OPINION: The Nothing CMF Phone 1 costs £209 in the UK, while the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra costs £1249. That’s almost six times the price.
You might be wondering what exactly are you getting when you spend all that extra money, or how much you’re missing out on if you don’t. Are the top phones worth it? Or does it make more sense to spend as little as possible?
I have spent the last few weeks with both phones and here’s what I think.
Expensive materials make for an expensive phone
A lot of the reason expensive phones cost more is because they use more expensive materials in their construction. So where you’ll find an expensive titanium frame on the Samsung, sealed seamlessly with the high-end Gorilla Glass on the front and the back, the Nothing CMF Phone 1 has a plastic build.
Does that affect how you use the phone? Not really. But it does mean the Samsung phone is more durable and – because of the type of glass it uses on the front – also has a screen that’s less reflective for easier viewing in bright conditions, and more resistant to scratches and impact.
Because it’s completely sealed, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (and other similarly priced phones) is more resistant to anything getting inside, namely dust and water. It’s IP68 rated, which means it can be submerged and it’ll be fine. The IP52 rating on the Nothing CMF Phone 1 means it’ll not do so well with water at all – It’s okay for mild splashing or moisture, but no more.
A reason for that is that the back isn’t completely sealed. Nothing wanted to build a phone that was easy to get into, and easy to change the look of, so with a screwdriver and a little force, you can remove the back and replace it. If the back does break, it can be fixed easily.
The surprising thing about the Nothing CMF Phone 1 is that it still feels pretty sturdy, and has a good in-hand feel. I’m not going to pretend you can’t feel the difference in quality between this and the more expensive phone, but at the same time, Nothing has shown you can buy something attractive and unique for very little money.
The customisation options make it fun, and interesting. And the other benefit of it being made from cheaper materials – is that it’s much lighter, by about 30g. This is something you feel when using it every day.
Can you do everything with a cheaper phone?
Because it runs Android, just like the S24 Ultra does, you can do pretty much all the same basic stuff on a cheaper phone that you’d be able to do on the premium model. At least when it comes to social media, casual gaming, web browsing and taking photos.
For instance, I can play my usual long stints on Mario Kart Tour with the only real difference being that different levels take a little longer to load. I am talking a few seconds here, not an absolute age. Once you’re in the game, it’s smooth and effortless.
If you care about high-intensity games and titles where it’s pushing the processor and graphics chip to the extreme, it’s probably best to pay more. With the likes of Call of Duty or Genshin Impact at their highest possible settings, the cheaper phones will stutter and lag.
There are additional performance benefits that are nice to have in flagship-priced phones too. Benefits like support for Wi-Fi 6e and Wi-Fi 7 which are more stable and consistent wireless connections. You might not notice that all that much if you’re just streaming video on YouTube, Netflix and social media and you definitely won’t have any benefit from it if you’re not using a Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 capable router.
The CMF Phone 1 also lacks NFC – which means no contactless payment with Google Wallet. This is something to be aware of if you use your phone a lot to pay for stuff.
You won’t find much difference in battery life between an expensive and a budget phone They’re similar sizes, and I found they gave me about the same battery life overall, getting me well into a second day, and almost to the end of it with light usage.
A budget display is surprisingly good
One thing that struck me about the CMF Phone 1 was how surprisingly good the display was for a phone of this price. It might not have the advanced adaptive refresh abilities of the S24 Ultra, but it’s big, vibrant and sharp enough.
Samsung’s option is sharper if you enable the higher-res 1440p QHD resolution option, but at arm’s length when you’re just using the phone day-to-day for average everyday tasks it’s not something I missed. It’s technically brighter too and if we want to get pernickety, it handles highlights, contrast and colours better than the budget phone, but it’s not so mind-blowingly different that you can see immediately that it’s far far better. Certainly not 6 times better.
The one element that makes the difference is the same thing that makes the difference between Samsung and any other phone, including more expensive ones. The anti-reflective surface on the front means it can be seen easily in any condition, even when there’s lots of bright light reflecting on it.
The flagships win out when it comes to the cameras
The one real standout area where you see the extra cost is the camera experience. Not just because they’re better, but because of how many of them Samsung has packed in. This is typical when you go up the price points to the more expensive phones, and this comparison is a prime example.
Nothing’s CMF Phone 1 has two cameras, but only one of those is used to take photos. The other is just to measure the depth between foreground and background objects, to help build an attractive background blur and depth of field.
Samsung has put four cameras on the S24 Ultra, each with a different focal length. You can switch from an extremely wide ultrawide lens, to the primary, which is also quite wide, then to a 3x zoom and a 5x zoom.
Using sensor cropping and AI processing the S24 Ultra can zoom up to 100x if you want. But at those high levels, it is the AI and processing doing most of the work, colouring in details, smoothing over the low resolution grain and natural texture, making the photo look like an oil painting on canvas.
Still, you can get a great variety of focal lengths, suitable for different situations which gives expensive phones a lot more versatility.
You can zoom in on the Nothing CMF Phone 1, and shots look pretty good at 2x zoom. Go any further and images lose detail, gain lots of noise and have an overall grainy sheen that’s quite artificial-looking.
Otherwise, it’s the finer details in the day or in the nighttime where you’ll spot the quality difference in the images. I often found it in the finer textures of leaves, flowers, or rough surfaces like the road or pavement. Samsung’s more expensive phone was just better at processing all of that detail and texture overall, whereas the Nothing phone was a bit smoother and texture-free.
The more expensive phone also has better dynamic range, so bright spots are very bright. But at the same time, it knows how to elevate detail from the shadows better, where the budget phone was a bit dark and crushed.
Video quality has a similar difference. Even when shooting in 4K resolution, the Nothing CMF Phone 1’s footage was rougher and duller. And it can only shoot 30fps at 4K. Samsung can do 60fps, and even shoot at 8K if you absolutely need it – which you probably don’t.
Now all of this is to say – Yes, the Samsung S24 Ultra is better. Of course it is. But at the same time, the £200 Nothing CMF Phone 1 equips itself well and can take good-looking colourful shots with family, friends and social media.
Software support is worth a lot
There’s one last thing worth mentioning and that’s Software. First, Nothing’s cleaner, distinctive, bloat-free software is cool. It looks good, it’s minimal, and I love the purposefully designed widgets.
Nothing, however, doesn’t have the budget of Samsung, so won’t have the same sized team working on software development, design or rolling updates out. This translates to Samsung’s software having a lot of built-in extras. Dedicated S-Pen features for the stylus built into the bottom edge, and default Samsung apps – designed to be used instead of Google’s – but meaning there are duplicates, is a common complaint. You get Dex too, for using the phone as a mini PC of sorts.
More importantly, Samsung is one of the best at rolling out software updates and security patches and will support this phone for about seven years with both. Nothing is going to deliver just two major updates to this phone, and three years of security patches.
The result might surprise you
In the end, what this comparison highlights is how good the best cheap phones are now.
Since the more expensive models keep having to add more, whether it’s more cameras, more premium materials, more power, more pointless AI features, more of everything to keep justifying those high prices. It’s certainly not six times the phone that this CMF Phone 1 is, that’s for sure.
I love the S24 Ultra, it’s probably my favourite phone of the year, but I could happily use this £200 phone from Nothing as my daily phone and wouldn’t have any serious complaints. That’s a massive compliment indeed.
