- 29/04/2025
I like lego. I like phones. Now we got both...but is it good?
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TechTranscript
00:00This is the Nothing CMF Phone 2 Pro, and in a very weird kind of way, this is the phone that I've
00:06been most excited about in 2025. Because if you remember the CMF Phone 1 from last year,
00:11that thing came out of nowhere, introduced an entirely new ecosystem of accessories that you
00:15could very literally screw into the device. It was an actually amazing phone even outside of
00:19those accessories, and was only priced at £200 or $250. It was so good that I ended up awarding
00:26the thing Budget Phone of the Year, and now we have the sequel. It's a little bit more expensive at
00:31£219, but it's claiming to be able to do so much more that if it actually pulls it off, this is
00:37going to become like the most instantly recommendable phone on the planet. So this is the box I got.
00:42There's a whole truckload of stuff inside, so let's just get rid of that. And let's start with a new
00:48wallet and stand. Well, that's already pretty interesting that they've managed to combine
00:55both of those things. There's another new accessory here. Interchangeable lenses. Well,
01:00that's interesting. Let me take you back to the last video a second. My mind is kind of worrying
01:05of the possibilities. Like, I'm just thinking as an example, what if you use this screw and this screw
01:09to add a permanent lens attachment to your cameras? And now they're a real thing. Oh, shh.
01:19The universal cover, which as you'll see, works quite differently to how it used to.
01:25Doesn't feel all that premium. It's a little flimsy. There's a lanyard. This looks like the
01:30same as the one you got with the last phone. Why is it so thick though? Feels like you could
01:34tow a car with this thing. And then two new earphones. So these are the Buds 2, which look
01:41like a very basic pair of £39 wireless earphones. And they feel about as plasticky as you'd expect
01:48them to. But I've tested these and I was not ready for how damn good they sound. Like, very explosive,
01:56very bassy, but still clear audio. The active noise cancellation is not the best, but they have all the
02:02key features like auto-pause when you take one out and pretty responsive controls up here. I would
02:07actually go as far as to give them a 9.5 out of 10. And then also the Buds 2+, which are £10 more at
02:13£49. And they are basically just a little bit better at everything. They have this smoother
02:20texture. This little dimple is made of metal now. They have slightly better sound. They have slightly
02:24more noise cancellation. But the standout thing has to be that the battery life is up to 61 and a half
02:30hours, which is very much up there. Also a 9.5. You can't really go wrong with either. All right,
02:36so that's the accessories. Now we just need something to accessorize. So these are the CMF
02:41Phone 2 Pros. We've got three of the four colors. Let's just go for orange.
02:47So first thing you see is the insert, which does actually contain a case.
02:52Why are budget phones always the most generous? So then the phone and at the very bottom,
02:57this blocky CMF styled USB-C cable and the also custom CMF styled SIM ejector tool,
03:09all leading to this one peel.
03:19So what has actually changed since the first phone? Well, if we hold the Phone 2 Pro side by side with
03:24the Phone 1, I mean, there's a whole extra third camera. There's a very unique feeling button on the
03:30side that they're calling the essential key. And just generally, the body of the phone is a little
03:33bit more refined, kind of like the Phone 1 just went to the gym. It's about 5% thinner, it's about 5%
03:39lighter, and it's a little curvier. So it doesn't dig into your hands as much. One weird thing is that
03:43there are slightly different finishes depending on the color that you pick. Like they're saying that the
03:48green and the black are meant to look glass-like, but in person, I actually don't like them
03:53because it's not glass and in trying to fake glass just feels more like every other budget phone out
03:59there. So let's get rid of these and we will stick to the orange because I think they've done a better
04:04job here. Oh no. No, it looks okay actually. Well, there you go. That's our durability tester. Anyway,
04:11long story short, pick the orange. Looks better, it feels better. But here's my big question. How does
04:16this fit in with all of this? Well, I got good news and I got bad news. Let's do it the way that I'd want it.
04:22Bad news first. So the way that the Phone 1 worked is the entire back and sides were completely
04:27replaceable. You would take these four screws and this spinny thing out and the whole thing would
04:32just pop off as one piece. And then for each accessory, you could secure them directly onto
04:37the back of the phone using those same few screws. But it's a little different now. You've still got
04:41the screws, but the back plate is actually glued onto the phone now. So even if you took all the screws
04:46out, nothing comes off, which is what's allowed them to make the phone slimmer. It's what's allowed them to
04:51improve the IP rating from IP52 to IP54, which means it's protected from splashing water from any
04:57direction as opposed to water from specific angles. But it also means that you're losing one of the key
05:02pieces of DNA that I think made the original so special, which is that you damage the back or the
05:07sides of the last phone. Who cares? You swap the entire thing out for £29, which meant that you could
05:14happily use this phone completely naked, guilt-free. Whereas because this is now stuck on, we're right
05:21back to where we are with just about every other phone, which is, well, I should probably use a
05:25case now. But then doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of the thinness improvements? Plus, you might
05:30not get much choice when it comes to the case. Because while it is very cool that we now have
05:35interchangeable camera lenses and this magnetic wallet stand thing, if you want to use them,
05:39you need this case. This universal cover is the only way to get the mount that you'd need to
05:45attach the lenses into. And this is what has the magnets inside to be able to snap the wallet onto.
