CMF Phone 2 Pro Review - Next-Gen Modular Phone!

This is the Nothing CMF Phone 2 Pro. And in a very weird kind of way, this is the phone that I've been most excited about in 2025. Because if you remember the CMF Phone 1 from last year, that thing came out of nowhere, introduced an entirely new ecosystem of accessories that you could very literally screw into the device, was an actually amazing phone even outside of those accessories, and was only priced at £200 or $250. It was so good that I ended up awarding the thing Budget Phone of the Year. And now we have the sequel. It's a little bit more expensive at £219, but it's claiming to be able to do so much more that if it actually pulls it off, this is going to become like the most instantly recommendable phone on the planet. So this is the box I got. There's a whole truckload of stuff inside. So let's just get rid of that. And let's start with a new wallet and stand. Well, that's already pretty interesting that they've managed to combine both of those things. There's another new accessory here, interchangeable lenses. Well, that's interesting. Let me take you back to the last video a second. My mind is kind of whirring of the possibilities. Like I'm just thinking as an example, what if you use this screw and this screw to add a permanent lens attachment to your cameras? And now they're a real thing. Oh, shh. The universal cover, which as you'll see, works quite differently to how it used to. Doesn't feel all that premium. It's a little flimsy. There's a lanyard. This looks like the same as the one you got with the last phone. Why is it so thick though? It feels like you could tow a car with this thing. And then two new earphones. So these are the Buds 2, which look like a very basic pair of 39 pound wireless earphones. And they feel about as plasticky as you'd expect them to. But I've tested these and I was not ready for how damn good they sound. Like very explosive, very bassy, but still clear audio. The active noise cancellation is not the best, but they have all the key features, like auto-pause when you take one out and pretty responsive controls up here. I would actually go as far as to give them a 9.5 out of 10. And then also the Buds 2 Plus, which are 10 pound more at 49. And they are basically just a little bit better at everything. They have this smoother texture. This little dimple is made of metal now. They have slightly better sound. They have slightly more noise cancellation. But the standout thing has to be that the battery life is up to 61 and a half hours, which is very much up there. Also a 9.5. You can't really go wrong with either. All right, so that's the accessories. Now we just need something to accessorize. So these are the CMF Phone 2 Pros. We've got three of the four colors. Let's just go for orange. So first thing you see is the insert, which does actually contain a case. Why are budget phones always the most generous? So then the phone and at the very bottom, this blocky CMF styled USB-C to C cable. And the also custom... Oh my God, seriously. CMF styled SIM ejector tool. All leading to this one peel. So what has actually changed since the first phone? Well, if we hold the Phone 2 Pro side by side with the Phone 1, I mean, there's a whole extra third camera. There's a very unique feeling button on the side that they're calling the essential key. And just generally the body of the phone is a little bit more refined. It's kind of like the Phone 1 just went to the gym. It's about 5% thinner. It's about 5% lighter and it's a little curvier. So it doesn't dig into your hands as much. One weird thing is that there are slightly different finishes depending on the color that you pick. Like they're saying that the green and the black are meant to look glass-like, but in person, I actually don't like them because it's not glass. And in trying to fake glass, just feels more like every other budget phone out there. So let's get rid of these and we will stick to the orange because I think they've done a better job here. Oh no. No, it looks okay actually. Well, there you go. That's our durability tester. Anyway, long story short, pick the orange. Looks better, it feels better. But here's my big question. How does this fit in with all of this? Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. Let's do it the way that I want it. Bad news first. So the way that the Phone 1 worked is the entire back and sides were completely replaceable. You would take these four screws and this spinny thing out and the whole thing would just pop off as one piece. And then for each accessory, you could secure them directly onto the back of the phone using those same few screws. But it's a little different now. You've still got the screws, but the back plate is actually glued onto the phone now. So even if you took all the screws out, nothing comes off, which is what's allowed them to make the phone slimmer. It's what's allowed them to improve the IP rating from IP52 to IP54, which means it's protected from splashing water from any direction as opposed to water from specific angles. But it also means that you're losing one of the key pieces of DNA that I think made the original so special, which is that you damage the back or the sides of the last phone. Who cares? You swap the entire thing out for 29 pounds, which meant that you could happily use this phone completely naked, guilt-free. Whereas because this is now stuck on, we're right back to where we are with just about every other phone, which is, well, I should probably use a case now. But then doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of