One of many coolest issues about Nothing’s CMF line of merchandise is their modularity. By definition, this implies you can take elements off and readily change them as you see match. For merchandise just like the CMF Watch Professional 2, which means you possibly can swap the bezels, not simply the bands.
The CMF Telephone 1 was much more modular, permitting you to simply drop on equipment by way of an exterior screw system, which additionally allowed you to take away your complete again and change it with mainly something you could possibly discover. This brought on a whole 3D-printed cottage business to pop up on outlets like Etsy, making the CMF Telephone 1 the good cellphone to debut in 2024.
Nevertheless, the CMF Telephone 2 Professional does issues a bit in another way, and I didn’t understand that till it was too late. As I unboxed the cellphone, I took the time to unscrew the again and work on prying it off. The unique cellphone’s again design wasn’t the simplest to get off, so I wasn’t stunned it took me a bit of labor to take away this one, however I wasn’t anticipating the plastic to crack the way in which it did as I acquired midway by the method.
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After conferring with my Nothing PR contact, the corporate confirmed that the again of the CMF Telephone 2 Professional isn’t designed to be detachable the way in which the CMF Telephone 1 was.
Wanting again on the spec sheet, it’s clear that is how Nothing improved the ingress safety (IP) score of the cellphone, from IP52 on the CMF Telephone 1 to IP54 on the CMF Telephone 2. That quantity 4 within the score means the CMF Telephone 2 Professional can now stand up to splashing of water from any course, whereas Telephone 1 was solely resistant towards water drops as much as a 15-degree angle.
However none of this modifications the truth that I now have a CMF Telephone 2 Professional with a damaged again and a have to order a substitute half.
Step on a crack
As an alternative of the pain-in-the-butt detachable again of the unique — in the event you used it you’d understand how tough it was to take away — Nothing went with a “Common cowl” design featured in our CMF Telephone 2 Professional assessment by Android Central’s Harish Jonnalagadda. This cowl makes use of all 5 screws to connect to the again of the cellphone and never solely permits using MagSafe equipment and several other different official CMF magnetic equipment, nevertheless it additionally offers customers the power to click on extra lenses onto the cameras.
The issue, as customers have already discovered, is that this case isn’t solely tough to seek out proper after launch, however U.S. beta program customers don’t appear to have entry to it in any respect. As Nothing particularly instructed me, these equipment are “solely out there on Nothing.tech in Europe + UK with restricted qty.”
That mainly means it’s as much as Etsy and the 3D printing neighborhood to save lots of the CMF Telephone 2 Professional’s proverbial butt since Nothing itself doesn’t appear to be making numerous equipment for the cellphone. I’m comparatively OK with this, as I feel the neighborhood proved itself the primary time round and might do it once more, nevertheless it’s nonetheless disappointing to see such a significant design change occur and a product not obtain the assist it wants out of the gate to make up for it.
Lesson realized: don’t take the again off your CMF Telephone 2 Professional except you’ve already acquired a substitute in hand. This semi-modular cellphone goes to be superb as soon as accent makers get off the bottom and get producing merchandise for it. For now, at the very least, it’s nonetheless an unimaginable value-priced cellphone that’ll exceed any expectations you might need for what a sub-$300 cellphone is able to.
