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After Nothing founder and CEO Pei Yu officially announced on the X platform that Nothing had been established for three years and its product sales had exceeded 3 million units, Nothing's sub-brand CMF also brought good news.

Recently, CMF's first smartphone, CMF Phone 1, was officially launched overseas, with a starting price of approximately RMB 1,396. Nothing officially announced that the sales of the phone exceeded 100,000 units within three hours of its launch.In comparison, the Nothing Phone (2a) released by Nothing this year took 24 hours to achieve the same sales volume. The momentum of CMF is truly surprising.

Image source: Nothing

Although this has a lot to do with product pricing, CMF Phone 1, as CMF's first smartphone, has performed well enough.

You know, the mobile phone market has experienced the longest "winter" in history in the past three years. Many well-known mobile phone brands have or are about to officially bid farewell to the market, including but not limited to LG, Nokia, Black Shark and Savior.

In contrast, the new brand Nothing was able to gain a large number of loyal fans amidst the market environment and a number of mobile phone giants, which was beyond many people's expectations. How did it do it?

100,000 units sold in three hours, CMF Phone 1 is sold for “fun”

Speaking of the Nothing brand, I believe that most people will immediately think of unique keywords such as "lighting factory", "fashion design" and "whole life". These are the official brand labels given to Nothing. The sub-brand "CMF By Nothing" is no exception.CMF is derived from the three key words in the field of industrial design: “Color, Material, and Finish”, namely “color, material and surface treatment”.

Its extended meaning is that designers carefully select and match the colors, materials and surface treatments of products to give their products a better sense of design and texture.

Image source: Nothing

When launching CMF by Nothing, Pei Yu said that the goal of the new sub-brand is to "launch a series of new products to make better design more accessible." Now it seems that the sense of design is indeed one of the important factors in the phased success of CMF Phone 1 sales.

Although CMF Phone 1 does not use the Glyph light strip and transparent back cover design of Nothing Phone, Nothing still can't let go of its obsession with renovating the back cover of its phone.Careful friends should have discovered that, unlike the integrated body of most mainstream mobile phones, CMF Phone 1 puts the back panel screws in the most conspicuous position, and there is also a round protrusion in the lower right corner.

Image source: Nothing

Users can use the included small screwdriver to remove the screws on the back panel and replace the back panel of the phone. The official currently provides four color matching back panels of the phone: black, orange, mint green, and blue. It is likely that more styles of back panels will be launched in the future.

Friends who like novelty are in luck, CMF Phone 1 can satisfy your personalized need of a new back cover every day. If you see your friends changing their phones every day, don't be surprised, they may just change the back cover.

It is worth noting that the CMFPhone 1's free disassembly of the phone back panel is really limited to disassembly of the back panel, and there is no free replacement of the battery as imagined. At best, the CMFPhone 1 can only be regarded as a "lightly modular" phone, and it is still a long way from a truly modular phone.

As for the circular protrusion in the lower right corner of the phone, it is actually a "knob" module that can be connected to accessories.Users can connect the bracket, lanyard and card holder to the back cover of the phone. To assemble these accessories on the phone, they only need to unscrew the knob by hand and then install the accessories. There is no need to remove the screws like replacing the back panel.

Image source: Nothing

The above are the only two highlights of CMFPhone 1. If you ignore them, CMFPhone 1 is actually just a thousand-yuan phone that can’t keep up with the mainstream.In terms of core configuration: Dimensity 7300 processor, 6.78-inch 120Hz AMOLED screen, 5000mAh battery, rear 50-megapixel main camera + 2-megapixel depth of field sensor, and front 16-megapixel camera.

Not only the core configuration, but also the peripheral configuration is not satisfactory, such as the side fingerprint, 6GB memory, 33W wired fast charging, no NFC function, etc., and because the back panel is detachable, CMFPhone 1 only supports IPX 2 waterproof level, which means it may only be able to cope with slight splashes. However, the official introduction of the phone can be immersed in 25 cm deep water for 3 seconds. Xiao Lei is very skeptical and will find a device to try it out when he has the chance.

In general, the main selling point of CMFPhone 1 is not its configuration, but the playability of its design. Xiao Lei believes that most users buy it for this reason.In Xiao Lei's opinion, the "Renaissance" design of CMF Phone 1 is quite successful. Changing the shell has been an old way of doing things since the Nokia era, and it even gave rise to a joke that "technology is based on changing the shell". Unexpectedly, Nothing can rekindle users' enthusiasm again by changing the shell.

