I kind of understand the disappointment. However in particular in regards of the Phone (3), I feel a bit different: At first I was completely underwhelmed by this phone because I was epxecting something completely different. I gave it another good looks two days after launch and it quickly started to grow on me, so much that I preordered it on Friday when they went live. So far I have been really enjoying this phone, it’s not without flaws, but it’s a great overall phone.

For me, Nothing OS 4.0 overall also felt like a letdown. Long time small requests haven’t been listened to. Instead we got another beta (or worse, this time even alpha) “feature” which is incomplete and flawed. I thought they might learn from their Nothing Gallery mistake back when they released OS 3.0, when they announced their native gallery app as one of the headline features, yet it was only starting to be really usable well over half a year later. If a feature isn’t ready for prime time, just keep on developing it before releasing it to the general public. Same goes for that weird Playground thing, this time however, there was little else besides Playground in terms of features for the new Nothing OS.

While OS 4.0 at least for me overall feels more polished and has improved battery life somewhat, it also feels lacking. More clock widgets to get the lockscreen clocks on your homescreen? Nope. Option to switch between light and dark clocks on the lockscreen? Nope. Option to even customize the clock color for the lockscreen? Nope. Allow to further customize the “Smart” app drawer because it fails to get good results? Nope.

Personally I also dislike the heavy AI focus Nothing is trying to achieve, in fact it is one part of a larger puzzle which makes me already predict Phone (3) will likely be my last Nothing Phone.