Stepping Back, Grateful for the Journey

JochieSantiago · 2026-01-08T16:14:42+00:00

After spending a good amount of time with the Nothing Phone 3, I’ve decided to step away from using it as my daily device. I want to be clear: this is not a complaint post. On the contrary — it’s a thank you. Nothing was a genuinely interesting experience. The design language, the philosophy behind the brand, and the idea of doing things differently are what pulled me in. I spent many hours testing, tweaking, and pushing the device — especially through ADB — trying to understand its limits and potential. More importantly, I want to thank the Nothing community. The support, feedback, conversations, and shared knowledge during my testing phase were solid. People here actually care, help, and discuss things in depth, and that matters more than specs on a sheet. That said, for my current daily needs, I’ve moved on to another device that better fits my workflow. I do still miss aspects of the Nothing Phone 3 — mostly the identity and the idea behind it — but at the end of the day, stability and completeness matter to me right now. I’ll keep watching Nothing’s progress. The foundation is there, and I genuinely hope to see the software mature and fully match the vision. Thanks again to everyone who supported my testing, answered questions, and shared insights. This isn’t goodbye forever — just a respectful pause.

stephanstephanschmidt

This is the same for me! I will keep using it though as a development tool.

Now that 4.0 has rolled out to other NOTHING phones, I can play with the QR codes to get to display stuff on other users phones. Before, I was limited to the NP3 users only.

I’ve been using this at the local skatepark and it’s quite funny as windows will pop-up on devices automatically without pushing to select the QR code as is usually required.

I printed out an A4 sign saying NOTHING/CMF phone users take a photo of this and watched as text popped up on their phone automatically when they opened the camera app and it detected the QR code … it’s quite a nice hack and now works on the 3a series (maybe even the 2 series but I don’t see any of those in the wild) and CMF phones 😃

Otherwise, it’s a nice device to snap some photos and play with the glyph matrix.

I don’t have a work stream with a phone, thankfully, it’s just a toy for me 😃

krizxjr

JochieSantiago

Sad to hear that man, hope you have a better experience on the new device.

I also agree on your description of nothing, especially since the last few updates.

Hang around here, cuz people like you are what makes the community a community.

If you don’t mind, may I ask which device you preferred to go with ? (Samsung ? Oneplus ? 😅)

JochieSantiago

krizxjr im going with the Xiaomi

15T Pro. Battery life is just amazing, and the cameras are next level. Even the IR blaster comes clutch from time to time. And HyperOS 3 is so fluid (at least for me). Although it does suffer from update issues as some regions/devices get updates faster.

I do find myself navigating through my NP3 and keeping it up to date, but I just wish battery life was better and the OS didn’t have this many bugs.

Til21 🇩🇪

JochieSantiago I’ll take the same journey - one eye is crying, the other one is smiling. I love Nothing, but for my daily routine a “boring” phone will be the better choice.

stephanstephanschmidt

JochieSantiago I’d really like to get my hands on a 17 pro with that rear screen. I came from a Mi 10 Youth Edition with MIUI and a 5x periscope to here and I’ll probably go back next time I pass through HK/China and pick a Chinese model to run Xiaomi.EU on, which it better than the global or Chinese ROMs IMHO.

The cameras and processing are great on Xiaomi’s hardware and the .EU ROM removes bloat and allows Google on the Chinese hardware. Battery life is better as well and some Chinese-only stuff is kept useable, somewhat against EU law.

I’d actually look at that for your phone.

Have fun, perhaps I’ll see you again on the Xiaomi.EU community 😃

Anonymous1078

I think it’s natural to buy a Nothing phone to inevitably be disappointed. Either with performance, poor customer service, poor software support, or just general bad decisions made by them

stephanstephanschmidt

Anonymous1078 they’re quite cheap in Europe for the hardware (even the NP3, which I saw for £450/€550 or so before Xmas) and a tiny company with no presence IRL, so I naturally expect limited customer service and spare parts. The CMF line is so inexpensive, it’s essentially disposable @ £149 or so. That’s two tanks of petrol for a car or a day out with family if you had to feed them and use the train.