05:51So this would be its own thing that you're also going to have to buy. And to install it, you've
05:54got to undo the screws on the back, you've got to place this on top of your phone's back plate,
05:58and then you redo all the screws on top of it. The point I'm getting to is that if you're planning
06:02on using any of these new accessories, which feels not unlikely if you're choosing a phone like this,
06:08then you're not going to keep unscrewing and re-screwing this whole cover, you're just going
06:12to keep it on. And so what that means is that you've now paid extra to make your phone thicker
06:17than the previous device. Also, not to pile on, but I don't even think this magnetic wallet stand
06:23thing is worth all that. As far as it being a wallet, it stores, they're saying three cards,
06:27I wouldn't feel comfortable putting more than two in there. And as a phone stand, I feel like I've
06:31been spoiled by my Taurus case. This stand has every orientation and every tilt level baked into it.
06:37The CMF stand is just a stand. So that's the bad news. The good news is that because the CMF
06:44Phone 2 Pro does still have these screws, and because these screws are in the same positions,
06:49the new phone does still have full compatibility with the old phone's accessories. So you could still
06:54carry over the old phone stand or the old wallet or the old lanyard, and they will still bolt in place
06:59in the exact same way. Plus, these interchangeable lenses, they are actually extremely cool.
07:05But we'll get to them when we talk about cameras. First though, what's this phone like to actually
07:10live with? Well, folks, they've done it again. As far as the phone experience, this keeps everything
07:17I loved about the first phone and fixes pretty much everything I felt was lacking, like NFC. We
07:22didn't have it before, we do now. So you can use Google Pay. The storage is not massive, like it starts
07:28at 128 gigs, but you can expand it with microSD by up to two terabytes. You are getting a display here
07:34that does not feel normal for this price. Completely even borders around the edges,
07:38which we didn't have on the CMF Phone 1. And the panel itself is AMOLED. It has a 120Hz refresh rate,
07:44which can scale down when needed to save battery. Its brightness is not quite flagship,
07:48but definitely not budget. Point is, when you watch videos on this thing, it is a high-end
07:53viewing experience. It doesn't feel over-sharpened. It doesn't look washed out. It's very close to the
07:58best phones you can buy. The speaker isn't. It's a single mono speaker that shoots out from the
08:03bottom. But it does have one twist. A new feature called Ultra Volume, where you can go 50% above
08:09max volume, which nothing is saying shouldn't damage the speaker, as long as you're not going crazy with
08:14it and using it all the time. And it does actually make a big difference. Let me give you a real-time
08:19demo. So, you're these ears. This is what the phone would normally sound like to you on max volume.
08:28Now we're going to go up to boost volume.
08:35Hopefully you can tell quite a tangible difference. Battery is stellar. It's the same
08:40sized 5,000 mAh battery as last time, but just now with a more efficient display and more efficient
08:46software. So, we're talking seven and a half hours of screen on time if you push the thing,
08:51but you could easily make this phone last two days if you wanted to. The software is smooth,
08:56like really, really smooth. It's smooth enough that you completely forget when you're using this
09:01thing that it isn't like an upper mid-range 600-pound device. The only few times you're reminded
09:06are when the odd thing takes a little bit longer to load than you were expecting. But that only feels
09:11jarring because of how insanely slick the rest of the experience is. It's that sweet spot combination
09:16of just good enough hardware. The base model here has 8 gigs of RAM and the MediaTek Dimensity 7300
09:23Pro chip, which is a very modest 5-10% faster than what we got before, but still capable enough to
09:28play, say, every game on at least medium settings. But that's paired with a lot of care put into
09:34optimization. And that's the difference. While for most big companies, budget phones, they're an
09:39afterthought because they make a fraction of the profit per phone. You still feel here, as a user
09:43of this phone, like your experience has been the first priority. Now, that might change in the future.
09:48I already get the feeling that nothing is starting to evolve into one of these bigger companies with
09:53tons of product lines, with pro products, plus products, budget versions of products. They've got
09:57their own ecosystem. It is, frankly, getting a bit convoluted. But thus far, I haven't seen that
10:02affect the quality of the software. Nothing OS is still very light on bloatware, even if I haven't
10:07exactly made it look it right now. And you do get three years of OS updates, which by Western
10:12standards, at least, is very acceptable for a budget phone. And then there are some brand new
10:17features. You've now got customizable widgets on your log screen. You've got this new smart app
10:22drawer, which, you know, having installed like 100 applications onto this is extremely clutch.
