nights indifferent astir plugging my telephone successful aft seeing it had 50 percent left. That's with navigation, euphony streaming via Bluetooth, messaging, and snapping pics. I've managed to propulsion the 5,000-mAh artillery with dense usage and bring it down to 30 percent astatine the extremity of a day, but with mean use, I was regularly getting 2 days retired of it. (I cannot accidental the aforesaid astir the $1,100 Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6.)