Does anyone not see this brand as niche? Do people really expect Samsung, Xiaomi or Apple levels of service. In Europe, I’d expect something slightly worse than Motorola in terms of experience due to the tiny offline presence.

Anonymous1078

stephanstephanschmidt Hence why most of us come to regret buying a Nothing phone. On the contrary often smaller brands with less products have better support - Nothing decided to just pump out tons of e-waste products and likely has the same software team trying to work on 10x more stuff.

I certainly will never buy a Nothing product ever again and look forward to getting rid of my 3a

stephanstephanschmidt

Anonymous1078 Could you point out a new phone for sale in the UK/EEA at £149/€149 (CMF1 phone price) that has better support while maintaining a decent hardware spec. I think you’d be very hard-pressed to do this.

You’re being way too negative and have far too high expectations at such a price point.

I’m just a realist and don’t regret my purchase as it’s tempered to the money I have spent.

Anonymous1078

stephanstephanschmidt You can’t really use the CMF1 as an example because it is an end of life product so you of course you can find it for cheap as chips. It’s not a good buy at all with a year or so left of security updates

stephanstephanschmidt

Anonymous1078 Fine, since you don’t address my question itself, I propose the newest phone …

The NP3a lite, if you’d like the newest phone is €199 now, which is £175.

This phone is brand new … with 3 years of OS updates (although it did ship with NOS3.5 and has updated to NOS4.0, so two left) and 6 years of security patches.

No one expects good service as it’s cheap-as-chips.

I wish you to address my above comments with this phone. TYVM.

Anonymous1078

stephanstephanschmidt Well it’s £249 here in the UK.

Can get a OnePlus Nord CE5 for that and actually have timely updates/longer support.

PS - I don’t remember seeing “it’s cheap as chips so you get shit support” in the product description for Nothing phones - can you tell me where it says that?

stephanstephanschmidt

Anonymous1078

yeah, that looks like better hardware, especially the camera.

I like the NOTHING design language with all its faults. We’ve have 2 × 1+1, 1+7t and a 1+12 in the house. Haven’t tried a budget 1+ yet.

Complainers are simply gonna complain I guess. I think it’s great value for £175.

Anonymous1078

stephanstephanschmidt Thing is I didn’t buy a bottom of the barrel £175 budget phone…

My 3a was £370 odd… so I regret not just buying a Pixel for a bit more and actually having better cameras/longer support/timely updates/etc.

stephanstephanschmidt

Anonymous1078 yeah, buying mid-range anything in life is foolish. either buy it to last and spend 3-5x the minimal price or the buy minimal for the job (that’s what I do with any tools … and a phone is a tool). the middle range is socially reaching (pretentious) and not a good investment with limited resources.

that’s how I train my children.

why not trade it in (£200 in value). I’d just like to see you happy with your purchase, that’s all 😃

jaminallen

Hi. I have a Nothing 3a. I got it as my new main phone. I love the hardware. It’s the software faults I can’t live with. To some £379 may not be much. But to me that’s a lot of money. So I want something that works and doesn’t flash up with ‘log tool error’ every 2 minutes - literally. For weeks now. And when the customer support fobs you off and only after a couple of weeks of emails do they finally claim a fix is coming at some point several weeks away…well I see £379 of my hard earned and can’t really be spared money floating away. Especially as th resale value is cut to 2 thirds of the price just a couple of months back.

That’s my issue. I get the smaller support etc argument. But £379 is a lot for me. If I’d have spent that on a cool looking Poco then the support is way better. Way better. And the resale is similar.

So that’s why I’m jumping ship never to come back. That tied with how they market themselves as a customer-centric company. The little company that loves its customers and cares for them.

They really don’t. At all their customer service is awful.

Plus I had the misfortune of buying direct thinking it was the best way to they don’t accept returns tho. When Amazon would’ve taken it back due to the fault.

Oh well. Disappointed is all. i paid a lot for me and expected that much value. Didn’t get it. Got a faulty phone with no support and lost money.🤦‍♂️