I want to start by saying that my overall experience with Nothing has been very positive. I’ve enjoyed being part of the community, attended the Phone (3) launch event, and have always looked forward to supporting the brand. Unfortunately, my recent experience with Nothing Support has got me questioning whether I’d recommend the brand to some of my more distant friends and colleagues, people that I don’t interact with every day. Instead I would just say: “Hey! Yeah! This product is from Nothing” and leave it at that.
If you continue to read this post, please take this from the lens of an average consumer, not someone who is part of the Nothing community or has had opportunities to contribute to the brand. Also please forget my status as a Series A investor, I want this to be evaluated from an average consumer perspective.
The Issue (Dec 2025 – Mar 2026)
Around three months after purchasing my Phone (3), I started experiencing intermittent Wi-Fi failures. The phone would disconnect from Wi-Fi and then fail to detect any available networks until it was fully restarted (not just restarting the network settings). By early 2026 the issue became more frequent, and I discovered other users reporting the exact same problem on the Nothing Community forum. I submitted feedback through Nothing OS in February.
Support Timeline
6 April - Initial Support Contact
No recent OS updates had resolved this issue for me and so I had reached my limit of restarting my phone twice, if not three times, a day, as such I contacted support. The initial response was quick and professional “Can you clear your Wi-Fi networks, reset your network settings, update OS to the latest system, and then check for any Wi-Fi-related conflicts?”. (I did ask for clarification around checking for Wi-Fi specific logs, as I could only see general logs. This comes up again later)
Within a day or two the team came back to me to put my phone into safe mode and test the functionality there and my phone worked in safe mode. However this wasn’t a long-term fix for the issue.
28 April - Second Contact
The problem worsened to the point where I was restarting my phone between six and eight times a day. I contacted support again and was asked to repeat the same troubleshooting.
2–20 May - Losing Data
Nothing arranged for a warranty repair. Unfortunately, this required a factory reset, which meant I permanently lost a recording of my then unborn daughter’s heartbeat stored in Essential Space that couldn’t be exported. I had asked the Nothing Support team for clarification on if we would be able to export this audio file and this was before Essential Space had the backup functionality, so unfortunately this has been lost. I quickly learnt to use the recorder feature instead of relying on the Essential Space that Nothing had marketed Phone (3) on.
After some delays creating the RMA and me chasing for shipping labels along with limited communication during the repair, my phone was returned on 21 May.
21 May – 10 June - “Repaired” Device
The repaired device still had the same fault from day one (I tested this on multiple WiFi networks to ensure this wasn’t a router or network issue). I repeatedly had to chase updates, often waiting several working days between responses, while different support agents appeared to alternate between scripted replies and genuine investigation.
10–23 June - Replacement Discussions
On June 10th, I requested a refund because the repair had failed. Instead, I was encouraged towards another repair/replacement.
On June 11th I received a reply that upset me quite deeply. I was asked to specifically capture WLAN/Wi-Fi logs. (Remember on April 6th when I asked how I could do this?). If you’re reading this, I really appreciate you following my journey, a bit of insight, I’m an ex-failure analysis technician. Nothing had the faulty device (which they stated they had repaired), within their facility to capture these logs and yet they asked me, as the consumer, to do this testing for them. I do not understand how this fault was “repaired” if logs showing the issue had not been captured, or a change/fix was made without actually identifying the fault. Either way this shows a critical misunderstanding on fixing the issue. But what upset me more was not the fact they had not done the testing themselves. It was that I had asked for this methodology 66 days prior and not been told how to get this data for them. Therefore losing those 66 days or 44 business days, accounting for three UK bank holidays.
June 22nd - Consumer Rights Interlude
Here in the UK we have the Consumer Rights Act 2015. This is a superseding piece of legislation that entitles consumers to certain privileges. One such privilege is the right to a repair, replacement, or refund, depending upon an issue, its timeline, and already attempted fixes. Although Support acknowledged the legislation, they continued to steer the case toward another replacement instead, this is something I believe Nothing need to review since the UK legal legislation was “pushed aside” by the support team who followed their own internal policies.
30 June – 5 July - Replacement Phone (3)
I received a replacement Phone (3). Within two days, the exact same Wi-Fi issue returned. I supplied videos proving the fault and again requested a refund while stating my complete dissatisfaction in this process, in the diagnostic testing, phone resets, and everything that I had taken action on. This is also not something that any average consumer would do, instead only a specialist fan posting on a community forum for the company would do, to be honest, at this point I felt I’d been taken advantage of.
July 5th - July 13th - Fight for a Refund
After further back-and-forth, Nothing instead offered a Phone (4a) Pro. Once again the legal bindings of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 of the UK were not acknowledged, the only reason I have not taken the actions to start the process of following up with Small Claims Court is because of my goodwill toward the company, which is now drained. Although this wasn’t my preferred resolution, I accepted because I’d previously used the model without issue.
I did push for goodwill to be made back up given the amount of time I had committed trying to support the Nothing Support team throughout this process, be it replicating the fault repeatedly, providing logs and even just waiting for the lack of communication I received and instead having to chase. Unfortunately I don’t believe the support team have the capacity for this. During this whole rigmarole my daughter was born. As such I asked for the Phone (4a) Pro in pink, which the support team stated they could do. Her due date was May 26th, and I believed I had two months to get this resolved before my daughter arrived; instead I spent those two months, and the first month of her life going back and forth with unhelpful Support teams trying to reach a resolution.
On July 13th, I sent off the replaced Phone (3) and it was received by their facility on July 15th. July 21st, I chased for an update but was met with a non-answer stating they had chased the relevant team. Finally, on July 29th, I received tracking. (14 days, 10 working days after they received my device). I finally had my replacement (4a) Pro on the 30th.
Outcome
Thankfully, the Phone (4a) Pro has been completely reliable so far, reinforcing my belief that this issue was specific to the Phone (3). Throughout the process, however, I spent almost four months troubleshooting, chasing updates, shipping devices back and forth, and repeatedly explaining the same issue.
What Needs Improving
The biggest issue wasn’t simply the hardware fault - it was the support experience which needs reviewing and improving in the following ways:
Better communication and regular updates throughout the repair process.
Consistent handling instead of repeating scripted troubleshooting after repairs.
Proper root-cause analysis before returning a repaired device.
Clear recognition of consumer rights where applicable.
Better acknowledgement of the customer’s time and inconvenience, including the capacity for goodwill since the lack of this has come off as arrogant.
Improved handling of Essential Space data, including the ability to export recordings before a factory reset.
Final Thoughts
I still care about Nothing and genuinely want the company to succeed. That’s why I’m posting this, not to attack the brand, but because I believe the support experience needs significant improvement as the company grows and more “casual” consumers interact with the brand.
I’ll continue using the Phone (4a) Pro and supporting the community, but after this experience I can no longer confidently recommend buying directly from Nothing to people who may have to rely on customer support. For those people, I’d recommend purchasing through a retailer with a stronger returns and support process instead.
I hope Nothing sees this as constructive feedback and uses it to improve what is otherwise a great product ecosystem.
If you have any questions about my experience or anything you’d like to add please feel free to join me in the comment section below!
PS: To pair with this post, I’m writing a separate post about the experience of switching phone 4 times in as many months and my learnings from that side of this experience and what I’d like to change about the process! If you have any suggestions for that article, let me know!
