CMF Phone 1 review: The only good $200 phone I've ever used

If you find yourself in need of a cheap new phone this year — say, around $200 —you're probably not very excited about your prospects. Historically, $200 phones are pretty bad and you really need to have a positive outlook on life in order to enjoy using one at all.

But the CMF by Nothing Phone 1 is different. It's not just the best $200 I've ever used, it's one of the best phones I've used all year and a shoe-in for phone of the year because of its stunning price-to-value ratio. There's simply nothing like it on the market, and it's quite amazing what Nothing was able to pull off on such a tight budget.

More than just being a good phone, the CMF Phone 1 is an interesting phone in a way we typically don't see. Nothing built the back to be removable via a set of four regular screws and one utility thumb screw that can be replaced with several accessories, including some supremely nifty community 3D printed ones.

About the only major thing it's missing is NFC— something that actually is problematic this day in age when people are paying with their phones more than ever— but this certainly won't be a deal breaker for everyone. Ready to get excited about a $200 phone? I never thought I'd say I was, but it's time you should.

Price and availability

The CMF Phone 1 is available at Amazon or the Nothing.tech website starting at $199 in the US (8GB RAM/128GB storage), ₹15,999 in India (6GB RAM/128GB storage), and €269 / £239 in Europe (8GB RAM/256GB storage).

Nothing sells the phone in Black, Orange, or Light Green colorways. The CMF Phone 1 sports an interchangeable back and can be switched out with Black, Orange, Light Green, or Blue options for $35 each. Nothing sells three additional accessories for the CMF Phone 1 at launch: a stand for $25, a card case for $25, and a lanyard holder for $25.

I used the CMF Phone 1 for over a week in both North Carolina and New York City. The phone I used was running on Nothing OS 2.6 with the July 2024 security patch, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.

What I loved

From every angle, the CMF Phone 1 is immediately recognizable. The uncovered screws on the back, oversized thumb screw (that doubles as a fidget spinner), and chrome accents simply look like no other phone on the market.

There's something deeply awesome about changing out the back of your phone at will - not just slapping a new case on it. In addition to that, Nothing has created a small number of useful accessories that can be quickly swapped via the thumbscrew, which is far easier than the four flathead screws required to swap out the back.

Accessories like a kickstand and lanyard holder are the first official accessories, and as previously noted, the 3D printing community on Reddit has already designed several new accessories that'll help you make your phone even cooler than before.

The Orange and Blue backs come with a lovely vegan leather finish that adds grip and makes the phone feel nicer than flat plastic. Black and Light Green use a matte flat plastic, which is fine but feels a bit cheap compared to the other two. On the bright side, the non-vegan leather backs are 1mm thinner.

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Modularity is something I've wanted in phones ever since Google's failed Project Ara was originally announced, and it's good to see someone finally picking up a sliver of that dream.

Beyond that, the CMF Phone 1 sports specs you would seldom expect at this price range. The phone dons a flat, vision-friendly 120Hz OLED display with DC-like dimming at high brightness and 960Hz PWM dimming at low brightness.

I found it super comfortable over the last week of usage and never experienced the headaches or eye aches that Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy phones give my PWM-sensitive brain. It also gets plenty bright with 2000 nits of peak brightness, so outdoor viewing is nothing short of great.

Overall performance is simply legendary. If you've used a phone at this price point before, you're familiar with how slow and stuttery they usually are. Not the CMF Phone 1. Everyday performance was incredible and something I'd expect from a phone substantially more expensive.

Games like Minecraft ran flawlessly, and multitasking was superb with multi-app switching happening instantly. I seriously couldn't believe the lack of lag — it's really unheard of at this price.

The MediaTek Dimensity 7300 chipset is built on TSMC's 4nm process, which means it's significantly better at sustained performance when compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset. Qualcomm's chipset might have the same ARM cores and a similar architecture, but it's built on Samsung's 4nm process and throttles pretty hard after just a few minutes' use.

In short, gamers and anyone who uses high-intensity applications for more than a few minutes are going to want to pick the CMF Phone 1 over anything else in the space that uses Qualcomm's equivalent Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chip.

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Even the camera blew me away! Launching it takes maybe 2 seconds — again, another massive pain point at this price given phones like the Moto G 5G 2024 can take up to 10 seconds before the camera is usable. Plus, the quality is easily comparable to phones in the $400-500 range.

Seriously, I cannot believe the photos above came from a $200 phone. This quality is simply unheard of.

