It might be worse for someone who tests phones for a living, but I think you’ll agree that the smartphone market has been pretty boring in recent years.
Similar designs and minimal hardware upgrades have led to AI being the big trend right now, but Nothing does something completely different, and I love it.
The company is still relatively new to the market and its sub-brand CMF is even bigger. However, the first smartphone is here to shake up the market, especially in the budget area, which is usually the most boring of all.
And there’s really no reason for that, as nothing has proven with the CMF Phone 1.
It stands out mainly because of its design and not just because it is bright orange. It’s a throwback to the old days of mobile phones, when they could be taken apart and modified – it really appeals to the tinkerer in me.
Those stainless steel screws aren’t just for show. Just like before, you can take them out (small screwdriver provided) and remove the back cover, then attach another one. There are four colors in total: orange, black, blue and light green – all for £29/$35.
The fun doesn’t end there as the mysterious dial on the corner that we all wanted to know is for attaching various accessories.
Unscrew it and you can add things like a stand or a lanyard. Simple but effective and fun. They cost £19/$25 each and are only available in orange, which is fine for me unless the light green back is fitted.
The final accessory – hopefully more to come – is a card holder, a panel that attaches via the smaller screws and then a wallet part that attaches via magnets in an Apple MagSafe-like fashion.
Again, it costs £19/$25 and will only be in orange at launch.
All this means the CMF Phone 1 offers something very different to rivals and starts at just £209 or $199.
It’s no slouch on the specs front either, with a 120Hz 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display, 50MP rear camera, a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 chipset, a 5,000mAh battery and 33W fast charging. It is very similar to the Nothing Phone (2a).
A few things to note with the removable back cover is that this means there is no waterproofing (just splash proof) and the battery is unfortunately not removable like on a Nokia 3210 – although it should be much easier to replace than most modern smartphones.
There’s no NFC either, but I think this could still be the best budget smartphone of 2024 and we’ll have a review soon to see if that’s the case (pun unintended).
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