Get a pixel, they said. You haven't tried Android
till you've had a pixel, they told me. I don't remember the last time I had a phone
that I've had to force close my app so many times
that I've had my keyboard not come up, that I've had my voice dictation just randomly not work for
as often as this phone. Okay, it managed to work that time, but I swear to you,
it breaks all the time. And maybe the phone 2 Pro from CMF by nothing
is gonna be this solution. The 3A Pro wasn't, but third time's the charm.
I can't keep track of their numbering scheme. Maybe this is the third one, who knows?
Welcome to nothing. Well, I'm not reading that, it's nothing, right?
No, sorry, sorry, the joke's old. Okay, what else we got here?
Wait, what even is their branding? They're not even pretending CMF is a separate brand anymore.
What is the point of it? The point of it is a decent value phone
with a decent processor at a fair price. And compared to the CMF phone one,
there are some key improvements. For one thing, the ingress protection
is significantly better. It's now IP54 rated, instead of IP52,
meaning you can splash it from any direction. It has three rear cameras now, a 50 megapixel wide,
a 50 megapixel telephoto with a 2X optical zoom,
an 8 megapixel ultra wide, and finally a 16 megapixel front camera.
Other than that, they've added the same essential key that we saw on the nothing 3A series,
which opens up a little AI note taker thing. And it is apparently their slimmest phone yet,
which personally I appreciate, especially the smaller camera bump compared to the 3A Pro.
That was, it ended up being kind of a deal breaker for me to be honest with you.
It was like hard to get in and out of my pocket. Let's finish off our visual tour.
We've got our lock button on the right, noise cancelling microphone on the top,
volume rocker on the left, that's gonna make taking screenshots that easy.
USB-C on the bottom, that runs at USB two speeds.
Speaker, microphone, SIM tray, and not a whole lot else.
This is not in fact a dial. Nope, sorry, not a dial.
But at the back, we get the same modular interface
that you know and love. Okay, you probably don't know it.
And odds are you probably don't love that they've actually changed it.
So any accessories for the original CMF phone
are not gonna work on this one. Whoops. Well, let's check it out anyway.
Oh, right, right. The tools are apparently in here, along with a USB-C to C cable.
That's a stylish cable. Very square. I heard it's hip to be that.
Yo, I saw people get upset sometimes at how carelessly I treat the accessories
and packaging for the stuff that I unbox. Look, if they can't handle what I'm doing to them,
they are never gonna survive that trip to your house with the FedEx or UPS driver.
Let's be real here, folks. Ooh, interchangeable lenses.
A concept that has never been any good and probably still isn't.
Actually, I've heard there are some that are decent. Are there some that are decent now?
Shall we? Does Xiaomi have a decent interchangeable lens?
Okay, all right. Well, you know what I have to say about that?
If you wanna match them, show me. Okay, what are you,
I'm gonna figure it out. God. Shoot, don't tell me step one.
Then tell me step two. You gotta do this other thing before step one.
Are you kidding me right now? I don't even feel bad for being confused by that.
Well, where is it? You know what? We're gonna try it later.
Wallet and stand.
We're like, Meg, dangerous, gonna break your shit.
Oh, wait, do I need this stupid thing? I need this stupid thing.
This is what has the magnet. This doesn't even have the magnet.
It's a universal cup. So the only thing modular about the interface
is you take off these screws and then you add the interchangeable lens
and the magnet feature that was supposed to have. How much is this thing?
25 euros. This is 25 euros. Okay, fine.
They only sell them in Europe and the UK. But you can't even buy the universal cover.
Here's not very universal, then is it? But thank God I can put a lanyard on it.
Kind of nerd would use a lanyard in this year.
Oh my God, who would use a lanyard this big on their phone?
Hi, welcome to Best Buy. I hang my phone around my neck
because I literally want everyone to know what a slave I am to my digital devices.
What can I help you with? Like seriously?
Well, here's how you put it on anyway. Look at the profile of this thing off the phone.
I mean, it makes sense coming from the company. What brought you the giant camera bump
coming off this high, but like what? Do I tie it? Like do I tie it in a little bow back here?
Like what are you? Is this the style?
Is this what the kids are wearing? Do they walk the runway in this?
In Europe and the UK. Yeah, mom, I'm just doing a show right now.
Gotta go. I said I'll talk to you later, mom.
Cod! This is a trot just dude, it's like.
Let me have some people, they're wearing it. I like the sling. Yeah, it doesn't feel like a crossbody.
We could try the cross, let's try the crossbody because the, no, I look like an idiot.
Too long, it's supposed to be by your hip.
So convenient.
Okay, it comes with a screen protector. Let's get the SIM tray open. I could still be pleasantly surprised.
Whoa, SIM 2 micro SD. Oh, oh, we got expandable storage here, folks.
We got expandable storage. I was looking at it again,
I was expecting to find a headphone jack. You know what else we got in here?
This message from our sponsor. Dude, I feel like we barely scratched the surface of this thing.
Because it has a screen protector. Did it? Otherwise we would have scratched it pretty good.
Okay, let's play around with the camera. I got the wallet working.
Wallet, kind of mediocre stand.
But it's attached to your phone already, which is so convenient.
Oh dude, there's so much still to talk about. So much. Okay, you know what?