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What I particularly liked is that Nothing included not only a decent telephoto camera — giving this phone better zoom detail than others at the price. Most phones at this price range include a gimmicky secondary camera that takes garbage quality photos, usually focused on macro photography or something equally useless. The CMF Phone 1's 2x camera makes portrait photos look substantially crisper.

Even when just zooming in to 2x or 3x, those zoomed in images look like actual photos, not a watercolor painting — something you may be familiar with if you've ever zoomed in beyond a camera sensor's capabilities.

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And the front-facing camera is nothing short of excellent, too. Portrait mode is truly stellar and outperforms even the $900 Google Pixel 8 Pro in portrait mode quality. Nothing seems to have really nailed the algorithm for separating the foreground from the background and doesn't exhibit any of the nasty blur artifacts so often found on some other phones.

What could use work

While the removable back is a fantastic concept, removing it isn't as easy as I'd like it to be. After unscrewing the screws, the back is still quite difficult to pop off and required me to pry it off at the edge with the included screwdriver. I thought this would get easier over time but I was always worried I'd crack the plastic when removing the back.

I'm also not crazy about the flathead screws being used, as they make it overly difficult to remove and tighten versus something like a star bit or Philips head. All in all, I don't think too many people will be snapping different backs on the phone regularly to match their outfit every day. Hopefully, the 3D printing community or another user can figure out a better alternative. 

Folks using the CMF Phone 1 in the U.S. should expect spotty 5G coverage and slower than expected speeds. As Brady Snyder pointed out in his CMF Phone 1 critique, the phone has pretty terrible network coverage here "due to its old and, frankly, bad modem."

I used it on T-Mobile and had decent 5G coverage but had to do the old "airplane mode reset" to make sure it stayed there. This means I'd see it drop to 4G, 3G, or, somehow, still Edge/2G and then toggling airplane mode would typically get me back on the company's 5G network. Verizon and AT&T customers shouldn't bother at all.

I also found that download and upload speeds were notably worse than other phones I had on hand no matter if I was using 5G or Wi-Fi. Not the "this took 2 seconds longer than usual" kind of worse. The "this 200MB file took 30+ seconds to download" kind of slow.

In addition to this, there's no NFC support on the phone whatsoever. That means no mobile payments or anything else you might do with NFC which can be a make-or-break feature for some people. Personally, I don't really care about NFC and hardly ever use it, but I've seen several people say this is a deal-breaker for them.

I'd say the wallet attachment makes up for the lack of NFC, but I don't like the construction of it. The actual wallet portion snaps to the phone via a magnet and I wasn't confident enough in its strength to store any actual important cards in it.

Competition

The $200 price point is essentially bereft of any other truly good options. In the U.S., the best option for a new phone is probably the Moto G 5G 2024, a phone that's utterly sluggish and has terrible cameras when compared to the CMF Phone 1. It's also got quite a bit of bloatware installed, a problem the CMF Phone 1 doesn't suffer from.

If you can spend $100 more, the Nuu B30 Pro is a superb launch that actually supports 5G networks in the U.S. but it uses a slower MediaTek Dimensity 7050 processor and it isn't guaranteed the same update cadence or long-term promise as the CMF Phone 1. Nuu had my pick as best cheap phone in the U.S. before the CMF Phone 1 came along.

Internationally, the Poco X6 series is a good alternative but it'll cost you 30% more and both the cameras and sustained performance of that phone are worse than what you'll get on the CMF Phone 1. The other obvious tradeoff is that the Poco doesn't offer customizable phone backs or easy-to-add accessories like the CMF Phone 1.

Should you buy it?

You should buy this if...

• You need an amazing phone for very little money.
• You love the idea of a modular phone with interchangeable parts.
• You enjoy a light OS with great features and support.

You shouldn't buy this if...

• You need NFC.
• You use AT&T or Verizon.

The CMF Phone 1 by Nothing is near-revolutionary in many ways. Not only is it a mere $200 out the door — not subsidized by a carrier to $200 after a trade-in — but it's just an amazing phone all-around. Combine fast processing, an excellent camera, superb multitasking, and a fantastic operating system experience with the unique qualities of the modular design and we have a real winner on our hands.

There's no denying that a lack of NFC is going to hurt the phone's chances of success. As good as everything else is, NFC is a basic requirement for lots of people who have grown used to securely paying for things with their phones. Not only that, but 5G coverage in the U.S. is spotty at best and nonexistent, at worse, because of Nothing's choice of an older modem.

But if you don't care much about NFC or you don't live in the U.S., there's no reason to spend more than $200 on another phone unless you absolutely need something specific that a more expensive phone can offer. This is the best value phone on the market today, and it's going to be near impossible to overtake it for a long while.