Hi everyone,
This is Chandan, and you may also know me @that_chand across major social media platforms. I recently had the opportunity to use and review the CMF Phone 2 Pro as part of the Community Review Program. A special thank you to Akis and Deepanshu for the program.
While I have already published a review of the device on Twitter, I am publishing it here as well (cuz why not!).
DISCLAIMER: This unit was provided by the brand for review. But the brand has no direct or indirect input in this review. All the opinions are mine and are highly unbiased in nature.
Unboxing & Box Contents
Unboxing the CMF Phone 2 Pro was a one-of-a-kind experience. The box is made of recycled material, and the overall feel and design are very refreshing from the generic smartphone boxes. You also get pretty much everything inside the box.
There’s the phone itself, a 33W adapter, a type-C to type-C cable, a nice transparent TPU case and a SIM ejector tool with CMF’s design touch. The phone comes with a pre-installed screen protector (membrane).
Design & Build
The device is made completely out of polycarbonate material. However, the ring you see around the camera is made of metal. In the first touch only, I was able to feel how lightweight and modular it is. It weighs around 185 g and measures the thickness of 7.8mm.
Despite being a big display smartphone, it feels very nice and comfortable to hold (an upgrade from the CMF Phone 1). You get four colour options: Black, White, Light Green and Orange. I have the green colour variant with me, and it has a nice shimmering matte finish.
The Orange and White get a dual-tone rear panel. It has a flat frame with a power on/off button and Essential Key housed on the right-hand side, whereas the volume control is on the left.
Category Rating: 4.5/5
Multimedia: Display, Speaker and BT
The CMF Phone 2 Pro has the same display as Phone (3a). It’s a 6.77-inch flexible AMOLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, FHD+ resolution and variable refresh rate (30- 120Hz) support. It has an HBM (High Brightness Mode) rating of 1300-nits.
The display is good enough for the price. You get a symmetrical bezel around the panel, and to achieve this, the brand had to settle for thicker borders overall. But in my opinion, they could’ve let go of the symmetrical bezels to provide a better-looking panel with more FOV.
There’s no support for HDR in Netflix. The mono speaker is terrible, and the ‘150% volume’ mode somehow makes it worse. Bluetooth, on the other hand, is good. It has support for all the major audio codecs, and I haven’t faced any issues with it so far.
Category Rating: 3.5/5
Battery & Charging
The Phone 2 Pro comes with a 5000mAh battery, and while it may seem outmatched by the monsters packing 6000mAh or even 7000mAh batteries, CMF takes the win in optimisation. It delivered 8+ hours of screen-on time, even with heavy gaming and camera use.
It has support for 33W PPS charging, and it’s very restrictive in terms of temperature control. And as a result, it takes around 1 hour and 30 minutes to fuel up to 100%. The latest update has not made any drastic change either.
Category Rating: 3.8/5
Performance
The CMF Phone 2 Pro packs a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro SoC with DDR4x RAM and UFS 2.2 storage. The day-to-day usage is fine with a few stutters and lags around the UI and while using the camera. The gaming performance is just fine. It’s not the best device for it.
I didn’t try a lot of games, but since there was a lot of hype about BGMI 120FPS support, I tried it. And believe me, if you want to game on it, you are better with the Smooth + 60 FPS settings. Any device can handle BGMI well if you just want to loot and wander around, but the real test is when you engage in close combat, as this is the time when the device has to go through a lot of rendering and server load. Being an old BGMI player, I couldn’t avoid it and noticed tons of stutters and lags.
Category Rating: 3.8/5
Software
The NothingOS 3.2 is decent enough. It got close to a stock-Android experience with nice animations. However, you miss out on some core features and multitasking features. But since options are limited in this range, it is an easy plus.
Category Rating: 4.⅗
Camera
Now talking about one of the most hyped features of the device, its cameras. It has a 50-megapixel GN9 1/1.57″ primary camera, a 50-megapixel OV50D 2X telephoto, an 8-megapixel ultrawide and a 16-megapixel selfie shooter. There’s no OIS on any of the lenses.
- Daylight performance is good, but HDR control needs work.
- There’s a huge inconsistency in terms of colours and overall camera performance.
- Highlight control is sub-par.
- Night performance is poor, primarily because of the lack of OIS.
- Zoom performance is very good.
- Portrait mode needs work as it’s inconsistent with skin tones and edge detection.
- Selfie is decent for good lightning conditions, but poor for the rest. It applies face beauty even when it is turned off (Very annoying!).
While the cameras look good on paper, they need a lot more work and refinement. And the lack of OIS…? They could’ve better skipped to ultrawide in favour of OIS, but it is what it is.
Category Rating: 3.⅖
Others
- Haptic motor is the best you can get in this segment. However, just like its elder brothers, it is not implemented properly across the UI.
- The microphone quality is subpar. It performs poorly, especially under a fan or noisy environment.
- The fingerprint scanner works fine, and so does the face unlock.
Final Verdict
The CMF Phone 2 Pro is a decent device, but it still has a long way to go, and that’s why I call it ‘A Phone with Untapped Potential.’ The camera hardware is good, but the processing falls short. Battery optimisation is solid, yet charging could be better. The SoC isn’t the best in its price range either. It’s a mixed bag - one step forward, one step back - making it tough to figure out exactly who this phone is meant for.
Final Rating: 3.8/5
