Last year I was looking around for a new phone. I had been using a Samsung Galaxy S10+ for around 6 years and whilst that was a flagship phone at the time, I was looking for a bit of an upgrade.
The S10+ was struggling to take pictures that still looked good on modern hardware and couldn't make use of the newer 5G signals. Plus, my son was off to university and was looking for a new phone that was reliable (and didn't have a cracked screen).
I had seen Nothing when they released the Phone (1) back in 2022. It looked like an interesting phone, and I quite liked what the company was doing. Their subsequent models of phones and earphones were getting good reviews, and seemed reliable.
When they announced the new Phone (3) I bought it with 15 minutes of it going on sale. I really liked the design of the phone and found the addition of a glyph matrix interface (ie. a little monochromatic screen) on the back really interesting.
I went for the black version, with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage stage.
In this article I'll go through the principle features of the Nothing Phone (3) and what I think about each. There's quite a lot to look at in the phone so I instead of writing pages and pages I'll just pick the main points.
Nothing
Nothing as a company really impress me. In just a few years they have gone from strength to strength with their products and brand. Their CEO, Carl Pei, has said that they only have a tiny percentage of the market share, but that has only increased year on year.
They have made some mistakes, but they have admitted those mistakes and explained what happened. All companies make mistakes, but it's what they do next that makes the difference. Most notably, after the release of the Phone (3) a number of promotional materials were released apparently showing images taken with the camera on the Phone (3). The problem was that they were taken with a professional camera and left as placeholders until the correct image could be sourced.
In the chaotic world of marketing agencies, tight deadlines, and social media posts I can absolutely see this sort of thing happening. I have see companies make mistakes in the past and then double down on those mistakes and try to do anything but apologise for them. That attitude really makes me distance myself, and I have cancelled subscriptions because of issues like that.
So far, Nothing have quite impressed me with their products and ethical standpoints including their stance on reusable materials and ethically sourced components.
Packaging
The phone comes with full paper and cardboard packaging; it's actually 100% plastic free, which is a nice touch.
In the box we get the following:
- Nothing Phone (3)
- Nothing Cable (USB c to USB c) 100 cm
- Phone (3) case
- Phone (3) screen protector (pre-applied)
- SIM tray ejector tool
- Safety information and warranty card
You might have noticed there that the phone comes with a case and a screen protector. This was a nice surprise and meant that I didn't need to rush out and buy a case and screen protector.
Ethical Construction
Buying phones, or any electronics for that matter, is an ethical minefield. Nothing make a point of stating up front that they attempt to get the materials for the phone from as many recycled resources as they can. The Nothing Phone (3) contains at least 17.61% recycled materials.
Here is a breakdown of the recycled materials used in the construction of the phone.
- 100% recycled tin is used on 9 circuit boards
- 80% recycled steel is used in 27 steel parts
- 100% recycled aluminium is used for the mid-frame, buttons, and SIM tray
- 100% recycled copper foil is used on the main board
- 30% recycled plastic is used in 17 plastic parts
Plus, 100% of the energy used in the final assembly process is from renewable energy resources.
Yes, this isn't a massive win for the environment, but it is refreshing to see a company as small as Nothing striving towards reusing and recycling materials. It means that their products don't have such a detrimental impact on the environment.
So, when I buy a phone from Nothing it doesn't have quite as much of an impact on the environment as other phones. An important consideration for me.
Cameras
The Nothing (3) comes with a number of different cameras, 3 on the back and 2 on the front.
The cameras on the phone are pretty impressive, after months of taking pictures I have been really impressed by how things turn out.
The lenses that are included on the cameras are probably worth talking about as well. The ultra wide lens is able to capture quite a wide arc of the scene, and you can zoom in to great detail using the periscope camera. The periscope camera has allowed me to take very close up images of some tiny things, including a very small mushroom that was only 1mm across.
The camera app is created by Nothing is quite good as well. It is an extension of the normal Android phone app, but they have added lots of features that you don't normally see on other phones. You can change the attributes of the image add even watermarks to the images quite easily through the interface.
I won't throw a load of sample images here, but here's a picture of the hill behind my house, taken on a frosty January morning and with a water mark showing some information about the image (resized for the web).
