I broke my CMF Phone 2 Pro so you don’t have to
One of the coolest things about Nothing’s CMF line of products is their modularity. By definition, this means that you can take parts off and readily replace them as you see fit. For products like the CMF Watch Pro 2, that means you can swap the bezels, not just the bands.
The CMF Phone 1 was even more modular, allowing you to easily drop on accessories via an external screw system, which also allowed you to remove the entire back and replace it with basically anything you could find. This caused an entire 3D-printed cottage industry to pop up on shops like Etsy, making the CMF Phone 1 the coolest phone to debut in 2024.
However, the CMF Phone 2 Pro does things a little differently, and I didn’t realize that until it was too late. As I unboxed the phone, I took the time to unscrew the back and work on prying it off. The original phone’s back design wasn’t the easiest to get off, so I wasn’t surprised it took me a bit of work to remove this one, but I wasn’t expecting the plastic to crack the way it did as I got halfway through the process.
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After conferring with my Nothing PR contact, the company confirmed that the back of the CMF Phone 2 Pro isn’t designed to be removable the way the CMF Phone 1 was.
Looking back at the spec sheet, it’s clear this is how Nothing improved the ingress protection (IP) rating of the phone, from IP52 on the CMF Phone 1 to IP54 on the CMF Phone 2. That number four in the rating means the CMF Phone 2 Pro can now withstand splashing of water from any direction, while Phone 1 was only resistant against water drops up to a 15-degree angle.
But none of this changes the fact that I now have a CMF Phone 2 Pro with a broken back and a need to order a replacement part.
Step on a crack
Instead of the pain-in-the-butt removable back of the original — if you used it you’d know how difficult it was to remove — Nothing went with a “Universal cover” design featured in our CMF Phone 2 Pro review by Android Central’s Harish Jonnalagadda. This cover uses all five screws to attach to the back of the phone and not only enables the use of MagSafe accessories and several other official CMF magnetic accessories, but it also gives users the ability to click additional lenses onto the cameras.
The problem, as users have already found out, is that this case is not only difficult to find right after launch, but U.S. beta program users don’t seem to have access to it at all. As Nothing specifically told me, these accessories are “only available on Nothing.tech in Europe + UK with limited qty.”
That basically means it’s up to Etsy and the 3D printing community to save the CMF Phone 2 Pro’s proverbial butt since Nothing itself doesn’t seem to be making a lot of accessories for the phone. I’m relatively OK with this, as I think the community proved itself the first time around and can do it again, but it’s still disappointing to see such a major design change happen and a product not receive the support it needs out of the gate to make up for it.
Lesson learned: don’t take the back off your CMF Phone 2 Pro unless you’ve already got a replacement in hand. This semi-modular phone is going to be amazing once accessory makers get off the ground and get producing products for it. For now, at least, it’s still an incredible value-priced phone that’ll exceed any expectations you might have for what a sub-$300 phone is capable of.