We'll get to the camera in a second then. Let's talk performance. One of the big selling points here
is the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro 5G chip set,
which as far as we can tell, is basically the same damn thing as the last one,
but like maybe a couple percent faster. That's not a terrible thing.
It's a pretty okay chip and it didn't thermal throttle in any of our testing,
but it wasn't much of an improvement over last gen. So realistically, if the phone feels more responsive,
that's probably coming down to the faster touch polling on the new device.
So it's still 120 Hertz display, supports variable refresh rate,
but the touch polling is far more frequent.
So it could feel a little more responsive in games.
And it has more AI? Also, apparently the screen can hit 3000 nits now.
Gosh, that's a lot of nits. Too bad it only does that
in like a special test file in Google Photos.
Hey, it's Wi-Fi 6 though, Bluetooth 5.3.
Okay, that's the same as the other CMF phone. I mean, I'm gonna find some stuff.
I'm gonna find some stuff that's different. You just wait. It's still pretty mind blowing
for a relatively affordable phone. I mean, we usually talk pricing at the end,
but I think it's one of the big highlights here. 280 US dollar for this thing.
That is a flippin' lot of phone for the money.
I mean, it even has NFC now. And you don't need the universal stupid thing
in order to have it. That was one of my biggest complaints with the original CMF phone.
And I know that in at least one of their main target markets, India,
QR codes are a much bigger deal than NFC, but NFC is a thing pretty much everywhere else.
And it's nice to have it. I don't wanna be locked out of using it as a feature.
Love to see it. No wireless charging still though. But hey, the wired charging is reasonably fast.
It'll do 33 watts, which, okay, it takes a little over an hour to reach a full charge,
but hey, it's a 5,000 milliamp hour battery, guys.
And we got over 18 hours of video playback in our test.
So what, half an hour to run for like,
friggin' nine, 10 hours? I still like their skin.
I did have some bugs with the 3A Pro, which were part of the reason that I abandoned it.
Like I would just get random music playback when I would disconnect it from Android Auto.
It would just like play a song for a little bit on the phone speakers, even if I didn't even have music on.
I don't love having to interact with this
multiple times every single time. I wanna be able to drag it all the way down.
I didn't actually realize that that's just an Android thing now.
So overall, my impressions of Nothing OS have been pretty positive.
I didn't personally find much use of the essential key.
It just wasn't that essential for me, but I do generally like the idea
of being able to add a quick voice note that I can refer back to later
and just having that go somewhere organized for me as an ADHD brain, it's pretty appealing,
but it's the kind of thing that I would really have to work to get in the habit of using.
And when I haven't locked into a phone just yet,
haven't put a ring on anything, it's hard to make that a habit.
Speaking of putting a ring on things, why don't we fire up the camera and try out some of these interchangeable lenses?
Mid, quite mid indeed. Let's try the telephoto.
Less mid or bad. You know what though, I'm sure the lenses
are gonna fix this, fix it right up. Why would I bother with this?
This is, dude, this is trash.
Look at this chromatic aberration here. It's fish eye.
Yeah, it is. I don't wanna be a fish then cause they apparently can't see so good.
Let's check out the real texture on this D-brand skin.
This glow circuit skin. LTTstore.shortlinus.dbrand.com.
Wow, you can really see that texture. Damn.
The question is, do we even need it? Could we just go in macro mode?
Wait, does this not even have a macro mode? Well, wait, no, I get it. No, if I want my media to be macro,
I gotta get the flash.
Using the main shooter, just taking a shot from farther away.
You know what? Okay, the macro lens does something. It does something.
It does something. But hey, MagSafe.
Yeah, MagSafe. All right, selfie, ooh.
Is it euthanizing me? No, no, not that kind.
I mean, making me look more youthful. Oh my God.
If only my skin was that smooth. I don't even need no pores.
Who needs pores? That's like holes in your skin. You don't need that.
Oh, that's too bad. Did you see how good the color looked for a second
before it like bunged it? Take the picture.
See that? It like flattened it all out. Such a fluttered photo.
Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Okay, here, here, here. Here, here, check this out.
Check this out. Like I looked like I was alive and then it was like, nah, dude, you old.
Retouching natural, strong. Ooh.
Whoa, buddy.
Whoa, strong retouch. Damn.
Oh no, that's better. Okay, maybe it wasn't in no retouching mode. Okay, okay, that seems fine.
Poor choice of subject, but otherwise good photo. Oh yeah, speakers.
Okay, let's check these out. You know what? I have high hopes.
Nothing's quality for the price has generally been pretty good in my experience.
So I feel like these speakers are going to be stereo
and they're going to be pretty strong. Well, we were bound to find at least one reason
that it is not a flagship phone. The speaker is that reason.
Those are rough. I shouldn't say those. That is just one speaker.
That speaker, that speaker is rough. We haven't talked about the RAM yet.
It's got eight gigs of RAM. So if you like one gig of RAM,
you'll like this eight times more than that. But all you can expect at this price point,
three years of software updates, six years of security updates.
Oh yeah, and the screen is 6.77 inches for those of you who were kind of wondering about that
before. Subscribe to ShortCircuit. I'm going to keep looking at these bezels.
Decide whether to switch to this phone.