Of particular interest is the preset modes that you can also add to. This includes a lenticular effect that give the image lots of wavy lines and a watermark effect that adds date and time information to the image itself.
My main issue with the cameras is that they aren't colour perfect. It seems to have an issue with artificial lights, especially blue colours. This proved difficult when I was recently trying to take an image of some LED lights that needed to be the correct blue. After an hour of fiddling I still kept getting a colour that more on the purple side than blue. I ended up using another camera to take the picture in the end.
Screen
The screen on the Nothing Phone (3) is very good. It is a 6.67” display with a 1260 x 2800 resolution (at 460 PPI), a peak brightness of 4500 nits, and a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1.
These specs essentially mean that the display is amazing. Colours are crisp and vibrant, perfect for previewing images taken on the camera or watching movies on Netflix.
It's a bit difficult to take a picture of the display of the phone using the camera on the phone, so I've had to resort to taking pictures using my old phone, which just doesn't do it justice.
Playing games is also really good as the crisp resolution means everything stands out really clearly. I'm a fan of puzzle games so this display is ideal for picking out tiny details in games.
Included Apps
There is surprisingly little bloatware on the device, which is really good to see. After coming from a Samsung device where they pre-install a bunch of social media apps (that were impossible to remove) it was good to see a company that respected my choices and allowed me to install what I wanted.
There are a few included Nothing Apps that come with the phone, so I'll go through and review them as well.
Essential Space
Essential Space is an AI agent that you can push things to and have it analyse and organise it. It is basically a bucket of images, recordings, and small bits of text that the AI agent will inspect and attempt to pull out information that it contains.
The AI agent will extract most of the text from images, and can prompt you to create calendar entries for dates. You can create collections of related information although the app doesn't automatically organise these collections for you.
The Nothing Phone (3) actually has a dedicated button that will take a screenshot of whatever is on the screen at the time and post it to the app. I used the button quite a bit to take screenshots of YouTube shorts or interesting bits of code and they all end up in the app, somewhere.
The problem is that I press that button accidentally at least 5 times a day, including sending shots to the app once or twice a day. Quite annoying when you accidentally take a screenshot of your calendar and the app attempts to create a diary entry that you already have. I have quite a number of random images that I don't remember taking.
I have tried hard to like this app, but it's honestly pretty useless. It isn't possible to search the space so it feels like a bucket of random stuff that needs emptying to keep is useful. The automatic calendar creation can quite often create spurious calendar dates using any "date like" string that happens to be in the image.
Essential News
This is a little widget that you can add to the phone where an AI generated voice will talk through some items of news. You can select what subjects you would like to have read, so you don't have to sit through all the sports news before getting onto something interesting.
The AI generated voice is a strange one. It introduces itself with some tortured pun about "nothing", which are almost funny (almost). Nothing have added the occasional pauses, mispronunciations, "um"s and other artefacts that attempts to make it feel more alive, but ends up just being a bit creepy.
It's a nice idea, and
Recorder
Just like it says on the tin. You can quickly record the audio of a meeting and play it back later.
It's a snappy, well designed, little app that is quite unobtrusive. It is able to pick up audio very well and has a number of different modes to provide voice focus or environment focus.
Nothing X
Used to connect Nothing's line of Bluetooth peripherals and track your fitness. On its own this own this app doesn't do very much, but it springs into life once you add earphones and a watch the app becomes much more interesting.
I might write more about the app if I write reviews on additional Nothing devices.
Glyph Matrix Interface
The phone has a small monochromatic screen on the back that has a number of different apps created for it.
The glyph screen will show information like the volume level when you change the volume, or the battery status when you plug it in. When you flip the phone over it will display a little line to show you that the "do not disturb" mode is enabled.
There are a few apps that you can add to add functionality to the glyph interface, things like clocks, games, a compass, phases of the moon, and even a spirit level. Since getting the phone Nothing have updated the collection of apps to add more features to the interface.
It's a good idea, and I quite like the implementation, but ultimately I have to admit it's a bit of a gimmick. After the first couple of weeks I realised that I wasn't using it. In fact, I often turn it off at night and forget to turn it back on for a few days without realising it.
