The CMF Phone 2 Pro has been making its rounds online and has finally arrived at the home studio. I’ve been personally excited to get my hands on the second phone of Nothing’s sub-brand ever since I saw it. Now, it is a bit of a disappointment that we didn’t get all the attachments that you might have seen, but that does give me a good opportunity to evaluate the phone as is. No gimmicks. Just the phone itself.

CMF Phone 2 Pro First Impressions Philippines: Design and Display

The first words to come out of my mouth when I got this white version of the CMF Phone 2 Pro out of the box were: “This looks clean AF.” Yes, I did clean it up a little bit for the sake of this article, but every word holds up. The orange was definitely eye-catching, but the two-toned warm white with the grey looks sick. It is made out of plastic—there’s no hiding that—but it feels incredibly good in the hand. The phone is slightly thinner than last year and is a couple of grams lighter. Despite that, it does feel wider than some of the phones I’ve gotten to try recently, like the Tecno Camon 40 Premier and even its cousin—the Nothing Phone 3a.

Buttons are nice and tactile, with the volume rocker on the left side. You have the SIM tray, USB-C port, and the single speaker on the bottom. On the right, you have the power button and the Essential Key. The Essential Key takes you to the Essential Space or takes a screenshot of what you have on screen and analyzes the content to give you a summary, plus the ability to write notes about it as well. To be honest, ever since I saw this on the Nothing Phone 3a, I struggled with this feature’s usefulness.

I was also a little sad to hear that the Phone 2 Pro lost a bit of its modularity this year because that was one of the biggest charms of the Phone 1. I was also initially hyped about the attachable lenses, but after seeing that it was a Fisheye and Macro, the hype faded because it reminded me of the clip-ons that were popular a couple of years back.

In terms of its display, you’re still getting a 6.77-inch Flexible AMOLED panel on the CMF Phone 2 Pro with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. The improvements this year? Better peak brightness at 3000 nits compared to the Phone 1’s 2000 plus its slightly bigger. So far, it checks all the boxes of what I typically look for in a display, although I do think that the bezels could be slimmer.

CMF Phone 2 Pro First Impressions Philippines: Cameras

The big update this year and what people have been saying gets this the honorary Pro in its name is the telephoto camera, but I love that the triple camera system is filler-free with a 50-megapixel main, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide, and that telephoto camera is also at 50 megapixels too. I also love that you’re getting the same ability to save presets on this phone like you can with the Nothing Phone 3a to give your photos a unique look via filters that you can import via LUTs that you find online. Sadly, there were no improvements to the front cameras, which is still at 16-megapixels and you’re still locked to 1080p 30 video recording.

CMF Phone 2 Pro First Impressions Philippines: Internals, Software, and Battery

For its internals, the CMF Phone 2 Pro gets a modest boost compared to last year. It goes from the Dimensity 7300 chip to the Dimensity 7300 Pro, further justifying the Pro in its name. I am kidding, of course. This is paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage on our unit, which can be expanded up to 2TB via microSD card. I was hoping to see them give this a bigger specs bump, but I guess that would have brought the pricing too close to the Nothing Phone 3a. We’re still in the middle of testing out the phone since it just arrived yesterday, so we’ll report back if we find anything unusual with its performance.

The CMF Phone 2 Pro, of course, ships with Nothing OS 3, and while it is heavily stylized, it is super clean. There are a few pre-installed apps by Nothing themselves, but it is completely forgivable, and I’m expecting a few updates to roll in since they’re really quick to work on any community feedback, like the good ol’ OnePlus days. Remember those?

For the battery, this gets a 5000mAh battery that supports 33W charging. It’s not quite as beefy as other mid-range phones out in the market right now, and the charging isn’t as fast either. We do have to test out the battery life ourselves, but we have had some really long-lasting phones recently—including the Nothing Phone 3a—so it’ll be interesting to see where this lands.

CMF Phone 2 Pro First Impressions Philippines: Pricing and Availability

As far as pricing is concerned, the CMF Phone 2 Pro starts at Php 16,490 for the base model (8GB + 128GB) and goes up to Php 18,490 for the model that we have that has 256GB of storage. There are three color options for the CMF Phone 2 Pro: White, Black, and Orange.

Pre-orders start on May 5 up to May 11, 2025, via Digital Walker, where you can get the chance to nab some Limited Exclusive Gifts like a CMF 65W GaN Charger and a CMF Phone 1 Lanyard that’s compatible with this device, of course.