A Budget Phone With More Camera Than You Bargained For

The CMF Proposition

There is a sea of budget phones out there, and most of them aren’t even trying to be different. The same can’t be said for the CMF Phone 2 Pro, a $280 device from a subbrand of Nothing, the company that makes see-through earbuds and, most recently, the divisive Phone 3. What makes CMF different in the budget phone space? A host of first-party accessories that position its Phone 2 Pro as modular in some ways. At launch, CMF offered a few: an attachable lanyard, additional camera lenses that include a fisheye and macro, a “universal cover” for actually putting stuff on, and a magnetic wallet mount. There’s even a cool screw for attaching the lanyard built into the bottom of the device!

See CMF Phone 2 Pro at Amazon

They’re not groundbreaking accessories by any means, but the idea of a modular phone is a provocative one, especially in the budget space where things get vanilla very fast. The problem? I haven’t gotten to try any of that out. According to a spokesperson for Nothing, there was a manufacturing issue with the universal case that actually allows you to attach things, which prevents me (the person who’s supposed to test this phone out) from, well, testing this stuff out. Not off to a great start when it comes to budget phone impressions.

Still, there’s a lot of phone to test here, even if the main thing that makes this budget phone interesting isn’t one of them. So, let’s start with the more traditional stuff.

Can a Budget Phone Have a Pro Camera?

There are a few notable upgrades over the CMF Phone 1, and one of them is the camera. This time, the Phone 2 Pro gives you a three-lens system that includes a 50-megapixel main sensor, a 50-megapixel telephoto, and an 8-megapixel ultrawide. That’s, on the surface, a pretty good deal, but what matters is how all that actually translates to the pictures the phone takes. And the answer to that is… honestly, better than you’d think.

Obviously, you can’t expect a $280 phone to take flagship-level pictures, but you want them to be above potato quality all the same. I’d say the CMF Phone 2 Pro sometimes takes pictures at a level you’d expect, but a lot of the time exceeds your expectations. This generation’s camera was designed specifically to capture more light with its sensor, and it definitely succeeds in that endeavor. Even photos shot outdoors on a cloudy day looked plenty bright—so bright that I would say I was actually surprised.

Any issue I have with the camera system doesn’t have to do with its ability to capture light; it would be with its sharpness. Pictures on the CMF Phone 2 Pro tend to all look a little soft, with edges that can get a little blurry. This is a budget phone, after all, but something to be aware of if you’re stepping down from a midrange device or, God forbid, a flagship. To avoid that dullness as much as you can, I’d recommend shooting in 50 megapixels for the highest resolution by changing your camera’s settings, which are set to 12 megapixels by default. That won’t change the fact that this lens (a budget one) may just be on the duller side, but it won’t hurt.

Speaking of shooting in 50 megapixels, you should be prepared for a slight delay on the shutter when you’re snapping pictures—sometimes that delay between button press and a picture actually being taken is about two seconds. Again, these are the types of sacrifices you’ll make when buying a budget phone, and it may be a deal-breaker for some, but if you’re not expecting the best and fastest all the time, it may be worth the savings. Overall, I would describe the photos as a step above what I was expecting from a sub-$300 device, slightly soft-looking warts and all.

So, What Is the Catch?

So far, we’ve got a better-than-you-think camera, nonexistent accessories, and a very affordable price. But what about the rest of the Phone 2 Pro? If you’re going to be taking pictures, you need a screen that actually lets you look at them with the right amount of color contrast, brightness, and clarity, and I can say the CMF Phone 2 Pro has that. There’s a 6.77-inch AMOLED display with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate that provides 3,000 nits of peak brightness. In phone speak, that equates to a fast, fluid screen with good color contrast that makes editing photos, scrolling web pages, and watching YouTube videos feel seamless. Swiping between apps and pages on the phone is responsive, just like any other phone with a 120Hz refresh rate.

