The Nothing CMF Phone 2 Pro makes me feel good about modern smartphones. It doesn’t cost all that much, yet it manages to pack in more creative fun than phones that cost a whole lot more, without cutting back on the important features we need. In a sea of phones created by a committee, the CMF Phone 2 Pro is a rebel.
Rebellious
What do I mean by this? Many modern phones take themselves very seriously, and are created by different departments all watching the bottom line, and aiming to target as many people as possible. It’s the way things have to be in big businesses, and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the results. The CMF Phone 2 Pro comes from a different place. Yes, it’s still built by a big business — Nothing — and committees will have been involved, but it really seems like everyone had fun in the process, and it shows in the final product.
It’s bright orange for a start. Other colors are available, but if you’re going to get the CMF Phone 2 Pro, it should be this one. The rear cover isn’t just orange, it’s dual-tone orange, with a matte finish on the top half, and a shiny section on the lower half. It’s plastic not glass, but it looks so good that from a distance no-one would know it wasn’t glass or metal. There are aluminum rings around the cameras, making them as much of a design statement as the color.
The exposed screw heads are there for a reason, as the back cover can be removed and replaced by a different one, making the phone a modern take on the often-tried modular format. The odd circular part in the bottom corner is used to attach a big, thick CMF lanyard, and a kickstand can be stuck to the back of the phone. Most intriguingly, the camera is compatible with two lens accessories for shooting macro or fish-eye photos. This is true versatility in terms of function, but it’s also a whole lot of silly fun.
Handling the CMF Phone 2 Pro
The CMF Phone 2 Pro is really light at 186 grams, and you instantly notice when you pick it up. The plastic rear cover wraps around the sides of the phone making it comfortable to hold, although it does feel quite slippery due in part to its featherweight properties. Holding it, you’ll notice an additional button on the side of the chassis which is for the Essential Space, an AI feature also found on the Nothing Phone 3a and Nothing Phone 3a Pro.
It’s the first of two surprise feature additions. Essential Space organizes your screenshots and voice notes, then uses AI to help sort and summarize them. It’s an interesting take on features like Samsung’s Now Brief, where AI can step in and organize your time and day. Samsung holds Now Brief back for its Galaxy S25 phones, leaving the mid-range Galaxy A56 with very little AI to add value. It’s a big reason why Essential Space is so welcome on the CMF Phone 2 Pro. The only downside is the button’s placement, which makes it too easy to press by accident or mistake for the power button.
The other surprise feature is a 50-megapixel telephoto camera providing a 2x optical zoom. It’s not bad at all, taking bright photos with decent levels of detail, all without cropping the image down. It adds a little something extra to the camera, which I don’t usually expect to see on a phone at this price. Add in a potentially useful AI feature, and you’ve got a smartphone that doesn’t just go against the competition, it rebels against it.
Is it all good?
I haven’t used the CMF Phone 2 Pro as my main smartphone yet, so if there are any idiosyncrasies related to the software or performance, I won’t have spotted them yet. The screen is likely going to be the phone’s biggest downside. The Panda Glass over it gets covered in fingerprints, the viewing angles aren’t great, and although on-paper the brightness should be sufficient to see it in all conditions, in reality it’s nowhere near as bright as phones with higher quality screens and glass.
Android 15 is installed and the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro processor with 8GB of RAM keeps it working nicely, it supports a cute floating window mode, and Nothing’s signature pixel art theme is available for use. Some power saving measures are noticeable though, with some initial jerkiness when opening features or apps which haven’t been used for a while. It’s not a dealbreaker, and many either won’t notice or care about it, considering the rest of the phone.
I’m using the phone ahead of its official launch, and a software update promising to improve the camera did arrive during my time with it. The CMF Phone 2 Pro’s photos can look a little washed out, even after the software update, and the 8MP wide-angle camera is barely worth using due to its lack of detail, but I’m being harsh here, as to have three mostly usable cameras on an entry-level phone is quite an achievement. I’ll live with tweaking the look of my snaps in Google Photos afterwards.
Everyone else needs to do better
The 128GB CMF Phone 2 Pro costs 219 British pounds in the U.K., and a version with 256GB is available in the U.S. for $279. Sure, you have to fiddle around buying it through Nothing’s Beta Program, just like the Nothing Phone 3a series, but I genuinely think it’s going to be worth the trouble. Phones that cost less than $500 are rarely interesting, yet the CMF Phone 2 Pro goes beyond interesting to become exciting.
When I reviewed the Samsung Galaxy A56 recently, it was perfectly acceptable, just a bit dull. It’s twice the price of the CMF Phone 2 Pro, but comparing the spec and build doesn’t immediately make me think it’s twice as good. I’ll know more when I use the CMF Phone 2 Pro as my main phone, but based on this short experience, every other manufacturer needs to look at their entry level phones and do a whole lot more to attract buyers.
The CMF Phone 2 Pro is the smartphone rebel that finally ends the days of only high-end, $1,000-plus phones being interesting.
