CMF Phone 2 Pro Review: How Do They Do It?

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The CMF Phone 2 Pro comes at a true budget phone price but punches well above its weight with an excellent display, great build quality, competent camera system and Nothing's signature operating system.

The Good

1. Beautifully unique design and colours
2. Bright, price-defying display
3. Reliable, triple-lens camera system

The Not So Good

1. No Optical Image Stabilisation
2. MediaTek chip is fine but a minimal upgrade over predecessor

• User Ratings (8 Votes)
  2.5

Need-to-knows

• Clean, fresh and stylish design
• Excellent display for the price
• Dynamic camera system that produces good 1x photos. Different focal lengths can be unreliable, though
• Starts at an incredibly low £219

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If you’re wondering what CMF stands for, it’s ‘Colour, Material and Finish’, and if you’re wondering what it is in the world of smartphones, it’s the budget arm of Nothing. 

And you really should know about it.

The CMF brand was officially launched in September 2023 with some earbuds, a watch, and a 65W GaN charger (no, really). In 2024, the first CMF phone arrived, and it was called, predictably, the Phone 1. Hey, this is Nothing, after all.

I didn’t review the CMF Phone 1, but I did get to play with it briefly last year and couldn’t get over how it offered so much for a starting price of just £209. The most you could spend on that thing was £239. Which is still basically nothing, in smartphone terms.

Sorry, these inadvertent puns are unavoidable.

Now, we have the CMF Phone 2 Pro. It’s a bit more expensive than its predecessor, and it has the word ‘Pro’ in its name. It’s joined by a bunch of new earbud products, which, on the face of it, also follow the CMF mantra in terms of budget price-busting feature sets.

How I reviewed the CMF Phone 2 Pro

My main smartphone at the moment is the iPhone 16e. Alongside that, I always carry an Android device, into which I place my secondary SIM card. The CMF Phone 2 Pro has played that role over the last few days.

I’m what I’ve always assumed is a ‘regular’ smartphone user. I use them for communicating, browsing, entertaining myself, and taking photos. That’s the kind of use case I’ve been putting the Phone 2 Pro through.

As I write, I’ve also brought it with me to Delhi, where I’m attending the launch event for CMF’s new device.

Specs and pricing

The Phone 2 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro with 8GB of RAM. There are two storage tiers – either 128GB or 256GB, pricing the phone at £219 and £249, respectively.

Category	Specification
Main Camera	50 MP, f/1.88, 1/1.57″ sensor, EIS, Phase Detection Autofocus
Telescopic Camera	50 MP, f/1.85, 1/2.88″ sensor, EIS, 2x optical zoom, 20x digital zoom
Ultra-wide Camera	8 MP, f/2.2, 1/4″ sensor, 119.5° FOV
Front Camera	16 MP, f/2.45, 1/3″ sensor
Video Recording	4K at 30 FPS, 1080p at 30/60 FPS, Slo-mo at 120 FPS, 4K Time Lapse
Water and Dust Resistance	IP54 certified
Battery	5000 mAh, 33W Fast Charging
Chipset	MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro 5G, 8-core up to 2.5 GHz, 4nm TSMC process
Fingerprint Sensor	Under-display optical fingerprint sensor
Audio	2 high-definition microphones, 150% ultra volume speaker
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3
OS	Nothing OS 3.2 (based on Android 15), 3 years Android updates, 6 years security patches
Memory and Storage	8 GB RAM + 128 GB or 256 GB storage; Expandable up to 2 TB
Dimensions	Height: 164 mm; Width: 78 mm; Depth: 7.8 mm
Weight	185 g
Display	6.77” flexible AMOLED, 1080 x 2392 resolution (387 PPI), 10-bit colour depth (1.07B colours), 120 Hz adaptive refresh rate, 3000 nits peak brightness, 800 nits typical brightness

It comes with a 6.7-inch AMOLED display that has a 120Hz variable refresh rate and 3,000 nits of peak brightness, a 5,000mAh battery, IP54 water resistance, and both a fingerprint reader and facial recognition for biometric security.

Comparing the Phone 2 Pro against the Phone 1, the key differences are that it has the Pro version of the Dimensity 7300 chip, a bigger and brighter display, better water resistance, and some camera upgrades, which I’ll get to soon.

Design

The CMF Phone 2 Pro is available in four finishes – white, black, orange, and Light Green. Orange looks to be the pick of the bunch (obviously), but I was sent the Light Green version to review, and it’s really rather nice. Muted, but nice.

The Phone 2 Pro also happens to be the thinnest smartphone Nothing has ever designed. It’s light, too, which, dare I say it, gives ‘Air’ and ‘Edge’ vibes, even before Apple and Samsung have entered the thin phone boxing ring.

If you’re wondering why there are a bunch of exposed screws on the rear of the Phone 2 Pro, that’s because it continues Nothing’s desire to grant CMF phone owners the ability to customise their devices. With a special tool, you can add stuff to the rear casing. There’s a bunch more accessories on the way, too, including a wallet and lens covers (although we’re told that quantities will be limited).