Actually, that's not entirely true. I use the glyph matrix almost every day, as a flash light. I added a widget to the front screen of the phone that lets me turn on the glyph matrix, which I use when wondering around my house in the middle of the night. The light it produces is less bright than the camera flash and so doesn't hurt my eyes.
What is neat is that Nothing have realised a SDK for the glyph matrix interface, and I have already seen a few third party apps being created for the interface. This is really good to see.
Design
I really like the design of the Nothing Phone (3), both the physical device and the theme they have included with Android are excellent. I love the design language that Nothing have. They have embraced a sort of minimalist retro-futuristic aesthetic to their brand and products that continues in the interface.
The design of the interface is interesting in that it is meant to be uninteresting. By default the interface has muted colours and will tone down the colours of the apps in order to create an interface that is functional and not distracting.
Nothing use an AI system to automatically colour and app icon to fit in with the other icons on the homepage. This means that the random apps you install don't create a messy interface, everything looks really nice.
The back of the phone is perhaps the most controversial part of the phone. I've seen a few people online lambasting the phone for being ugly, and whilst it does have a certain asymmetry, I wouldn't call it ugly. Nothing have done a great job of creating a glass back to the phone that shows off the inner components in an aesthetically pleasing way.
Benchmarks
I downloaded Geekbench 6 and ran a few benchmarks on the phone. The results are as follows:
- CPU 2,088 single-core score.
- CPU 6,456 multi-core score.
- GPU 13,312 OpenCL score.
These scores are pretty impressive. In fact, the CPU and GPU scores are only beaten by some of the high end Samsung Galaxy phones, which normally cost at least £1500 more than the Nothing Phone (3).
Conclusion
I'm loving my experience with the Nothing Phone (3). It feels solid and robust in my hand and is fast enough to keep up with everything I've thrown at it over the last few months. I've done photo editing, video editing, gaming, and even some development using the Godot engine. The phone has ran perfectly and hasn't missed a beat in any of it. The large 512GB storage means that I can throw my entire music collection at it and still have room for a load of app and years of pictures before I need to offload any of it.
The Phone (3) has high level components, but Nothing have cut costs on the phone by not adding the top level components. This means that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 4 chip you get with the phone isn't the Elite model and so can't compete with the flagship phones of the likes of Samsung and Apple.
Honestly, though, unless you are really pushing the phone hard you probably won't notice. Those few CPU cycles that the Elite model of chip will add aren't enough to warrant increasing the price of the phone bu £300. I think it's a good choice to save on costs and still give very good performance.
The camera is a massive step up from my old phone and I've been having lots of fun with some of the camera effects and settings that the camera app has. The image quality is a massive upgrade, but I've found the colour reproduction to be slightly less than reality. Still, for day to day use it excels at being a point and shoot camera that you can carry with you.
As for sound, the phone is capable enough, but lacks some of the tonal quality of other phones. There's very little bass and music reproduction does sound a bit high end as a result. I quite often use a Bluetooth speaker or a set of heaphones anyway, so sound reproduction quality isn't really an issue for me.
The included case and screen protector, and whilst they aren't the best items in the world, they are certainly very welcome. When I bought the phone I didn't then have to run out and buy a case for the thing as well, it was already in the box. I hate applying screen protectors and the fact that it comes with one already fitted is a real bonus.
The only things that annoy me about the phone are the position of the essential space button and how slippery the phone is.
I attempted to use the phone without the case for a week, and after dropping it a few times I decided that the case is probably a good idea. The glass front and back just don't have any purchase on anything and so slip out of my grip constantly.
The case I use now is one that covers the sides of the phone in metal (which isn't great for signal reception) and also makes the buttons all feel the same. This means that I end up clicking the AI or power buttons when I meant to change the volume.
Nothing make use of AI quite a bit in the phone, even outside of the Essential space app. It will use AI to organise your apps into groups and the theme has some AI components that change the design of icons to suite the look and feel of the phone. There's even an AI powered wallpaper generator built into the interface, although the results are typical AI generated strangeness.
Those downside are more niggles than actual issues though. There is nothing (pun not entirely intended) about the phone that I really dislike and I would highly recommend going for the Nothing Phone (3). If you are looking for a more budget friendly phone then Nothing have a range of other phones available that are well worth a look.
