Are the conceptions of modern smartphones boring? We questioned 1,500 readers for their reflections on this same question earlier this year, and 78% of respondents answered in the affirmative.
The smartphones industry was once flooded with strange and wonderful devices (do you remember the LG wing?), But nowadays, manufacturers are – literally – much more straight in their approach to design.
The exception to the rule is nothing, which has remained by its mission to “carry out the technology again” since it was founded by the former head of OnePlus Carl Pei in 2021. Nothing that the phones were designed to stand out from the crowd, and the last combined of the company, the phone 3 was waiting, fills this brief, then some.
Nothing is “First True Flagship” is a really weird thing. Imagine if a kindergarten took a game of puzzle of sliding blocks from the old school, plunged it in PVA glue and accessorized it with three black sewing buttons. This is the Nothing Phone 3. It is a bizarre creation with specifications to compete with some of the best phones – and I think it could be the most interesting flagship launch of the year.
To watch
So, what is new against the well received phone (but resolutely non-flagship) nothing 2 phone 2? To start, the linear glyph lights are extinguished and a new interface of glyph matrix is in place.
This interactive screen is found in the upper right corner of the 6.67 inch telephone panel 3 and is capable of displaying several different types of content – specific notifications for the “glyph toys” (read: party games) like spin the boot and rock, paper, cissers. Heck, Glyph Matrix can even double as a Pixed Viewer for Selfies, which is a nice retro touch for those who are missing the Game Boy camera.
Picture 1 of 3
As for the other major design changes, phone 3 always has this classic modular modular look. But its camera lenses are independently of a physical module, rather than being positioned in a circular or pill -shaped box, as on the 3A phone and the 3A Pro phone, respectively.
I can see that this objective arrangement is the most controversial aspect of the phone design 3, but I am personally a big fan of the abstract and asymmetrical atmosphere that it brings to the device as a whole. Previous nothing of the phones seemed unique, of course, but not to this extent.
Speaking of cameras, there is a whole new one. Telephone 3 obtains a main objective of 50 megapixels, an ultra-large target of 50 MP and a brand new 50MP telephoto lens with a 3X optical zoom. Of course, we cannot yet say how good these cameras are without having tested them correctly (stay listening for our full exam), but on paper, at least they are snapers at the flagship level.
You will also get a 50 MP selfie camera at the front, which marks one step back compared to the equivalent of 32 MP on the telephone Nothing 2. Oh, and the small red dot at the back of the phone 3? This will light up when you record with one of its three rear cameras.
Under the hood, the phone 3 is fed by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 4 chipset. I already wrote why I do not think that the absence of a Snapdragon 8 Elite is a big problem in a separate room, but we will not know with certainty as long as we have not compared the phone 3 against competitors at similar prices.
Nothing, for its part, is confident in the performance identification information of its “first real flagship product”, and having had a quick game with the phone 3 during its London launch event, I am convinced that the 8S Gen 4 will be fast enough to support the software requirements of nothing OS 3.5 (and, finally, nothing bones 4.0).
The phone chipset 3 is associated with a 5,150 mAh silicon carbon battery, which is a technology that you will still not find in many of the best Android phones. You will also get a quick load of 65W – another significant upgrade on the 45W load speed ceiling on the phone 2.
The other characteristics of the most recent Nithing flagship product include a dust resistance and IP68 water rating, Gorilla Corning glass protection and a new essential search function to go next to the essential physical key, which was introduced on the 3A Pro phone.
Again, I only managed the phone for a few minutes at the launch event of Nothing, so I have not yet taken these new tools for an appropriate spin. But the main thing is as follows: the phone 3 is different from any other device on the market at the moment, and sincerely I hope that its performance is up to the “flagship” invoicing of nothing. If the Snapdragon 8S Gen 4 can compete with Google’s Tensor G5, at the very least, the phone 3 may well be the most interesting phone of the year.
The device starts at $ 799 / £ 799 for the model with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, this price of $ 899 / £ 899 for 16 GB and 512 GB, respectively. These figures put the phone 3 in the league with the iPhone 16, the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Google Pixel 9, so stay listening to our verdict on the question of whether the last phone of nothing can compete with such renowned rivals.