the thinness improvements? Plus you might not get much choice when it comes to the case. Because while it is very cool that we now have interchangeable camera lenses and this magnetic wallet stand thing, if you want to use them, you need this case. This universal cover is the only way to get the mount that you'd need to attach the lenses into. And this is what has the magnets inside to be able to snap the wallet onto. So this would be its own thing that you're also going to have to buy. And to install it, you've got to undo the screws on the back, you've got to place this on top of your phone's back plate, and then you redo all the screws on top of it. The point I'm getting to is that if you're planning on using any of these new accessories, which feels not unlikely if you're choosing a phone like this, then you're not going to keep unscrewing and re-screwing this whole cover. You're just going to keep it on. And so what that means is that you've now paid extra to make your phone thicker than the previous device. Also not to pile on, but I don't even think this magnetic wallet stand thing is worth all that. As far as it being a wallet, it stores, they're saying, three cards. I wouldn't feel comfortable putting more than two in there. And as a phone stand, I feel like I've been spoiled by my TORAS case. This stand has every orientation and every tilt level baked into it. The CMF stand is, it's just a stand. So that's the bad news. The good news is that because the CMF Phone 2 Pro does still have these screws, and because these screws are in the same positions, the new phone does still have full compatibility with the old phone's accessories. So you could still carry over the old phone stand or the old wallet or the old lanyard, and they will still bolt in place in the exact same way. Plus, these interchangeable lenses, they are actually extremely cool. But we'll get to them when we talk about cameras. First though, what's this phone like to actually live with? Well, folks, they've done it again. As far as the phone experience, this keeps everything I loved about the first phone and fixes pretty much everything I felt was lacking. Like NFC. We didn't have it before, we do now. So you can use Google Pay. The storage is not massive, like it starts at 128 gigs, but you can expand it with microSD by up to 2 terabytes. You are getting a display here that does not feel normal for this price. Completely even borders around the edges, which we didn't have on the CMF phone one. And the panel itself is AMOLED. It has a 120 hertz refresh rate, which can scale down when needed to save battery. Its brightness is not quite flagship, but definitely not budget. Point is, when you watch videos on this thing, it is a high-end viewing experience. It doesn't feel oversharpened. It doesn't look washed out. It's very close to the best phones you can buy. The speaker isn't. It's a single mono speaker that shoots out from the bottom, but it does have one twist. A new feature called ultra volume, where you can go 50% above max volume, which nothing is saying shouldn't damage the speaker, as long as you're not going crazy with it and using it all the time. And it does actually make a big difference. Let me give you a real-time demo. So you're these ears. This is what the phone would normally sound like to you on max volume. Now we're going to go up to boost volume. Hopefully you could tell quite a tangible difference. Battery is stellar. It's the same sized 5,000 milliamp hour battery as last time, but just now with a more efficient display and more efficient software. So we're talking seven and a half hours of screen on time if you push the thing, but you could easily make this phone last two days if you wanted to. The software is smooth, like really, really smooth. It's smooth enough that you completely forget when you're using this thing that it isn't like an upper mid-range 600 pound device. The only few times you're reminded are when the odd thing takes a little bit longer to load than you were expecting. But that only feels jarring because of how insanely slick the rest of the experience is. It's that sweet spot combination of just good enough hardware. The base model here has eight gigs of RAM and the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro chip, which is a very modest five to 10% faster than what we got before, but still capable enough to play, say, every game on at least medium settings. But that's paired with a lot of care put into optimization. And that's the difference. While for most big companies, budget phones, they're an afterthought because they make a fraction of the profit per phone, you still feel here as a user of this phone, like your experience has been the first priority. Now that might change in the future. I already get the feeling that nothing is starting to evolve into one of these bigger companies with tons of product lines, with pro products, plus products, budget versions of products. They've got their own ecosystem. It is frankly getting a bit convoluted, but thus far, I haven't seen that affect the quality of the software. Nothing OS is still very light on bloatware, even if I haven't exactly made it look it right now. And you do get three years of OS updates, which by Western standards, at least, is very acceptable for a budget phone. And then there are some brand new features. You've now got customizable widgets on your lock screen. You've got this new smart app drawer, which, you know, having installed like a hundred applications onto this is extremely clutch. It's done all the organization for