The Nothing Phone 3 is the company's best phone by a wide margin, but is that enough?
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Nothing Phone 3 review: Nothing ventured, nothing gained
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I feel like it was a mistake to get rid of the lights on the back. For myself, it was the reason the phone was interesting. And for at least one other, they were going to purchase the previous version specifically for the lights. If they had just gone RGB from the previous version, that would have been a really easy win for them in my eyes.
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I wonder if this one is as customizable and more reparable as the previous versions they had that were
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We need some sort of penal colony for anyone hubristic enough to permanently tie their pet feature to one of the relatively scarce hardware buttons.
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I'm always somewhat confused by phone benchmarks. Who is playing high-end games on their high-end phone?
Glad they made a decent skin here, sad about the AI nonsense sounding like it's even more nonsense than usual and tied to a hardware button. A shame the camera doesn't stack up against the Pixel 9 series. That's a tough thing to topple, of course.
Glad they made a decent skin here, sad about the AI nonsense sounding like it's even more nonsense than usual and tied to a hardware button. A shame the camera doesn't stack up against the Pixel 9 series. That's a tough thing to topple, of course.
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I think describing the mobile phone market as competitive is a cliche and not true anymore. At least in America. Apple is raising prices on the low end and none of the makers really offer new features or unique features.
Foldables was the last “big” thing and it has barely spread.
For all intents and purposes, this is like the business laptop market. Everyone chasing subscription fees and services add-ons for hardware and software that changes little. Rearranging deck chairs to obscure the cost of inflation.
At least Nothing is trying something to stand out.
Foldables was the last “big” thing and it has barely spread.
For all intents and purposes, this is like the business laptop market. Everyone chasing subscription fees and services add-ons for hardware and software that changes little. Rearranging deck chairs to obscure the cost of inflation.
At least Nothing is trying something to stand out.
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I feel like this is great marketing for Nothing, I was so entranced by the doggo photos I almost missed that the camera isn't that great. Photogenic dogs make me think everything is wonderful!
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And naming it the "Essential Button" is just salt in the wound.
It seems like a perfectly functional and useful phone with some added gewgaws to make it try and stand out. Personally I wouldn't choose it over a Pixel, but I can see why some would.
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That longdog is objectively adorable. Requesting that Ryan scritch its snoot on my behalf.
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I wasn't that impressed with the specs, and the appearance is obviously trying to go for the "un-phone" look by being different, seemingly for the sake of difference.
Your post gelled my impression. It's "special" in ways that aren't functional, leaning on style and FOMO (to some degree), trying to create buzz around stuff that really doesn't buzz in the first place.
Not that they're bad phones, but "It's not a bad phone" doesn't sell phones.
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I do think being able to use a screen on the back of a phone as a viewfinder is a nifty idea, just because the back cameras are always so much better than the front ones, but that's about it. Obviously the dot matrix on this particular phone isn't particularly well suited to that, even if they attempted it.
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Nothing spent all that money to acquire Essential so they could use the name Essential, quickly decided that was a bad idea, but then branded the side button the "Essential Key?" It probably would've been better to not call attention to that.
Wait until you see how it looks in a standard black case.
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Phones seem even more cursed than business laptops because there's (effectively; unless you want to get deep into hobbyist ROM modding) full bundling of OS and hardware. The midrange and low end, in particular, seem to have been substantially hollowed out by this.
The nice thing about the PC side is that, much as OEMs might not like it, there's pretty substantial decoupling of OS and hardware. You can offer worse firmware update support in the cheap seats, preload more bloatware on the dodgy consumer trash, and there will sometimes be driver differences because CPU vendors are using refreshes of last-gen parts as the bottom of this generation's SKU lineup so the iGPU is actually slightly different or because someone decided to save 20 cents by going with last year's wifi+BT chipset; but it's basically the same software whether you are using some trash tier "intel processor N150" based system or the new-hotness Core Ultra 9.
On the phone side; not so much. Don't really care about Qualcomm's new-hotness SoC because phones have been fast enough for checking email for 10 years? Hope you like either prior-year flagships that have already burned through a nontrivial chunk of their vendor support or the fairly awful images that valu-phones tend to get.
It's what I really miss about when Google was still doing 'Nexus' rather than 'Pixel'. Thanks to Team Silicon the world is rammed to bursting with featureless black slabs that are perfectly adequate hardware; but the software situation just turns to garbage if you wander too far from the halo models that they actually want you to buy.
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Can I trade the AI button and Furby-eye screen on the back for a headphone jack?
While we’re going full Homerphone, I would pay for a creator/musician phone with a great mic, a 1/4” jack, and two headphone jacks so Marge and I can listen to tunes together.
While we’re going full Homerphone, I would pay for a creator/musician phone with a great mic, a 1/4” jack, and two headphone jacks so Marge and I can listen to tunes together.
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"For example, you have to long-press to stop the stopwatch, which defeats the purpose..."
Ahhhhhahaha, that is funny. Spend gobs of money developing a phone and just absentmindedly overlook the simple stuff. But they crammed in some (apparently poorly executed) A-1, though.