10:26It's done all the organization for me, with now an extra private space for the apps, files, or photos
10:32that you don't want anyone else to see. And then we've got this rather curious essential key,
10:37which is this very unique feeling rounded glossy button, which does actually help to not get it
10:43confused with the power key. So you press this button, it takes a screenshot, and it gives you
10:47the option to add a note. You hold this button, it takes a screenshot and lets you give a voice
10:51command. And then you double tap this button and it opens up your essential space where all of this
10:55stuff is being collected. And I think there is a very useful feature set buried inside of here
11:00somewhere. I just can't find it. I love the idea. I love the idea that, you know, we're using 50
11:08different apps at this point, and each one has its own way of bookmarking things and trying to save
11:13information, which is why this is trying to become the one space that brings together everything that
11:18you want to keep and everything that you need to remember. So the company is basically saying,
11:22instead of saving that post on Instagram, add it to your essential space, organized into the various
11:27different collections that you've created. Instead of opening up Google Calendar to add an upcoming
11:31event, just tell your essential space to remind you in three hours. You can even, if you open up
11:35your camera app and then hit the essential key, take a photo and attach a note. Like I was looking at
11:40London restaurants recently. You can point to one and tell it to remind you to book it on Friday.
11:46And it's even got AI built into it that tries to understand what it is that you've just captured,
11:51which I assume might help you to organize it in the future. But right now, doesn't feel like it's
11:56quite there. It's designed in a little bit of a convoluted way. It works pretty unreliably. Like
12:01half the time, it doesn't understand me right or doesn't register what I'm trying to ask it to do.
12:06And you can't yet organize anything or search through the things that you have saved. It needs
12:11more cooking, but it might taste great when it's done. And now, just before we wrap this all up,
12:15the time has come to talk about one of the most unique parts of this experience, the cameras. So
12:21accessories aside for a minute, because while this is very cool, of course, the key, key reason that
12:26I liked the CMF Phone One so much is that even if you had none of the extras, it was still a very
12:31polished experience for its price. And the camera was one of the main areas that came through. And so
12:36with that in mind, it's actually a little bit crazy just how much the company has further upgraded
12:41them here. So the 50 megapixel main camera on the old phone is still 50 megapixel, but now using a
12:47substantially bigger camera sensor. And the difference is immediately obvious. Like side by
12:51side with the last already pretty good budget camera, shots are brighter, they're crispier,
12:56they have more depth. That fairly useless camera at the top, which was just there to assist the main
13:01camera, has been replaced by an 8 megapixel ultrawide now, which, as you'd probably expect, is not
13:05amazing, but it's as good as ultrawide cameras at this price tend to be. And then completely separate
13:11to both of those cameras, there's now a brand new 50 megapixel, two times telephoto camera
13:15too. And this is a pretty huge improvement. It gives you basically twice as much power to
13:21be able to zoom longer distances, but even more importantly for me, a better quality portrait
13:25mode. You're not about to confuse this with a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra camera. You will notice
13:30lag while using it. You will notice bits of jitteriness from the lack of optical image stabilization.
13:35And its image processing is not as advanced as more intelligent phones, leading to the odd shots
13:40with very obvious over or under exposure. Then again, show me a 200 pound phone that does
13:45it better than this. So what happens when you add these lenses? Well, for starters, you've got the
13:50fisheye, which on first glance seems very strange because you put it onto your main camera and it
13:56basically turns that main camera into an ultrawide with almost the exact same field of view as your
14:02ultrawide camera. But then in another way, that's also the upside. You can take ultrawide shots with the
14:07quality of your main camera, although with quite a lot of softness around the edges that does make
14:12it feel artsy, but would also probably put me off using it. The second though is the macro lens,
14:18which is extremely good. It gives your main camera the ability to focus at very close distances. And
14:23this is something that you don't really get to see without a lens like this. It's very high quality
14:29close up photography, like the complete opposite of those tacky two megapixel macro cameras that cheap
14:34phones used to be famous for. So here's the down low. This is not what I was expecting it would be,
14:40but it's every bit as great as I was hoping it would be. What I was expecting when I saw the price
14:45was big changes to the way that this accessory ecosystem works and a real level up in terms of
14:50what it means you can do, but with the phone itself being largely the same. In reality, kind of the
14:57opposite. Like there aren't that many exclusive new accessories and I don't think the ones that they
15:01have made are particularly game changers, especially because of this whole fiddle with this universal
15:06cover that you have to do. But then the phone itself is far more of an improvement than the
15:10small price jump would make you think. Especially in this budget segment, things don't usually move
15:15this fast. Making this, as prophesized, instantly recommendable.
Recommended
14:48
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