CMF Phone 1 by Nothing review
Display
The CMF Phone 1 has a pretty decent display at its disposal. It measured 6.67 inches in diagonal and has a 1080 x 2400 resolution. That's a pretty common 20.5:9 aspect ratio and works out to around 395 ppi. The display looks perfectly sharp in person.
The manufacturer claims this particular Super AMOLED panel can do about 2,000 nits of peak brightness with a typical brightness value between 500 and 700 nits. In our standardized testing, we measured a brightness of 720 nits by maxing out the slider. The max auto brightness value we saw was 1259 nits.
The minimum brightness at point white the CMF Phone 1 managed was just 4 nits. The display has 960 Hz PWM dimming.
Max display brightness test
White test pattern, 75% fill (nits)
- Manual mode
- Auto mode
Poco X6
Redmi Note 13 4G
Nothing CMF Phone 1
Poco M6 Pro
Redmi Note 13 Pro 4G
Galaxy A25
Galaxy A35
The CMF Phone 1 display offers 8-bit color support. There are two color modes to choose from in settings - alive and standard. The former targets the DCI-P3 color space, while the latter goes for sRGB. Both do a bang-up job in terms of accuracy.
As far as we can tell, the CMF Phone 1 has no popular HDR hardware certifications. It has no HDR video support. However, the marketing materials do state that it is capable of "Ultra HDR with 1000000:1 contrast ratio". So, there is Ultra HDR support for photos. There is HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG in terms of HDR decoder support. Only Dolby Vision decoding isn't supported.
The panel in the CMF Phone 1 has a 120Hz maximum refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. The refresh rate is being marketed as "adaptive". The phone can actually operate in either 120Hz mode or 60Hz mode. There are no other modes in-between, such as the popular 90Hz.
There are two refresh rate settings to choose from. One of them just locks the display at 60Hz, while the other has some smarts to it. It allows the phone to operate in 120Hz mode while you are interacting with it. Leave it for a few seconds, and it drops down to 60Hz.
The phone also automatically recognizes full-screen video playback and drops down to 60Hz to conserve energy. It is not the most sophisticated system, but it works well.
Naturally, we did also try some high refresh rate gaming. Unfortunately, we didn't have much luck and out of the four test titles we tried, only one managed to trigger 120Hz mode and push past the 60fps barrier.
Battery life
The CMF Phone 1 has a 5,000 mAh battery on board. We had already reviewed the Dimensity 7300 in other phones and were expecting stellar battery life. And that's exactly what we got. We are happy to report the phone scored an Active Use Score of 16:13 hours in our standardized battery testing routine.
That is better than both the Oppo Reno 12 and Reno 12 Pro - the other two devices that also run on the Dimensity 7300 chipset and have a 5,000 mAh battery.
Charging speed
The CMF Phone 1 supports 33W "Fast Charging" (wireless charging is not supported). As with all Nothing phones, no charger is included in the box.
Nothing doesn't offer any particular description as to exactly what protocol it is using for fast charging. However, we can gather some clues. Like the fact that Nothing sells a 45W official charger that seems to work over Power Delivery. It is meant to saturate the 45W of charging supported by the Nothing Phone (2) and Nothing Phone (2a). Presumably, it will also be the best match for the CMF Phone 1.
We didn't have the Nothing charger at hand, so we tested with a known good 65W PD/QC universal charger. We measured a peak charging wattage of around 26W, and the CMF Phone 1 charged at around 20W for most of the charging cycle.
Overall, the CMF Phone 1 is not particularly fast to charge. Fifteen minutes on the charger got us from dead to 26%, thirty minutes resulted in a 50% charge, and a full top-off took an hour and twenty-one minutes. You can definitely get faster-charging devices in this price range.
Charging speed
- in 15 min
- in 30 min
- Time to full charge (from 0%)
Poco X6
Nothing Phone (2a)
Moto G84
Galaxy A35
Galaxy A15 5G
Nothing CMF Phone 1
Redmi Note 13 5G
Speaker - loudness and quality
The CFM Phone 1 only has a single bottom-firing speaker at its disposal. There is no hybrid stereo system or anything of the sort. The speaker isn't particularly impressive, either. It only managed a GOOD loudness rating in our standardized testing.
Quality-wise, it's definitely far from the worst we've heard. In fact, it has pretty clear mids, so voices come out sounding quite good. Highs are also decent, even at high volumes, without any screeching or major distortion.
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
Connectivity
The CMF Phone 1 is a Dual SIM device with two Nano-SIM slots and SA/NSA Sub-6 9-band 5G support on both slots. GPS, GALILEO, GLONASS, BDS, and QZSS support are available for positioning. For local connectivity, the phone has dual-band Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3. There is no NFC on board. There is no FM radio receiver either, nor is there a 3.5mm audio jack.
The Type-C port of the CMF Phone 1 is backed up by a simple USB 2.0 data connection, which means a theoretical max data transfer speed of 480 Mbps. It offers USB Host/OTG support, but there is nothing else fancy like video output.
The CMF Phone 1 has a pretty full set of sensors. There is an InvenSense icm4n607 accelerometer and gyroscope combo, a qst qmc6308 magnetometer and compass combo and a liteOn ltr569 light and proximity sensor combo. A hardware proximity sensor is on board the phone, which is great to see. There is no barometer, though.
Reader comments
- Peterr
- 20 Nov 2024
- IH2
The currently available back cover options include Black, Light Green, Orange and Blue. The Blue one is exclusive to the Indian market Cmf no longer makes any of the 1 covers and they told me that all are discontinued. James goes for the screw o...
- Pallab
- 03 Nov 2024
- PS2
What's the perfect charger/adapter for this phone? 33W or 30W?
- Anonymous
- 28 Sep 2024
- YQN
Are you mad? Or something else? What are you comparing. Whatever but honestly I'm using redmi note 11 pro 4G currently but I'm so disappointed about this phone. 1.so much heating on simple tasks. While gaming uff leave it 50°C+ 2. Cam...