Nothing Phone (3), the review: a smartphone unlike any other
Carl Pei, founder and CEO of Nothing, is right: phones are boring . They're all identical rectangles, sometimes bendable, sometimes not, all essentially with the same operating system and equivalent, if not identical, hardware components. So the difference is made by the interface, the price, and a few more or less useful gimmicks.
And then there is Nothing, which in just a few years has built an original and different narrative, with successful marketing choices, great attention to detail, and some intelligent design ideas. Thus, the Anglo-Chinese company has carved out a space for itself in the very difficult mid-range market, offering good quality devices, innovative in design, with functions that others don't have. And now, strong in these results, it is launching the Phone (3) , the first attempt to seriously compete in the premium flagship segment, with a starting price of €799 for the 12GB/256GB variant and €899 for the 16GB/512GB one.
From the front, the Phone (3) is the usual smartphone with the largest possible display, but the back is unmistakably Nothing. Transparent, it gives the illusion of showing the inside, and instead reveals another level of interface: it is organized according to unspecified blocks, which do not correspond to specific functions or components. The choice to isolate the various components of the photographic compartment is interesting, a bit as if they were interchangeable (but it's not the FairPhone, so they are not), which frees you from the obligation to imagine a symmetry, a column or some other form of organization of the protruding lenses. The construction maintains the IP68 certification and uses premium materials with an aluminum frame and Gorilla Glass Victus on the back. The weight of 218 grams and the thickness of 9 millimeters do not make it a champion of portability, but the square design with flat edges certainly improves ergonomics. Another new feature is the Essential Key, located under the power button: it is used to launch Essential Space, a sort of “second memory” that allows you to save practically anything with the simple press of a button.
Finally, two new features that aren't just aesthetic choices, but also have a practical function: the little red square on the back, already present on the Phone (2a), which now lights up when recording video, and the Glyph Matrix, which replaces the LED strips of other Nothing models with an interactive display capable of showing custom notifications, animations, the camera timer, volume levels, and other widgets. It consists of 489 micro-LEDs arranged in a 25x25 pixel circular display, which occupies the upper right corner of the rear panel. It can act as a second flashlight, with a wider and softer light, and, also taking advantage of the touch-sensitive button, it can run what Nothing calls Toys, mini applications, or games. The open SDK allows developers to create custom apps, but it will take some time for a killer app for the Glyph Matrix to truly justify its use, if it ever does: for now, it's a delightfully nerdy touch, in perfect Nothing style.
Perhaps the most controversial choice of the Nothing Phone (3) concerns the processor: the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, instead of the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite. Performance is smooth in everyday use, but it doesn't reach the levels of more expensive competitors. In Geekbench it almost reaches 2200 points in single-core, and 6700 points in multi-core. The gaming tests reveal good but not exceptional performance, and at times the Nothing Phone (3) heats up a bit too much: it's not exactly the behavior you would expect from a top-of-the-range phone, but it's also true that the 3DMark stress test outperforms many of the most demanding games.
The Phone (3) features a 6.67-inch OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate; it has a 1.5K (2800 x 1260) resolution, reaches 1,600 nits in automatic mode, and goes up to 4,500 nits with HDR content. The brightness is more than sufficient for everyday use even under direct sunlight. The panel offers vivid and accurate colors; it supports HDR10+ by default and uses Android's Ultra HDR standard for photos and videos. It lacks the LTPO technology that was included as standard in the cheaper Phone 2: this means that the display cannot go below 30Hz when viewing static content, while most devices in this category go up to 1Hz. This choice should reflect negatively on battery life, but in reality, even with heavy use, it is not difficult to get to the end of the day with 40% charge remaining, an excellent result. In addition, the 65W fast charging allows you to reach 50% in 19 minutes and 100% in less than an hour. This is because the Nothing Phone (3) is equipped with a 5,150mAh silicon-carbon battery and 65W fast charging via cable and 15W wireless.
Otherwise, the USB-C port strangely only transfers data at USB 2.0 speeds, but Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 are present, and for audio there's the usual AptX codec. We didn't encounter any problems with calls or connecting to the home network.
The Nothing Phone (3)'s camera department consists of four 50MP sensors: a main one with a 1/1.3" sensor and OIS, a 3x periscope telephoto lens with OIS, an ultra-wide angle lens, and a front-facing one. It's the best we've ever seen on a Nothing phone, but that doesn't mean it's the best on the market: at the same price, the Vivo X200, OnePlus 13, or Xiaomi 15 do better. The telephoto lens' macro mode is particularly impressive, with sharp focus and a natural bokeh effect. Zoom gives good results up to 6x, although color rendering varies slightly between the different sensors. Magnification theoretically reaches up to 60x, thanks to artificial intelligence, but the results are very artificial and effectively unusable for any image containing anything other than geometric patterns.
HDR management is a bit aggressive, sometimes excessively brightening shadows and dampening highlights, making images look unnatural; but this is an issue that could be solved with a simple software update.
Phone (3) supports 4K video recording at 60fps on all four cameras, with 4K HDR support; optical stabilization is excellent and video quality is very good.
The Nothing OS 3.5 operating system is based on Android 15, not the more recent 16, which has been available for a month. The update to Android 16 is scheduled for the third quarter of 2025, and Nothing guarantees 5 years of OS updates and 7 years of security patches. The interface adds little to the standard version of the operating system, much like Motorola's and Google's own Pixel line, but it's fluid, beautifully designed, and features some unique features, such as Essential Space. It's one of the most useful AI implementations ever seen: it allows you to save screenshots with automatic annotations, transcribe meetings, intelligently organize content, and perform natural language searches on photos, videos, and audio. The dedicated Essential Key allows you to record and transcribe meetings with a simple long press, and the integration of ChatGPT as an alternative to Google Gemini adds further versatility to the system. The Essential Recorder allows you to record audio, transcribe it, summarize it, and underline the most important passages using artificial intelligence; 300 minutes of free transcription are available each month. The only problem is that the AI can currently understand Italian, but only provides responses in English.
- Original design
- Above-average autonomy
- Essential Space
- Not a top-of-the-line processor
- Higher price than competitors
- Software stuck at Android 15
The Nothing Phone (3) has good performance, excellent battery life and a photographic compartment that guarantees more than acceptable results. But you don't buy it for any of these reasons, and in fact there are competitors on the market that boast a better quality-price ratio. The latest smartphone from the Anglo-Chinese company is a courageous experiment in an increasingly standardised market, and this is already an excellent reason to choose it, with all its advantages and disadvantages.
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