My Honest Criticism of the New Status Bar Icons

offcolor · 2025-11-21T17:23:54+00:00

[upl-image-preview uuid=e15f944e-e3e7-48cc-a1e0-c158f1ba714b url=https://cdn.nothing.community/2025-11-21/1763746042-652672-nothing-35.png alt={TEXT?}] [upl-image-preview uuid=ff100eb7-54c5-4f6e-91ef-31059030e1b9 url=https://cdn.nothing.community/2025-11-21/1763746050-716558-nothing-40.png alt={TEXT?}] I know everyone is *very* excited about the status bar update, so I assume I'm an outlier here. I'm a professional designer that has been making (among other things) icons and design systems for about 10 years now. This change, by my evaluation, is a downgrade. Please note that the inconsistent height and tapered ends of the data icon may be a bug. It appears that the data icon is being stretched vertically, which would account for both of those things. Despite that, I still feel like we moved in the wrong direction here. Thought I'd share my two cents! Both status bar screenshots were taken by me on my Nothing Phone (3). I updated from the open beta to the stable release this morning.

Krsna

offcolor they are evolving backwards

rel4x

Stock Android 16 look horrendous aswell tho.

They should stick to the existing (old) ones imho.

Spark

IDK why, but I have this feeling that they introduced this in a hurry 🙈

Just saying…

IYKYK😌

Groot54

offcolor got it! Thanks sir

and yeah i confirmed in above post in edit about the bug

Spark but they teased those icon while releasing the Open beta, they had plenty of time, and also NOS 4.0 doesn’t bring drastic upgrades, minor and subtle changes and they had plenty of time.

Don’t know recently what kind of decisions are they making 😕!

Groot54

offcolor Deep Analysis 🫡, I respect that sir, I agree with you, new status icons doesn’t feel that polished, but Pixels’ Android QPR1 design are the better, hope they adopt those.

Btw, I didn’t get what you meant by the inconsistent spacing?

Arw you pointing out the empty spaces in battery and Signal icons, but aren’t they vary depends on signal strength and battery percentage, how can they be consistent, I’m getting wrong idea here ig

Will be glad if you explain

Edit: I don’t own a Phone (3) but I got the screenshot and ig, the signal icon is bugged for you

And now, instead of making the status bar more coherent to Nothing Design, it looks inconsistent

Wifi icon - pointy

signal icons - blunt (curves might look good and consistent)

I’m not a professional designer but tha doesn’t look good to me, maybe subjective, just shared my opinion

offcolor

Groot54

Ah yeah good question. I meant the space between each icon. They’re not optically balanced, so it appears that the Data icon is much closer to the Battery icon than the Wi-Fi icon.

But I genuinely think that the Data icon I have is bugged. It doesn’t match the official depictions of the status bar that Nothing posted. It sort of feels like the Data icon is being sourced from a completely different set.

simplex19

offcolor Do you happen to be based in the US? I’m not sure if it’s related, but Samsung also uses a 5-bar signal strength icon in the US but a 4-bar one almost everywhere else in OneUI and Nothing might be doing the same here?

code913

I think since this is a purely visual change with no specific reason, people prefer the old one they’re used to instead of unnecessary change, and there’s no way they could’ve done it right except to just keep the old icons

CMF1_hacker

I ❤️ them and my NP3 feel more modern now!!!!!!

JochieSantiago

offcolor this is what I mean when I talk about a halfbaked update. Thank you for pointing that out.

CMF1_hacker nah mate, stop doing whatever it is you’re doing with all that “my phone feels modern”.

It is literally the same beta update only with misaligned icons. I don’t know what’s modern about the same thing you had before the beta 🙄

CR24

Only thing I don’t like about the new update. I don’t get why everyone’s so excited about it

itsmeralph09

A bug or a disinformation from the op

offcolor

itsmeralph09 Yeah my data icon is likely a bug. I mention that in the post.

CMF1_hacker

JochieSantiago

i didn’t have these icons before beta or during beta. I like the way it looks.

Also, the phone feels more fluid in general usage.

I find he update pleasing and battery life remains great, around 10h SoT, which is same as beta.

I need to play with it some more to see what’s really changed. I enjoy playing with QR codes which can trigger new events now with the camera App.

ranaa! 🌠

offcolor lmao wtf this is hilarious

That status bar literally looks like it was made in a hurry. They could’ve just adopted the new stock icons in Android 16 QPR1 . Nah, what’s the fun on that? They’re gonna develop a half baked icon and make it worse in every way possible. Hell they could’ve stayed with the old A15 icons and I don’t think anybody would complain (because it just looks simpler and nicer).

For a company that is trying to focus on “making you use your phone less by making the OS so much simpler (which is why the entire glyph system was made in the first place, oh wait, they turned that into a screen as well)”, they’ve just been doing it really wrong recently. Instead of making the status bar more consistent to their design lineup, they decided to make it look inconsistent as hell.

NothingOS updates recently just feels like half-baked updates, most likely because 90% of the company feels like it’s managed by Sales people and Community Managers. At this point I’m just gonna say half the company runs the YouTube channel.

Mazharuddin

Don’t change the icons of status bar in Nos 4 previous icons is looking cools and feel like stock android. Make it more functional rather than changing the icon of the status bar.

JoeDissolvo

Mazharuddin you know these icons are stock android, right?

simplex19

JoeDissolvo it’s not, it only looks somewhat similar

Mazharuddin

I would say previous icons are good

shadoe17

I’m kinda imagining if nothing just sticks with their dot matrix style for everything that would be cooler + very strong brand Identity, yes it will be very confusing since dots and battery status, mobile network, wifi etc etc with that style might end up being incoherent in small sizes but would be very cool and unique

JochieSantiago

CMF1_hacker these are the idle percent drop on my 3 devices

Xiaomi 15T Pro

Tecno Slim

NP3

In idle during 8 hours of sleep, both the NP3 and Tecno lost 1% while the Xiaomi remained at 100%. All of them had BT off and in 4G/LTE network.