See CMF Phone 2 Pro at Amazon

Performance-wise, the Phone 2 Pro is using a budget chip, the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro, but as I’ve said in many other phone reviews, an older chip often doesn’t matter much. The only time I noticed any real, perceptible slowness was when I was taking photos, but outside of that—if you’re just web browsing and using apps like most people—then this will be enough performance to get you by.

While the biggest differentiator of the Phone 2 Pro is still the accessories, the second biggest is probably Nothing OS, which is Nothing’s custom skin over Android that comes with some visual flourishes, including a monochrome setting that defaults all your app icons to black and white. If you don’t want that, you can easily change your phone to stock Android, but it’s nice to have the option. As is the case with other Nothing phones, Nothing OS runs smoothly on the CMF Phone 2 Pro even with a slower chipset. Again, this is not a phone built for machine learning, Apple-style computational photography, or graphics-intensive 3D gaming, but for all the normal stuff you do on a day-to-day basis, it performs reasonably well.

One thing that I love to see in the second-gen CMF phone is an NFC chip, which means that you can actually use mobile payments. Everyone is different, but not being able to use my phone to pay for things would be a dealbreaker, so it’s nice to see CMF upped its game here. Battery-wise, the CMF Phone 2 Pro comes with a 5,000mAh battery, which lasted about two days for me with normal usage. For reference, that’s the same size battery you’d get on the Nothing Phone 3a Pro and lots of other phones for that matter. The CMF Phone 2 Pro also supports fast charging, but only up to 33W, compared to the Phone 3a Pro’s 55W. One feature that was surprising to me was the inclusion of reverse charging, which operates at a slow and steady 5W, but it is still nice to have in a pinch. I was able to top up my Nothing Ear wireless earbuds, which was pretty neat.

One thing that you’re going to get in basically any budget phone on the market is less expensive materials—this isn’t an iPhone, no titanium here. The CMF Phone 2 Pro is no different and is made mostly from plastic. The bad news is the phone feels cheap in your hand, but the good news is it’s also incredibly light, which I don’t hate. Design-wise, I think the look of the CMF Phone 2 Pro is actually a step down from the CMF Phone 1, especially because it doesn’t have a modular backplate anymore that lets you customize the look. The glass is glued on, despite the screws that would have you thinking otherwise. My main gripe aesthetically is that the “light green” colorway actually looks more blue or silver than anything else. I even did an impromptu quiz in the Gizmodo office, and most guesses were “silver.” I’m not going to go full color police here, but if your name is CMF (an acronym for color, material, and finish), you ought to nail the whole color thing.

Am I Budging on Budget Phones?

I’m going to be honest with you: I won’t be using a budget device any time soon—I’ve grown accustomed to snappy pictures aided by computational photography, beefy chipsets, and a weight and feel that some midrange and budget devices don’t offer. But just because I won’t be switching doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. The fact of the matter is that the CMF Phone 2 Pro does what you need it to and even excels in categories that you wouldn’t expect.

The CMF Phone 2 Pro has a camera that performs much better than it ought to, a solid battery, a screen that will please most people in most scenarios, and even ventures to offer unique perks like accessories and bespoke software, even if one of those things was actually kind of botched at launch. In the budget world, I think it’s hard to find all of those pros in one package, and for $280 it’s encouraging to know that you can get a device that won’t make you feel like you’ve stepped back in time to a point where people still said the “cell” in front of “phone.” I hope that CMF figures out its modular identity, though. A glued-on backplate is a step back, and not having accessories available at launch is a bad look, but the idea of a modular phone is one that I think could appeal to the masses.

Budget phones will never be for the legions of spoiled iPhone users, but for the rest of the world, options like the CMF Phone 2 Pro are here to fill in the gaps and offer you quite a lot for not a lot of money, and it’s nice to know that if you ever wanted to, you could still buy a sub-$300 phone and get away with it.

See CMF Phone 2 Pro at Amazon