Personally I am happy overall with my Nothing Phone (3), have been using it since well over five months now, since I pre-ordered it right away.
We don’t know yet if Nothing will release a new “flagship” next year, keep in mind they skipped the 2024 year completely in this regard. They only already teased and as such confirmed a Phone (4a) for next year. If there will be an actual successor next year, it most likely won’t be before summer. So the usual question applies: How long do you want to wait?
That’s especially true since there will always be a “better” phone on the horizon. If you are a spec-head and need to have all the technical gizmos to be mentally satisfied, it might be better to go with a different phone. Looking beyond specs and tech however:
- The NP3 is fast. Now I don’t play any games, but the phone is very snappy, feels smooth and so far I have never experienced any slowdowns. Personally I don’t care about the SoC critics, as for me, the one used in this phone is absolutely up to the task.
- While there is no ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, the one used works very fast and reliable. It’s extremely rare I have to try twice to make it work.
- The display panel can’t compete with the beautiful panels of Samsung flagships, however it gets decently bright ion summer days and the overall quality is ok in my opinion, however IMHO it surely is one of the weaker points of this phone in my opinion.
- The vibration motor is great and offers excellent haptic feedback.
- In my ears the sound quality is also very good, considering these are tiny phone speakers, I think they offer good quality.
- The Glyph Matrix is a hit and miss in my opinion. Overall I still prefer the old Glyph Interface of the previous phones. I wish we could have longer notification animations or maybe use a 2x and 3x loop repeat so you can glance them more easily. It adds some fun but limited possibilities, yet I feel the single button interface makes it clumsy to use once you have selected a number of toys.
- Battery life is good, but not as good as I had hoped. I easily get through a day with a 90% charging limit, even on more busy days, however it won’t make two on a single charge. At least for me idle power consumption feels pretty high - but I have to say in all fairness, it did so with all my previous phones including my Samsungs. So it might just be app configuration.
- The OS might be a letdown for some people who like flashy things such as live wallpapers, transparency effects everywhere or those trending 3d lockscreens. Yet it blends a pleasing, simple, kind of tech retro design which really matches the hardware design well. For me it works extremely well and I am very pleased with it, although I still wish they’d offer some more quality of life features like for example a more contrasty clock when using a bright wallpaper or being able to use the lockscreen clockfaces as widgets on the homescreen.
- Essential Space is a nice addition for some quick, screenshot based note taking. The ability to easily add voice notes as well is great, yet I simply don’t use it too much. I do however frequently use the voice recording widget. Essential Space is doing a fairly good job compiling both information from the screenshot and your voice.
- While the software support looks great on paper, after the highly disappointing OS 4.0 for the predecessor, I am starting to have heavy doubts how well the device is actually going to be improved software side on the long run. Samsung always does a great job improving their existing phones, even three years after the release. Nothing simply seems to stop caring once the successor is out and just gives the bare minimum after sales support.
- Camera is great in my opinion and it was the department which actually surprised me the most. Compared to the so-so NP2, the cameras are a huge upgrade. In particular the new telephoto camera and even the main camera. My only gripe are some odd, random AF issues, where the phone refused to focus automatically on an actually easily spottable subject. Taping and holding the subject always points the AF in the right direction. I hope they’ll improve this with a future software update.
- Last but not least I love the design and build quality, I very rarely use cases on my phones and the NP3 is built incredibly well and doesn’t need to hide from “true” flagships like Galaxy S2x Ultra or Apple iPhone. The finally added IP68 certification gives an additional peace of mind. Design is unique and in my opinion very beautiful, it looks a lot better in person than it does on most press photos. While a lot of fans cried out in rage about the hidious design, I got quite some praise regarding my nice smartphone from none-techy people.