Not only that, selling mobile phones may only be the first wave of revenue for CMFPhone 1. The real big money comes from accessories. The back panel, bracket, lanyard, and card holder mentioned above are not given away for free by the official. Users need to buy them on their own in the official store. The replaceable back panel costs about RMB 271, and other accessories cost about RMB 177. If users want to experience more personalized accessories, they need to pay a cost higher than the price of the phone.

Try something different, Nothing is always making things happen

A quick glance at the mobile phone products on the market shows that all you can see are the same latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen X processors, increasingly larger flash memory combinations, one-inch large-bottom sensors, and a few seemingly mysterious new technology names. That's how a flagship phone is equipped.

Although they are all easy-to-use mobile phone products, in the highly homogenized mobile phone market, it is more difficult to make a recognizable and memorable mobile phone in a suitable price range than to design an easy-to-use mobile phone.

Pei Yu said that the reason he founded Nothing was largely due to his dissatisfaction with the current smartphone industry. Although he was once an Apple fan, Pei Yu felt that Apple's innovation was getting slower and slower, and the entire smartphone market was becoming more and more boring. In his words, "It's like going back to the PC market in the late 1990s, when everyone was making gray consoles."

Therefore, we can also see its unique innovative concept from Nothing's product series. In July 2021, Nothing released its first product, Nothing Ear(1). This is a TWS true wireless headset with a fully transparent design. Although the actual configuration is average, with a price of US$99 and a futuristic design, this product has achieved good results and laid the foundation for the design and brand recognition of the mobile phones that will be launched later.

Image source: Nothing

If the Nothing Ear(1) was a trial run, then the Nothing Phone(1) that came out next was the pioneering work of Nothing. In an era when there were no major design breakthroughs in the appearance of smartphones, the Nothing Phone(1)'s transparent back cover + LED light strip design directly ignited the market and instantly became a popular online phone at the time.

The following Nothing Phone (2) and (2a) use the same design concept, with the same transparent back panel and almost the same LED light bar design. However, with more LED lights, the back display function of Nothing Phone (2) has become more abundant. Users can use the Glyph Interface function to view information such as volume, countdown, takeaway status, taxi time, etc., and even set different light modes for different contacts, so that they can see at a glance when receiving messages.

Image source: Nothing

It can be said that Nothing has incorporated the innovative concept of "doing something different" into all its products. Regardless of their practicality, they are at least good-looking.

It’s a pity that apart from the appearance design and increasing the discussion heat, mobile phone products including Nothing Phone and CMF Phone 1 have no other highlights. The low configuration and high price make these mobile phones typical vase products in the eyes of many users.

From niche to mainstream, Nothing needs more variety

In fact, the several mobile phone products that have been released can still make us feel that Nothing is trying to keep up with the mainstream market in terms of hardware configuration. From the Snapdragon 778G+ processor of Nothing Phone (1) to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 processor of Nothing Phone (2), although there is still a clear gap compared with domestic models that generally use the latest flagship chips, it is still a flagship processor after all; the main camera, screen size, battery capacity, charging speed, etc. of Nothing Phone (2) have all been improved to varying degrees.

CMF Phone 1 also wanted to enter the mainstream market, but it still couldn't get rid of the disadvantage of backward hardware configuration. Xiao Lei has not yet found the advantages of CMF Phone 1 to compete with domestic thousand-yuan phones. Even in the Indian market where it is mainly sold, CMF Phone 1 faces great pressure.

Image source: Nothing

In the ranking of the most popular smartphones in India in the first half of 2024 selected by the media Economic Times, mobile phone brands from China occupied 7 positions, among which OnePlus Nord CE 3 5G was the most popular, followed by iPhone 13 and Samsung Galaxy M14 5G.

Compared with products of the same price, battery life, fast charging, and imaging are not the advantages of CMF Phone 1, and its performance is only slightly better than some models on the list. If Nothing wants to open up new markets, it may not be realistic to rely solely on CMF Phone 1.

Looking back at the history of mobile phone development, "good design" can indeed add color to a mobile phone, and even make this phone a textbook for mobile phone development in the next two or three years, but they do not rely solely on "good design", but a unified combination of design + other elements.

An interesting appearance cannot cover up all the problems of a product. How to effectively combine the unique hardware design with other elements of the phone may be the problem that Nothing needs to solve next. When the core configuration and user experience keep up with the mainstream, the appearance design of the Nothing phone will become a real killer.

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In the hottest month of July, Lei Technology's mid-year review is launched, summarizing the brands, technologies and products worth recording in the first half of 2024 in the technology industry, recording the past and looking forward to the future. Please pay attention.