me with now an extra private space for the apps, files, or photos that you don't want anyone else to see. And then we've got this rather curious essential key, which is this very unique feeling, rounded, glossy button, which does actually help to not get it confused with the power key. So you press this button, it takes a screenshot, and it gives you the option to add a note. You hold this button, it takes a screenshot and lets you give a voice command. And then you double tap this button and it opens up your essential space where all of this stuff is being collected. And I think there is a very useful feature set buried inside of here, somewhere. I just can't find it. I love the idea. I love the idea that, you know, we're using 50 different apps at this point and each one has its own way of bookmarking things and trying to save information, which is why this is trying to become the one space that brings together everything that you want to keep and everything that you need to remember. So the company is basically saying, instead of saving that post on Instagram, add it to your essential space, organized into the various different collections that you've created. Instead of opening up Google Calendar to add an upcoming event, just tell your essential space to remind you in three hours. You can even, if you open up your camera app and then hit the essential key, take a photo and attach a note. Like I was looking at London restaurants recently. You can point to one and tell it to remind you to book it on Friday. And it's even got AI built into it that tries to understand what it is that you've just captured, which I assume might help you to organize it in the future. But right now, doesn't feel like it's quite there. It's designed in a little bit of a convoluted way. It works pretty unreliably. Like half the time it doesn't understand me right, or doesn't register what I'm trying to ask it to do. And you can't yet organize anything or search through the things that you have saved. It needs more cooking, but it might taste great when it's done. And now, just before we wrap this all up, the time has come to talk about one of the most unique parts of this experience, the cameras. So accessories aside for a minute, because while this is very cool, of course, the key, key reason that I liked the CMF Phone 1 so much is that even if you had none of the extras, it was still a very polished experience for its price. And the camera was one of the main areas that came through. And so with that in mind, it's actually a little bit crazy just how much the company has further upgraded them here. So the 50 megapixel main camera on the old phone is still 50 megapixel, but now using a substantially bigger camera sensor. And the difference is immediately obvious. Like side-by-side with the last already pretty good budget camera, shots are brighter, they're crispier, they have more depth. That fairly useless camera at the top, which was just there to assist the main camera has been replaced by an eight megapixel ultrawide now, which as you'd probably expect is not amazing, but it's as good as ultrawide cameras at this price tend to be. And then completely separate to both of those cameras, there's now a brand new 50 megapixel two times telephoto camera too. And this is a pretty huge improvement. It gives you basically twice as much power to be able to zoom longer distances. And even more importantly for me, a better quality portrait mode. You're not about to confuse this with a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra camera. You will notice lag while using it. You will notice bits of jitteriness from the lack of optical image stabilization. And its image processing is not as advanced as more intelligent phones, leading to the odd shots with very obvious over or under exposure. Then again, show me a 200 pound phone that does it better than this. So what happens when you add these lenses? Well, for starters, you've got the fisheye, which on first glance seems very strange because you put it onto your main camera and it basically turns that main camera into an ultrawide with almost the exact same field of view as your ultrawide camera. But then in another way, that's also the upside. You can take ultrawide shots with the quality of your main camera. Although with quite a lot of softness around the edges that does make it feel artsy, but would also probably put me off using it. The second though is the macro lens, which is extremely good. It gives your main camera the ability to focus at very close distances. And this is something that you don't really get to see without a lens like this. It's very high quality closeup photography, like the complete opposite of those tacky two megapixel macro cameras that cheap phones used to be famous for. So here's the download. This is not what I was expecting it would be, but it's every bit as great as I was hoping it would be. What I was expecting when I saw the price was big changes to the way that this accessory ecosystem works and a real level up in terms of what it means you can do. But with the phone itself being largely the same. In reality, kind of the opposite. Like there aren't that many exclusive new accessories and I don't think the ones that they have made are particularly game changers, especially because of this whole fiddle with this universal cover that you have to do. But then the phone itself is far more of an improvement than the small price jump would make you think. Especially in this budget segment, things don't usually move this fast. Making this, as prophesized, instantly recommendable.