I’ve been dailying a review unit of Phone 3 for the past month (shout out to Nothing) and wanted to give my thoughts as someone who’s purchased every flagship from the company but was disappointed when the leaks turned out to be the real deal. Now I want to preface that I waited 2 years for this phone to release and fully expected it to look like a supped up Phone 2 so when I saw the leaked design I swore it had to be a Phone 2a situation where they put out a bizarre looking phone and everyone hates it then surprise us all with a much better product upon launch.
Imagine my surprise when the keynote went live and the leaks were nearly exact. I decided Phone 3 would be the first flagship I wouldn’t buy after that. Now when I signed up to test it I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. While I still think the design is completely unorthodox and not my style, it has definitely grown on me as a whole. I won’t say it’s a pretty phone by any means but it’s not as bad as I initially thought.
I’ll start with the bad, my main gripes remain on this device, it’s much too busy. I don’t like how out of place the telephoto camera looks in both size and position compared to the main cameras. On top of this, there’s a small semi circle under the flash that looks just like a glyph light and could’ve easily been repurposed as the progress and essential glyph. On top of this, the Glyph Matrix, at least in my usage, is fairly underwhelming due to how low res it is. I know this is a purposeful design choice but it doesn’t vibe with me. I genuinely only use it to see the time during my meetings. I would’ve much rather just had the standard glyphs from Phone 2. Lastly, I’m not a fan of all the design decisions on the back, such as the different blocks of color, random shapes and the red square on the back utilized for the recording light (the red square was an iconic A phone feature, which makes it look cheap on a flagship like Phone 3). Overall Phone 3 in my opinion looks less premium than the past two Nothing main series devices.
The good however, is that there are some great upgrades this time around under the hood. The Snapdragon 8S Gen 4 performs great, whether it’s normal usage or gaming, it’s incredibly speedy and I never experienced a single slowdown. Nothing does an excellent job tuning their hardware and software most of the time and this phone is no exception. I’m coming from a RedMagic 10 Pro, which features an 8 Elite and a 7050MaH battery and I can say the Phone 3 stood toe to toe with the phone in the vast majority of scenarios and beat it in some, such as software support and cameras. In my time with the Phone 3 alone, I received 3 OS updates. I don’t even remember Apple supplying me with that many updates in a single month. Going towards the cameras, I took my Phone 3 on a business trip with me to Phoenix and managed to snap quite a few beautiful shots of Downtown Phoenix. Phone 3 does an excellent job at capturing all the little details of the sky scrapers no matter how much I zoom in, and the AI Zoom feature past 15x is surprisingly usable as well (I’ll include a Ferris wheel I captured at 20x). The essential space feature is quite useful as well, especially for reminders or even tracking things such as packages or prices easily. Lastly, the front and sides of the phone feel excellent in the hand.
While I wish Nothing would’ve had more premium glass as well as a quad curved display or less bezels overall considering they’re not that different over Phone 2 side by side, I still really enjoyed my time with the Phone 3, and consider it a solid phone overall. I would rate it a 7.2/10. It could be much better, and I see Phone 3 as a slight misstep for the brand, but it’s a decent first attempt at a new style of design language. I personally think Nothing should either go back to the original glyphs, expand the matrix area to be higher res and sit in the center of the phone, or find a way to utilize both while cleaning up the design of the next phone to keep it more in line with Phone 1 and 2. Do that as well as make the cameras all the same size and make everything revolve around symmetry again and you have a winner.
Good Luck with Phone 4 Nothing!