This is a handsome, unique, and characterful smartphone. The Phones 2 Pro looks and feels incredibly well-made and features a display which is several generational leaps ahead of what you get with the more expensive iPhone 16e. By the way – I don’t want to keep comparing CMF’s latest squeeze with Apple’s controversial entry-level iPhone, but I’m afraid it’s unavoidable.

The Phone 2 Pro also sports the Essential Key, which has been carried over from the Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro. This is a dedicated button for placing stuff into the Essential Space, which is an encouraging take on AI. I just wish the button was in a slightly different location, because it’s far too easy to hit, being so close to the power button.

The only other downside I can think of is the fact that the Phone 2 Pro’s looks might be an acquired taste, but that’s what you get when the brand behind the phone decides to be a touch more adventurous than the rest.

Camera

The biggest upgrade to the CMF Phone 2 Pro over the Phone 1 lies in the camera system. We now have a three-camera system on the back, which features a 50MP main, 50MP telephoto with 2x optical zoom, and an 8MP ultra-wide. The selfie camera is a 16MP unit.

We’re told that the main camera is capable of letting in 64% more light than the Phone 1, but the presence of three lenses versus one is arguably the biggest upgrade. None of them has optical image stabilisation (OIS), but that’s the kind of concession you must make at this price point.

I haven’t had a huge amount of time to thoroughly test the Phone 2 Pro’s camera system, but I’ve had long enough to discover that it’s capable of taking some wonderful photos across that optical focal range. Dynamic range is great, low-light is perfectly usable, and portraits, in the right conditions, are superb.

It’s the photographic options which set the Phone 2 Pro apart from some of the competition at this price point, though. The lack of an ultrawide camera on the iPhone 16e (oops – there it is again) is regularly frustrating, as is the inability to obtain usable photos beyond 2x.

The Phone 2 Pro’s ultrawide produces great results, and the 2x optical zoom is reassuringly non-digital. Beyond that, you can get nice photos up to about 5x, but you do need the right conditions, due in no small part to the aforementioned lack of OIS.

Video recording is limited to a maximum of 4K at 30FPS, but it does a really nice job, once again, at this price point. It’s a shame the selfie cam doesn’t extend beyond 1080p, but I guess that’s another concession we need to accept at this end of the market.

Performance and OS

The CMF Phone 2 Pro offers 10% better CPU and 5% better GPU performance than the Phone 1. Those aren’t huge gains, but it doesn’t matter. All you need to know about this phone is that during everyday use, it feels the same as an iPhone 16 Pro Max or a Samsung S25 Ultra.

Sure, if you want to undertake serious gaming on your phone, or anything else that requires mega horsepower… you’re probably not reading this review – let’s be honest.

The Phone 2 Pro is a great performer. It also has a two-day battery life (the claims for which I think are fair), and Nothing OS 3.0. I won’t dive deeply into the latter in this review, because I’ve done so countless times in the past – but what I will say is that it remains the most interesting version of Android I’ve used. The Nothing icon pack is a bit discombobulating, but switch to the standard Android colour scheme and you still have a very unique and fun operating system to get your teeth into.

It also has the Essential Space, as mentioned earlier, which feels very ‘V1’ but which is also a fascinating take on AI and personal information management. Simply press the Essential Key on the side of the phone and you can add photos and screenshots to the Essential Space, where your phone will analyse the contents (including any typed or spoken note attached to the image) and create to-dos and summarise the contents for you.

It needs work, but it’s genuinely useful. And it isn’t being kept from CMF devices, which is nice.

CMF Buds 2 Plus

Nothing also sent me the Buds 2 Plus to review. At £49, they rank among the cheapest noise-cancelling earbuds I’ve ever tried, and they are utterly brilliant.

No, really. They sound superb and have great noise-cancelling. There’s also a boatload of features to play around with in the brilliant Nothing X app, including a fairly comprehensive EQ.

I don’t know how Nothing does this. I checked with them, and, just like their phones, the buds are developed in-house – they’ve had no leg-up from any of the audio industry stalwarts.

The Buds 2 Plus join the Buds 2 (£39) and Buds 2a (£29) – and last year’s Buds Pro 2 (£59).

Conclusion

I made a list of the things you don’t get for CMF Phone 2 Pro money:

• Wireless charging
• Stereo speakers
• Longer optical focal lengths
• 4K/60
• 4K selfie
• Optical image stabilisation
• Flagship chip
• Flashing lights (Glyph interface)

If you can do without those things and you don’t want an iPhone, I can’t see why you wouldn’t give the Phone 2 Pro serious consideration. It is mind-blowingly capable for the money, as are the new earbuds.

Put it this way – if you’re an Android user and you’ve spent years paying over the odds for devices that are subsidised on carrier contracts, buying a Phone 2 Pro outright could save you an awful lot of money.

I can’t wait to see what Nothing does next – as always.