Hi everyone, I’m Anshu, a tech and photography enthusiast.
Recently, I got the opportunity to review the newly launched CMF Phone 2 Pro all thanks to Nothing’s Community Review Program.
This phone has quite a lot going on for itself & comparing it to the competition makes the value somewhat confusing
There are highs as well as lows, which aren’t talked about a lot.
Let’s uncover things hiding in the shadows
Review🧵
Unboxing:
Big box this time & it covers all the basic things that one needs in a smartphone box.
Here’s a showcase
Adding the charging brick & cover was a wise decision because to not give these things under 20k was quite a bad call
9/10
Build:
I’m not a fan of this green colour cuz the whole “Dual texture” & “Grippy material” used for the white colour appeals to me more
The green on the other hand looks like a metallic finished back which BTW does catch fingerprints but they aren’t visible that easily (All polycarbonate except the camera rings)
When light hits at a certain angle it shows all the fingerprints
The telephoto camera is a little difficult to clean because of the size as lint keeps getting stuck there, but apart from all this, the phone is well built.
8.5/10
Design:
Design, on the other hand, is quite smooth and comfortable.
I don’t like the fact that the back isn’t replaceable now cuz I did find that quite a fun way to customise the device
The camera design was something that I didn’t like but after such prolonged use I have started to like it
Still, Nothing please don’t make your phones so wide 😭 it makes it hard for people like us who have small hands
8/10
Display:
The display on this is quite good.
It’s bright at 1300 HBM & very well visible under the sun. The colour calibration is nice & the HDR performance is decent.
To be honest, I don’t have any complaints with the display quality, but the bezel size & front puch hole size do bug me.
They are big even for this bracket & while I appreciate the symmetry, smaller bezels on this would have been great.
9/10
Performance:
Dimensity 7300 Pro isn’t the most powerful chip in this segment & paired with UFS 2.2 that is something that does give me a thing to worry about
General performance of the device is decent, it doesn’t lag or jitter mostly but it does slowdown when pushed hard like quitting heavy apps like camera or games
UFS 2.2 while is optimised but doesn’t make up for the fact that it will slow down faster than the phones having 3.1
I know optimisation plays but in the end, after a year or so when the optimisation might go down & the storage gets filled up, this will definitely take a toll
7/10
Gaming:
BGMI,
I tested BGMI on this & we can get it at smooth 60fps; the gameplay is quite good. The 120hz mode gives an average of 109-110 fps
I tested all these under a fan room mostly as I did wanna factor in the temperatures these days & even with that the phone performed well
It constantly gave 58-60fps & only after 1 hour of BGMI it got warm & started showing occasional jitters here and there
Is that a problem? Naah (60fps) ~ it’s sufficient for a balanced offering NOTHING is aimed at
7.5/10
Speaker:
A bottom-firing ‘Mono speaker’ is something that I didn’t like TBH
The signature is flat & isn’t very loud. The overall clarity also takes a toll after 80% of the volume but we have to push it because it’s not that loud
I have missed quite a lot of calls because of the speaker not being that loud
That 150% boost mode makes the quality even worse
5/10
Earpiece & mic:
The earpiece, on the other hand, just does the job. Nothing special and that too isn’t that loud or has a very clean sound
Mic is just borderline usable. When recording or on calls the voice sounds compressed and tinny
5/10
Cameras:
The app experience -
Before I dive into the output the camera produces I feel I should talk about the camera app.
The camera app’s design is nice. It’s simple & easy to understand, but there is a major problem with this & that’s the response time. After that, with normal camera use, the “Lens switches” are also janky & can slow down quite a bit.
The inclusion of a telephoto camera at this price is a highlight for this device, I appreciate this step & I don’t mind them adding just a 2x lens here. It’s good to have a full optical focal length.
Main camera:
The main camera is quite nice when it works
The photos are very bright tho’ I usually have to dial it down by -0.3/-0.7 to get that perfect exposure
While daylight shots are no issue mostly but indoors and low light shots are tough to capture clearly, The lack of OIS makes this hard as the night photos and even normal night shots often appear to have motion blur
Portraits:
They have a surprise element as of now.
Sometimes the portraits come out very good but other times it messes up
But after the recent update the messed up portraits have lowered down but we still have a long way to go
UltraWide:
This lens works as it showed be
There’s nothing fancy here but to be completely open with my opinions the image doesn’t look good in the viewfinder but after processing the images becomes good enough.
But yeah only daylight captures are fine in typical fashion.
Telephoto:
I love 50mm focal length in general so I was excited to use this as well
Nothing has gone with a f/1.8 OV50D sensor
Daylight shots are great with nice amount of details, right HDR & the colour tuning seems good
But as soon as the light drops and when we move to a indoor situation the camera shows the lack of textures in the pictures taken
Not something that is a big deal here because it’s fine for a around/under 20k phone.
Selfies:
Selfies on this seems good.
The HDR, details skin texture & overall optimisation of the selfie camera is nice, nothing problematic, but yeah the light drops and you’ll see the quality getting hit.