Edit: clarity
Ahhhhhahaha, that is funny. Spend gobs of money developing a phone and just absentmindedly overlook the simple stuff. But they crammed in some (apparently poorly executed) A-1, though.
Edit: clarity
Last edited:
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Honestly my takeaway from this is I didn't realize the 16 was that far behind in graphics now. Yes we're almost at the next cycle, but Apple used to launch easily on top and lead for at least the next year and sometimes even two. The Nothing isn't as close on single core, but the Galaxy is while leading multicore.
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May as well go mini-XLR at that rate. What reasonable person doesn't want to casually stroll around listening to some big honking Audeze headphones from their phone? I am of course not a reasonable person.
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There was an amazing simple 'luxury' phone named Essential a few years ago. Used mine until 5g was really available as it was my escape from Samsung Android enshitification. I think Nothing bought the rights to that brand just to name the button Essential.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Phone
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While both are gimmicks, the led matrix display feels more like a gimmick in the toy sense, whereas the glyph matrix could at least make an argument for being a design element. Huge step back imo.
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"The last few years have seen several smartphone makers pull back or totally abandon their mobile efforts. UK-based Nothing Technologies, however, is still trying to carve out a niche in the increasingly competitive smartphone market."
Doesn't this describe a decreasingly competitive market?
Doesn't this describe a decreasingly competitive market?
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I'm replacing my Pixel 6A with one of these. I've been using Pixels for years because they were (past tense) reasonably priced and have excellent cameras, and I'm not a fan of the bloatware that seems to come with other Android flavors. I'm happy to try something new and I'm in the apparent minority in that I really like their minimalist/cyber aesthetic. Maybe I watched too much sci-fi as a child.
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The writer missed the opportunity: “Despite Nothing's talk about unique designs, the Nothing Phone 3 is nothing unique from the front.”
Joke aside, what is your personal definition of what’s essential in a mobile device in 2025? My choice would be a smooth and stable OS with regular security updates, excellent cellular connectivity, a days worth of battery, and a fantastic camera. I have all that in my iPhone 15 Pro, and I had it with its predecessor. And who doesn’t offer a phone with those essentials? Or, what’s left other than gimmicks?
Joke aside, what is your personal definition of what’s essential in a mobile device in 2025? My choice would be a smooth and stable OS with regular security updates, excellent cellular connectivity, a days worth of battery, and a fantastic camera. I have all that in my iPhone 15 Pro, and I had it with its predecessor. And who doesn’t offer a phone with those essentials? Or, what’s left other than gimmicks?
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Valid
However, it is highly likely that Nothing could support re-assigning this button through a software update.
The phone would then have two assignable buttons, which would be a very nice feature.
The matrix on the back could also show a variety of informative icons or emojis, if they supported that.
Consequently, they have some semi-novel hardware features which can be activated with a software update.
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For a device that brands itself as "Nothing", it sure seems to have its own bells and whistles. The round matrix display on the back is a head scratcher. The name "Nothing" is, of course, a marketing gimmick, but do gimmicks really sell mobile hardware? This article didn't make me sorry I bought a Samsung A36 5G ahead of reading this piece; Nothing will have to come up with (wait for it) "something" more compelling to lure some of us.
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There's more PC ports these days, Subnautica has just come to android for example. Emulation is quite popular in Android too, both console ROMs and via Winlator
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In other words, not excellent.
They managed to get aluminum to meld and morph into glass without a seam?
So, not delightful.
A tautology that could be cut entirely.
I won't go on, but make every word tell. They're not just there to fill space.
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People already won't pay for Sony phones, so I fear there's no chance of that. I'm waiting to see if the board problem really has been fixed before buying what will probably be the last Experia 1, but the price is alarming. Twice the price of a Pixel 9 pro, a lot to pay for a headphone jack and a card slot. Currently the Nothing costs more than the Pixel and the 3x zoom is bad news - I was able to full frame a crow in the garden with my Sony this morning, not something I want to lose.
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Yeah, it's basically useless, at least for me. I have the much cheaper CMF Phone 2 Pro, and it was just annoying. I was constantly pressing it unintentionally.
You can fully disable it, with manual deletion of the app it triggers via ADB commands. (No root required). I've seen some people also remap it to launch some other app as well, but I didn't bother, so can't confirm that.
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It depends. Once you get used to the sensitivity being higher than expected...
It still is if you're a fan of clicky stuff.
Well, there is value in tautologies, beyond the face value. Take for instance: "if you weren't so dumb, you'd be smart". That's a great line.
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Looks like the Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro retain the glyph lighting on the back of the phone. Similar to the Nothing Phone 2, but there are definitely a lot less lights than the 2 had (looks like only three of them). And from what I can tell, they are not RGB. You can take a look at them on the Nothing website (sorry, tried to include a link but the site thought my reply appeared spam-like).
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"Want to stop your phone being stolen by people with OCD? Buy a Nothing (3)".
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Simple one. Oxidise the edge of the aluminium to make it into transparent alumina, then melt the alumina into a high-alumina glass panel.
Look, I'm just a marketing consultant, the implementation is left to the engineers.
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