Remember when phones were interesting? If you’re lucky enough to be as advanced in age as I am, you’ll hopefully recall the days where the universal mobile phone design brief was, “Make it real weird”. Back before every device was a rectangular slab or, in the boldest efforts the modern industry can manage, two rectangular slabs taped together. Phone brands would experiment with form factor, features and all manner of gimmicks, so buying a new device would almost always feel…well, new.
After a good few weeks of using the Nothing Phone (3) as my daily device, I’m convinced this is the closest I could possibly come to that New Phone Feeling™ in the Android market – outside of taking a punt on something that folds or flips. Coming from my Pixel 9 Pro XL, which replaced a Pixel 8 Pro XL, it feels distinctly fun in a way that I hadn’t realised I’d been missing. And it’s more than just the unique look of the phone’s exterior, there’s an aesthetic philosophy that carries through the entire Phone (3) experience that I’ve been completely enamoured with.
The first thing that took me by surprise when I received the Phone (3) was the size of the box it came in. It’s wide and flat, almost obnoxiously so, but not without reason. In the package you get a comprehensive complement of contents including the device itself, a clear silicon case with all the right holes for the Phone (3)’s peculiar camera array, a Nothing-branded USB-C cable and a handy SIM tray pin. Best of all, though? A screen protector has already been applied to the phone. It seems to be a basic, plastic job, but anything that saves me the agony of trying to apply one myself is a victory in my books.
Of course, there’s a good reason this phone would come with its own protective gear. It’s a niche phone with an even more niche design, one that isn’t as easily accessorised as the iPhones, Galaxies and Pixels of the world. If you’ve seen a Nothing phone before, you’ll know the deal – a transparent glass back conceals an eye-catching grid of unique shapes and lines, like a faux cross-section of the phone’s innards. Three camera modules and a flash adorn the top section of the Phone (3)’s rear, powering its newfound photograph chops, but the real secret is the Glyph Matrix in the top corner and its matching Glyph Button a little further below.
The Glyph Matrix is a first for the brand, replacing the array of lights usually found on the back of a Nothing phone with a small, round dot matrix display. This can be customised to display a number of things, from the time and weather to fun curiosities like a magic 8-ball or a delightfully low-resolution “mirror.” The basic utility of the old Glyph lights remains, in allowing you to set up notification alerts for your favourite apps that show up on the Glyph Matrix when you’ve got your phone face down on a surface. I’m someone who gets distracted by their phone far too easily and definitely needed the encouragement to set it face down as much as I can, so this feature has been pretty nifty.
A lot of it definitely falls into the ‘gimmick’ category, but the Nothing community seems to be pretty consistent with finding, creating and sharing new ways to get the most out of features like the Glyph Matrix, so I’m excited to see what new use cases arise over time. Importantly, it’s something fun and different that you won’t find in competing devices, and that sense of whimsy is infectious. Every day that I’ve had this device has been met with “Is that a Nothing Phone?” or more commonly, “What the hell is that phone?”
Moving around to the front of the Phone (3) and it looks a lot less conspicuous. A generous 6.7-inch OLED sits inside a respectably thin and uniform bezel, possessing a 2800×1260 resolution – a slightly lower DPI than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge or Google Pixel 10 Pro XL but comparable in size. It’s Nothing’s biggest display yet and looks fantastic with great colours and contrast, decent brightness, good viewing angles and up to 120Hz refresh rate. It’s difficult to fault this phone screen. Unfortunately there’s no option for a smaller display, so if you’re keen to buy into the company’s new ’premium’ efforts you’re destined to be a Big Phone Person.
Still, it leaves plenty of space for a punch hole front camera without sacrificing functionality in the status bar, as well as an under-screen fingerprint sensor at the bottom of the display. I was surprised to find this significantly more reliable than the sensor on my Pixel 9 Pro XL, which I would constantly fight with even after multiple recalibrations.
Nothing OS has quickly become a favourite for me, offering a clean and focused look that retains what makes vanilla Android great while injecting it with the same unique aesthetic approach that makes the physical hardware interesting. The grayscale, dot-matrix look persists through a lot of the UI, including all of your app icons, and gives the whole thing a lot of cohesion. Though if you prefer the standard Android look with original, colourised app tiles you can turn off all of the customisation. I’ve grown to love the Essential Search bar, which you can optionally set in place of the typical Google Search bar at the bottom of your home screen, and allows you to quickly locate anything on your phone or type in a phrase and select which Google app (Search, YouTube, Maps, and so on) is appropriate for the result you need.