It looks like Nothing will be really supporting and enhancing the Phone (3) in 2026, and there are apparently no plans for a new flagship phone this year. Even though the phone is now just over 6 months old, it is still totally relevant and will be supported for a few years to come.
You can get a Nothing Phone (3) direct from Nothing via their website. There are a number of variations available but the phone I went for is currently on sale for £800, which is really good value for a phone with this kind of hardware.
Specs
As a final note, let's look at the specs involved. These are the specifications of the device that I went for in 2025 and may differ slightly.
Memory
- RAM 16GB
- Storage capacity 512GB
Processor
- CPU
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 4
- 4 nm TSMC process
- Qualcomm® Kryo™, 8-core, up to 3.21 GHz
- 1 Prime core, up to 3.2 GHz (Cortex-X4)
- 7 Performance cores, up to 3.0 GHz (Cortex-A720)
- GPU
- Qualcomm® Adreno™ 825
- NPU
- Qualcomm® Hexagon™ NPU
- Qualcomm® AI Engine
- ISP
- Qualcomm Spectra™ 18-bit Triple AI ISP
Display
- Display
- Size - 6.67” flexible AMOLED
- Screen material - Corning® Gorilla® Glass 7i
- Resolution - 1260 x 2800 (460 PPI)
- Colour depth - 10-bit
- Colours - 1.07 billion
- Contrast ratio - 1,000,000:1
- Brightness
- Peak brightness - 4500 nits
- Outdoor brightness - 1600 nits
- Typical brightness - 800 nits
- Refresh
- Adaptive refresh rate - 120 Hz
- Touch sampling rate - 1000 Hz
Battery
- Battery
- Charging
- 65 W fast charging
- 15 W wireless charging
- 5 W reverse wireless charging
- 7.5 W reverse wired charging
Audio
- 3 high-definition mics
- Symmetric stereo speakers
- IP rated IP68, fully resistant to water and dust
Camera
- Main camera
- Resolution 50 MP
- Aperture f/1.68
- Sensor 1/1.3"
- Features
- OIS & EIS
- Auto focus, 2x2 OCL PDAF
- 2x in-sensor zoom
- Periscope camera
- Resolution 50 MP
- Aperture f/2.68
- Sensor 1/2.75”
- Features
- OIS & EIS
- Autofocus
- 3x optical zoom
- 6x in-sensor zoom
- 60x ultra zoom
- Ultra-wide camera
- Resolution 50 MP
- Aperture F/2.2
- Sensor 1/2.76”
- Features 114° FOV
- Front camera
- Resolution 50 MP
- Aperture F/2.2
- Sensor 1/2.76"
- Features 81.2° FOV
- TrueLens Engine 4
- Ultra XDR
- Auto Tone
- Portrait Optimiser
- Motion Capture Mode
- Night Mode
- Macro Mode
- Action Mode
- Video recording
- Ultra XDR video recording at 60 / 30 FPS
- 1080p Ultra XDR video recording at 60 / 30 FPS
- Slo-mo at 1080p 240 / 120 FPS
- Time lapse at 4K / 1080p
Sensors
- In-display fingerprint sensor
- Accelerometer
- Electronic compass
- Front ambient light sensor
- Gyroscope
- Proximity sensor
- X-axis linear haptic motor
Operating system
- Nothing OS 3.5 powered by Android 15
- Software support
- 5 years of Android updates
- 7 years of security patches
Connectivity
- SIM card type - Nano-SIM (4FF), Dual SIM
- e-SIM - Support
- SIM mode - Dual SIM, 4G/5G DSDS/DRDSDS, CSFB/VOLTE/VONR
- 2G GSM - GSM 850, 900, DCS, PCS
- 3G UMTS (WCDMA) bands - UMTS B1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 19
- 4G LTE bands - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 30, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 48, 66, 71
- 5G NR bands - n1, n2, n3, n5, n7, n8, n12, n20, n25, n28, n30, n38, n40, n41, n48, n66, n71, n77, n78 - SA/NSA
- Wi-Fi - Wi-Fi 7, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be, 2.4G/5G/6G Tri-band, 2x2 MIMO and MU-MIMO, Wi-Fi Direct, Hotspot
- Bluetooth - 6.0
- Location - L1+L5 dual-band A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS, NavIC and SBAS
- NFC - Support
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