Also, Selfie portraits don’t usually have a great cut-out between the subject and background.
LUTs: (Lookup table)
This is a game changer
There are a few ‘Preset LUTs’ given by default & in that the “B&W” LUT is the best one
The way it makes the photos stand out is something else (samples attached)
But it isn’t limited to just this..
We can create our own LUTs, can select the exposure, focal length, colours & a lot of things + we can also share them for others to use it and have fun.
It’s a bright creative way of changing the tables of photography from a smartphone camera as before an “Edited” output could only show what the image can become but now with minimal effort everyone can have a better result.
Videos:
Video performance of the camera is just okay
It’s not the stabilization because that’s fine but the quality in general
Daylight videos are fine but evening & indoor videos have a lot of compromise in the quality even tho’ the lights are ample and not that challenging
The exposure shift is just non-existent, Look at the sample below + the 4k video skips frames (atleast that’s what it looks like)
The video section seems to be weak for this phone, Not that any other phone in this bracket is great at videos in general. But just putting it out there
5/10
Haptics~
This is the best haptic feedback I’ve ever experienced in this bracket.
I would say this that this is the best one in this bracket
Typing, nudges, calls & other haptic experience is great.
The integration is a bit weak with Nothing OS as compared to Color OS/One UI & even Hyper OS, it doesn’t really have that level of integration as these guys do.
I hope they improve on this in NOS4
8/10
Software:
Nothing OS is beautiful
The animation, the Nothing’s way of customisation, the ability to do all monochrome, the home screen swirl, lockscreen glass effect, widgets on the home screen, expandable quick toggles and much more
It is very well optimised but yeah it’s not smooth sailing with the software here
If we even ignore the lack of features like the ability to lock apps in the RAM, sidebar, more free long screenshot tool, gallery app that even lacks even a basic thing like a collage maker etc..
However:
- I had RAM management issues. (Apps would reload quite often & get killed in the background frequently) (Nothing says it prioritizes the camera app & games that’s why it cleans the RAM
- I got frequently switched to 4G from 5G even tho’ the network in my area is very stable.
- Charging the device was a mess even tho’ now I’m getting a full charge in around 1 hr 30/40 mins on an average. (Still slow for 33 watt)
And some other small things that have ironed out now after updates
Also, Missed Glyphs a lot.🥲
Charging & Battery:
Battery life on this phone despite having a 5000 mAh cell is phenomenal.
It easy gives me around 7-8 hrs of SOT with over 3+ hours of hotspot use & apart from that all sorts of usage of Twitter, YouTube, YouTube Music, Calls, WhatsApp, Camera & other UI flicks etc..
Without that heavy hotspot use with the same usage of rest of the apps it touches 9+ hrs of SOT easily.
But …..
Charging is not that impressive here…
It’s not just the 33 watt peak wattage it supports but it doesn’t stay that high (obviously it won’t) but it doesn’t even manage a respectable peak wattage
I have seen the wattage dropping below 5W often and very easily, the culprit here isn’t the charger but the algorithm & tech Nothing uses.
It’s because of the PPS protocol & the charging to be throttled value which is quite low because of which the phone throttles charging speeds very often & that’s why it charges so slow
I could get around this by charging my phone while it’s “Switched Off” but let’s be real it’s not practical.
However this PPS protocol thing was a big issue with my cousin’s Phone 2a as well but it wasn’t this bad
5/10
Essential Key:
The Essential Space is fine. There’s not much to do here with such limited feature set.
But, it can & can not analyse screenshots with your voice (Depends on you now) if you wanna include the screenshot or not.
The transcription & summarisation is faster now but yeah you can forget this exists as well after a while. Because I did.
They need to add more things here to make it much more useful.
6/10
Bugs~
I have been using this phone for a very long time & because of that I went through all sorts of bugs and glitches that were a problem.
Some were big while some were small. A positive note here is that most of the bugs have been fixed.
But there are still a few of them that are a problem but as a part of a “Community Review Program” we were able to share all the bugs and glitches we had with the Dev team at Nothing with logs.
Hopefully the rest of the bugs and issues will be ironed out soon.
Verdict:
So, There’s no straight answer to this.
If you want a phone with clean software experience, crazy good battery, great screen, eye catchy design, longer software updates (3+6) & camera hardware which is good then you can get this
But looking at the cons I think it’s better to wait a little bit for the price to go down then it will be a much crazy deal
If you have a budget of 20k and you want a Nothing Phone then get the Phone 2a which also has Glyphs, faster supported charging, much better design (transparency) better chip etc.
But yeah IDK how much people will be able to ignore the added charger & case when looking at an overall package to buy. Cuz that & the telephoto is an attraction that atleast the offline buyers will not.
Bonus images: (Night mode)
Set -1
Set -2
That’s it for this review.
Apologies for making it this big but I wanted to just talk about this normally because the phone is a decent buy.
Also, after some time when the price will drop down further & bugs/issues will be fixed this will become a great deal.
- Signing out, Anshu.
