Nothing Phone (3) combines flagship specs with unique design (including a Glyph Matrix display)
by Brad Linder · LiliputingIt’s hard to make a smartphone that stands out these days, but since introducing its first smartphone in 2022, Nothing has found ways to make its Android phones distinctive with features like LED light “glyphs” and modular accessories.
But the new Nothing Phone (3) is the first model that the company feels comfortable calling a flagship-class device. It has specs that should allow it to offer flagship-class performance. For the the first time it’ll be widely available in the US at launch. And the new phone also has a flagship-level price tag: it goes up for pre-order on July 4th for $799 and up.
On paper, the Nothing Phone (3) looks like a strong contender. It has a 6.67 inch, 2800 x 1260 pixel OLED display with a 120 Hz refresh rate, up to 800 nits typical brightness, 1600 nits outdoor brightness, and 4500 nits peak brightness.
The phone is powered by a Qualcom Snapdragon 8S Gen 4 processor and comes with either 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage or 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
The camera system includes a 50MP primary camera with optical and electronic image stabilization and a 1/1.3″ sensor, a 50MP 3X telephoto camera with OIS and EIS, and a 50MP ultrawide camera with a 114 degree field of view. There’s also a 50MP front-facing camera.
Nothing’s new phone has a 5,150 mAh Silicon-carbon battery, support for 65W fast charging (or 15W wireless charging), and support for reverse wireless charging (7.5W wired and 5W wireless). There are also stereo speakers, an in-display fingerprint sensor, and the phone features an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance.
But those specs only tell part of the story.
Instead of a couple of large LED lights on the back of the phone like earlier models, the Nothing Phone (3) has circular grid of 489 LED lights that function as a sort of display for notifications, animations, or even as a low-res viewfinder for selfies snapped with the phone’s rear cameras. You can also play some games on this little screen which Nothing calls the Glyph Matrix.
It’s certainly distinctive, but it’s a strange evolution of the company’s earlier Glyph lights that makes me wonder whether it wouldn’t make more sense to either offer a more consistent feature set across generations or just to go all out and put a small LCD or OLED display on the back of the phone.
In addition to the Glyph Matrix system, the back of the phone features a set of blocks and geometric shapes that make the Nothing Phone (3) look unlike anything else on the market, although I suspect it’s a design that’s going to appeal to some folks more than others. As somebody who’s been putting my phones in protective cases since day one, I don’t usually spend that much time looking at the back of my smartphones anyway.
The Nothing Phone (3) also features a small red LED light on the back which illuminates when any of the primary cameras are turned on, an Essential key on the side of the phone that launches the Essential Space app by default, but which can be configured to perform other actions.