Hands-on with Nothing Phone (3): A Bold Step Forward, but Not Quite Flagship-Level
The Nothing Phone (3) is now the best product the company has produced. Even though Nothing claims it is a "tru flagship", under any sensible definition, it does not really qualify as such. But I'm excited about this new trajectory of the Nothing Phone series. I have already liked a lot of their earlier phones, but I have wanted for some time to see the company produce a phone that has flagship performance. This has been a much anticipated product, and I have finally been able to put this phone to the test.
The Nothing Phone (3) features a really different design. In fact, the triple camera arrangement looks vaguely all over the place and there's no traditional Glyph lights to modify Nothing’s iconic branding. That being said, the design looks better in person, as it has evolved past its renders. The white is absolutely my recommendation, although the black is nice too when it's well-lit. As for the weight and size, the phone feels really solid in hand — it is bigger and heavier than expected, especially if consider that it has a 5,150 mAh battery. It weighs slightly less than the Pixel 9 Pro XL, but feels much heavier. While that is a good thing to me, it may be a point of contention.
The Nothing Phone (3)’s design will be eye-catching, but it’s safe to say there’s a lot more to love about it. Nothing is clearly demonstrating serious growth here, and there’s no question that they’ve learned a lot from their previous mistakes in a lot of different speakers. The most obvious example of growth, is the new Glyph Matrix.
The original glyph lights were great, but in many respects they felt almost gimmicky due to their lack of true, functional utility. While Nothing claims 8 out of 10 users kept this feature turned on, this statistic is far less impressive considering that Glyph was enabled by default. The new Glyph matrix allows for much greater utility, precisely because it is functioning as a display. The dot density may not be high enough to show an image, but it’s able to display a tremendous amount of information, including the time and battery life at the very least, which already feels like a real leap forward. Additionally, the "Glyph Toys" functionality also seems set up for additional, future development. Based on this alone, it feels fair to predict we will see a ton more development and utility from the Glyph Matrix than we ever did the previous Glyph Interface.
OnePlus13 Of all the Android phones on this list, the OnePlus 13 stands out as the best alternative to the Nothing Phone 3 for most people.
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