I respect your time, so let me answer your questions up front based on my research into this and other flagships.
1. Does the Nothing Phone 3 overheat under normal usage? In my experience, under normal non-stressful circumstances, no. Not unless there is defect of the cooling system. If you are using your phone normally (read: not playing graphically demanding games) and experience thermal shutdown contact Nothing support. It is possible 4K60 recording in a hot environment outside could also trigger thermal app shutdown, but even my Pixel 8 Pro would just outright shut down my phone mid-recording.
2. Can it overheat if I am playing graphically intense games? Yes, the CPU and GPU seem to be throttled LESS than some other flagships cough Samsung cough. In the event you push the chip hard for long periods of time (especially in hot rooms) it will shut down to protect the internals of the device similar to how the Xaomi 15 Ultra handles excessive heat.
3. What should I do if I’m worried about my phone overheating? Turn down graphical settings, play graphically intense games in a cool room (I estimate ~27C (80.6F) or lower to buy you the most time) or use a phone cooler along with the things above.
4. Is Nothing the worst flagship because it overheats and shuts down? The Xaomi 15 Ultra does exactly the same thing as the Nothing Phone 3 for overheating and I have video evidence of this (posted in question 5, timestamps below). Samsung S25 Ultras super throttles the chip to prevent heat build up in the first place meaning performance is lost on the top end and there is also video proof of most major flagships hitting the same thermal levels as the Nothing Phone 3 (again, see question 5). Essentially, the Nothing Phone 3’s thermal management is in line with other flagships.
5. But what about that time that person hit 63C or whatever? The Nothing Phone 3 can hit 63C, BUT the better question is whether it is the only phone that hits 63C when being used intensively. You can see at this point in the video almost every major flagship (besides Samsung) has exceeded 60C:
Some other important timestamps from the video:
Nothing Phone 3 Thermal App Shutdown: 6:14 and 6:42
Xaomi 15 Ultra Thermal App Shutdown: 6:13 and 6:43
And that’s it! Additional details below on how I came to these conclusions, supporting evidence and some opinion based stuff down there as well.
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The Research - Why Did I Bother With This?
What led me down this path was the initial rumors of there being no vapor chamber, then the video of 63C being hit by the phone and of course Reddit comments/posts asking if the phone overheats or if they should buy it since they heard it overheats. This led me to find video comparisons (like the one I posted in question 5), reading reviews across different outlets, replicating user reports and ultimately pushing my device to see if there really is a problem so I know how it gets triggered.
Passively Cooled Devices and Their Thermal Loads
Devices that are passively cooled (no fans or moving parts to move heat) have a thermal load. This varies based on size of the device, the amount of passive cooling materials (typically copper heatpipes/vapor chambers/graphite cooling pads) and the amount of heat provided by the components. The heat will transfer through the heat transfer materials, to the phone screen and the outer chassis ultimately making the phone feel hot to the touch. Since static air closest to the phone will take on the same temperature as the phone body, the heat is harder to move away unless that heated air is replaced by cooler air. As many of you know, air is a bad heat transfer material.
Obviously. What Does That Have to Do With the Phone 3?
Let’s say you’re a scrappy startup phone maker that wants to make your first flagship phone. Let’s assume that the best silicon on the market isn’t super affordable, so you grab the next best thing. Does it have drawbacks? Definitely. But it is more affordable and you can tune your software voltages, kernel governor settings, GPU settings, etc to make it better? Also yes. So how do you compete with the highest silicon on the market when yours is a step down?
It’s A Marathon, Not a Sprint
One thing I noticed in a few places was that if the Nothing Phone 3 passed the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, it will sometimes maintain better score deltas than other flagships. I first noticed this in the Phone Arena article (Source: https://www.phonearena.com/reviews/nothing-phone-3-review_id7482#performance) where the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra would smoke it in a short run but the Nothing Phone would catch up in a long loop. This made me think Nothing was banking on two things from their users:
1. Most of their users aren’t going to push their silicon to the shutdown threshold, so it would be a small power user base reporting this most likely (I’m sure they had data to support this).
2. For those that do want to push it, run it WIDE OPEN until you hit the thermal load limit and then hope they stop gaming before that limit hits or shut the offending app down HARD. Throw a nice warning message up so the user isn’t confused.
Assuming the Nothing Phone 3 can maintain cool enough temps during the test it may not throttle as hard as the competition. But keep running it that hard and eventually that heat needs to go somewhere. Nothing just keeps pushing the performance, barely throttling and then hard stops the app when it detects those limits being pushed past safety.
So Nothing is the Worst, Right? Post Over, No More Sales?
This actually makes them even MORE like their spec focused flagship counterparts. Watching the TechNick video (link here: I saw only 2 phones shut down during heavy benchmark tests: The Nothing Phone 3 (6:14 and 6:42) and the Xiaomi 15 Ultra (6:13 and 6:43). Interestingly close together actually. So that means that the Xiaomi is also experiencing thermal shutdown as well, seen in these posts here:
1. https:// www.reddit.com/r/XiaomiGlobal/comments/1lqjwpz/xiaomi_15_ultra_doesnt_pass_3d_mark_wild_life/ (Edit: Link was displaying weirdly so just remove the space between ‘//’ and ‘www’ to visit the link)
2. https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_15_ultra-review-2802p4.php
You might be wondering why Samsung, Oneplus, Oppo and Vivo finish the test without issue? This is a more complicated question to answer honestly. You can see in the video that these devices get as hot, or hotter, than the Nothing Phone 3 (exception being Samsung) and do not shut down. I do know that some have larger vapor chambers. I also believe some run completely un-throttled and expect you to cool it with like phone coolers. I am of the OPINION that they have thermal limits, but I don’t know what they would be. In the case of the Oneplus 13s hitting 68C (due in part to its smaller build) without shutting down, I wonder personally what the internal battery temperature was.