Now, I need to stress here that I am ostensibly not a fan of the current AI tech climate, and the slate of modern phones sporting all manner of genAI garbage apps and hyperattentive virtual assistants really isn’t for me. So when I discovered that the Phone (3) comes with an entire physical button dedicated to activating its AI functionality, I winced. But to my surprise, after doing my due diligence and testing it out, Nothing’s Essential Space function is nearly agreeable.
What Nothing OS doesn’t do is augment the entire software to be AI-forward and proactively jump in with ‘help’ from a built-in guessing machine (although its Android framework still tries to). What it does do is offer a dedicated space for quickly clipping and collating anything important that comes up on your screen that you might want to save for later. By holding down the dedicated button on the right side of the phone, you’ll capture a voice memo attached to a screenshot that’s then stored in the Essential Space app, along with a very basic machine-generated analysis of the content. The state of LLMs and runaway capitalism is unfortunate, because a feature like this is incredibly useful to the neurodivergent or just plain busy folks among us, but there’s no washing away that stink no matter how benign the application.
Overall, Nothing OS – which was recently updated to Version 4 while I’ve been reviewing the phone but hasn’t changed drastically – is one of the better Android environments out there. Only Google’s own Pixel software matches it for simplicity and functionality without bloated sluggishness or redundant third-party apps. Hopefully Nothing’s continued embracing of AI technology doesn’t threaten to spoil future iterations.
Despite the freaky-looking array on the rear of the phone and the photography chops it might imply, the Nothing Phone (3)’s biggest fumble is its camera setup. Software-wise it’s pretty well aligned to competing manufacturers’ camera apps, sporting a range of useful shooting modes and flexible settings for advanced users, and the hardware is decent on paper – a triple 50MP main, periscope and ultrawide cameras plus a 50MP selfie camera.
But for the purpose of point-and-shoot phone photography, it doesn’t produce overly consistent results. I suspect I’ve been spoiled by how hard Google’s phones work to correct the kind of haphazard snapping I do, but I’ve been disappointed consistently by the Phone (3)’s images, routinely ruined by poor subject focus, wildly variable colour saturation and shaky low light performance. In the right conditions, it can produce some pretty striking images, especially when going for a 3X telephoto or macro shot from the periscope lens in full daylight, and the selfie camera is quite decent.
Hands-down my favourite feature of the Phone (3)’s camera is, appropriately, something a little more fun and gimmicky. Nothing OS offers the ability to save a series of photography presets as widgets on the home screen, so you can tap on whichever you need in a pinch and have the camera app launch right into those settings. You can create these presets with everything from lens choice and focal length, bokeh, filters and more, or use any of the attractive built-in ones – including a recently-launched collaboration with filmmaker Jordan Hemingway that’s resulted in a very bold and striking filter dubbed Stretch. I quickly fell in love with the default black-and-white preset though, which manages some shockingly good shots that present the kind of tone and contrast that typical B&W filters completely miss. Here are some I took on a recent trip to Tokyo:
Video recording is also quite strong, offering up good detail and colour reproduction at up to 4K60. Image stabilisation from the main camera is impressive, and there’s minimal noise in optimal conditions – though like the photography, lower light shots do introduce a bit of grain and some focus struggles.
As for the Phone (3)’s actual performance in general use, I’ve left it this long to talk about because, well, there’s not much to say in either direction. Despite the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor being a little behind other brands’ flagships, the phone zips along without issue. My review unit is the 256GB model with 12GB of RAM, and that’s been adequate for me so far, but for a fairly reasonable markup you can pick up the 512GB version with a boosted 16GB of RAM. If you need absolute gaming performance, something like the Galaxy S25 Ultra or iPhone 17 Pro is going to give you that for a premium, but everything I’ve thrown at this phone so far has been met with confidence.
When I started using the Phone (3) for review, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I’d want to drop the Pixel 9 Pro XL as my everyday device, but if one thing has kept Nothing’s handset in my pocket, it’s the battery life. Even with the charging mode set to top out at 90% overnight for the sake of battery health, I’ll typically make it from a 6AM wake-up to a 1AM bedtime with no worries, and that includes at least three hours of commute. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a phone where I wasn’t reaching for a charger at least once during the day, so I’m pretty happy.
Final Thoughts
I’ve had an odd relationship with phone purchases these last few years. I’ve continued to upgrade my Pixel phone every year, opting every time for the biggest, fastest flavour of Google’s flagship, but barely changing how I interact with or take advantage of my devices. The Nothing Phone (3) has very quickly snapped me out of that mindset and reminded me that sometimes the fun thing is better than the good thing – even if this particular handset is also quite a bit of a good thing. I think I’ll keep using this one for a while.