Samsung’s Approach: Throttle Early and Throttle Hard
For Samsung’s S25 Ultra, the TechNick video shows that not only is it the coolest running phone out of the entire line up, but it also ends up with the most battery life overall despite it having the smallest battery in the test. We could attribute this as software optimization, but I think that would only be half the explanation. If they also run their silicon so conservatively that they are able to prevent excessive heat build up this would explain how temperatures stay so low. My instincts tell me if you take the top binned silicon from Qualcomm, run it at a lower voltage than most other chips could hope to achieve and then tune your kernel to lower performance as thermal load rises you’d have a pretty good recipe for success. Your loop scores would fall off drastically, which they absolutely do as you can see in this video where the first loop is 6801 and the last score is 3491:
1.
Samsung is Throttling! Don’t Their Users Care?
If the single run scores are among the highest in the business and your customers can play games without their phone getting hot, why would customers care if Samsung hard throttles your chip as the temperature rises? Their tactic appears to be “Crank the power for short run benchmarks and ease it back for longer play sessions.” As long as their user base doesn’t notice their phone getting excessively hot, or performance dropping so low it affects their game, you’ve found the “sweet spot” while limiting the chip’s capabilities. Also, now is a good time to mention that I’m not the first to point this out:
https://www.androidpolice.com/geekbench-banned-four-years-samsung-flagships-throttling-debacle/
So Samsung Throttles, What About Oneplus/Xaomi/RedMagic/Etc?
These Chinese gamer phone brands put larger vapor chambers, sometimes run their snapdragons full blast and hit similar temps that Nothing does, but will either hard shutdown the app to protect your internals (Nothing/Xiaomi) or just let you keep on cooking until…well, I don’t really know. However, I want to point out the differences in scores for these devices here in Wildlife Extreme Stress Test from their best loop to their worst loop:
Oneplus 13S: Best - 6162 Lowest - 4709 Difference - 1453 Source:
Oneplus 13: Best - 6052 Lowest - 4356 Difference - 1696 Source:
Samsung S25U: Best - 5991 Lowest - 2936 Difference - 3055(!) Source:
Xiaomi 15 Ultra: Best - 5962 Lowest - 4542 Difference - 1420 Source:
Nothing Phone 3: Personal Best - 4559 Lowest - 3565 Difference - 994 Source: Personal Scores
If you look at the score differences you’ll notice gaming phones have a lower difference between best and lowest scores. Whereas Samsung likes to trend downward faster and harder than the others, likely to avoid ever getting hot enough to make someone feel compelled to post on Reddit that their Galaxy S25 Ultra hit 60C.
So What is the Thermal Limit of the Nothing Phone 3?
This is only speculation on my part, BUT I would imagine the hard stop is 55C on the battery. I say that seeing that my personal stress test succeeded when the battery was at 50C, but it failed because I ran it in a hot room and the battery was around 55C in BatteryGuru. Again, this is speculation on my part. I would need more Nothing Phones to submit their experiences to know for sure. HOWEVER I AM NOT ASKING YOU TO STRESS YOUR PHONE OUT. I don’t want to start a trend of people trying to hit personal records on phone battery temps because heat is very bad for the battery. But I imagine it must have to do with the battery since it would be the most dangerous internal component if it were to suffer a failure.
**So What Should I Do?
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This question has a few answers to it so I’ll break it down by category:
If You’re a Normal Phone User that Doesn’t Game - Keep using your phone as normal. Know that there are protections Nothing put in place to protect your phone internals from being damaged and keep you, the user, safe. Your biggest concern for thermal app shutdown would likely be extensive video recording at 4K60 outdoors on a hot day.**
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If You’re a Gamer, But You Aren’t Playing Graphically Intensive Games - You’re probably as safe as the people in the category above. Test it yourself and see with the games you play to see if you notice excessive heat. If you play for lots of hours, play in a hot room, or both, heat could build up enough to potentially be of concern. The best way to know is to test. But if you are lucky enough be able to control your thermostat a lower ambient room temperature helps a lot to keep the phone cool.
If You’re the “Wuthering Waves” Maxed Graphics Pedal to the Metal Gamer - You can try out the Nothing Phone 3 with your preferred games, get a phone cooler or lower graphical settings to take some stress off the internal components and turn down the heat output. But mostly, without taking active steps to mitigate the heat build up you’re likely to thermal throttle. Again, I don’t know the threshold for you to monitor it, but I’d personally watch the battery temperature.
if you got this far, you’re awesome! I ran this test on my device for science and to finally answer the question of whether the Nothing Phone 3 is worse at overheating than other flagships. I think I have provided enough evidence to show while it does get hot, it is in line with other flagships. Seriously, if you read this far thank you! I hope some of it was useful for you. You can see now that the question of whether the device overheats is a complicated question and the answers are nuanced but deserved real investigation to combat against the rumors.
If I got something wrong, throw me a comment and I’ll edit or update the relevant section. I don’t mind being wrong, it keeps me honest. My next research post/tips will be on idle battery loss and apps to disable to reduce idle drain.
