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Review: Nothing Phone 3 - Charming and affordable top model

Nothing's latest top model holds its own against the larger manufacturers.

Elias Nordling
Published Modified

British Nothing was founded by Carl Pei, who previously co-founded the brand OnePlus. You can recognise the cheeky underdog attitude in the marketing, but unlike OnePlus, which was actually part of the giant Oppo, Nothing is truly an up-and-comer. Despite this, the Nothing Phone 3 shows that it is made by people with industry experience.

In terms of physical construction, the phone is very reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus or iPhone 16 Plus. It is therefore a larger model, with a solid metal frame and a screen with thin black bezels around it.

To stand out as an up-and-comer, it can be good to have something that attracts attention, and here Nothing focuses on the back of the phone. It is, like previous phones, transparent so you can see part of what the phone looks like inside. This time, they talk about how they have divided the back into three segments, which actually means it looks a bit duller compared to the coils and swirls we had on previous models.

New gimmick

The glyph interface, a series of LEDs that could be used to give different signals on the back of the phone, is also missing. It has been replaced by a small screen in the upper right corner of the phone that serves the same function. The screen has 489 monochrome LEDs and an accompanying button that you control it with. The small screen flashes in configurable patterns when someone calls, and you can choose your own patterns for different contacts. Pressing the button allows you to rotate through clock, timer, battery indicator, and a "spin the bottle" that you can use if you want to play just that.

The old glyph interface was a gimmick and the new one is too, there is absolutely nothing about it that you couldn't have done on the phone's regular screen. But it is, after all, something that gives the phone a bit of character and makes it memorable.

The phone has a Snapdragon 8 chipset, but to keep costs down, they have chosen to use the cheaper Snapdragon 8s gen 4 instead of the fastest Snapdragon 8 Elite. A wise choice, as the difference in user experience between the two is negligible, and even the cheaper chipset delivers top-class performance. The phone also has generous memory. Either 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage for 10,000 kronor or 16/512 GB for 11,000. There is no memory card slot.

Excellent screen and camera

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The screen is bright and works well in sunlight. It is of the AMOLED type with a fast refresh rate, high resolution, and in short, maintains an excellent standard. 

On the back, there are three cameras, besides the main camera, a wide-angle camera and a telephoto camera, and all three surpass those on the Samsung Galaxy S25 that I am comparing with.

The main camera takes pictures with good light sensitivity and really fine sharpness, and my only complaint is that the colours can feel a bit dull if it's grey weather, but in most other situations, the colour reproduction is also of high quality. The telephoto camera has three times optical zoom and a not particularly large sensor, so I am surprised by how good the pictures actually turn out from it. Up to ten times magnification, I think you can take photos and still get pictures that maintain quite okay quality.

The phone has Android 15 with Nothing's user interface with Nothing OS 3.5. Android 16 and Nothing OS 4 are promised for the third quarter. It is a good phone for those who do not like pre-installed apps. Apart from Google's apps, there are not many extra apps on the phone. When you start the phone, you can choose between a standard interface and Nothing's stylised interface. This time I choose standard. I think the stylised interface where all icons become monochrome and the text under the apps is removed makes it harder to use the phone, even though it is undeniably stylish.

Nothing's AI initiative is called Essential Space, which means that the AI-generated content can be found in one place on the phone. It involves both being able to record dialogue and have it transcribed (unfortunately not in Swedish) and being able to take screenshots and have them analysed with context-related information. This last feature still feels more like a promise than a useful function, the AI rarely says anything worth remembering about my screenshots.

Nothing has also given Essential Space its own button. You press it to take a screenshot, long press to start the voice recorder, and double press to open Essential Space. This button is placed too close to the power button, and even though it has a different shape, my Essential Space is filled with accidental screenshots when I just wanted to turn off the screen.

The phone naturally has NFC for contactless payments, an in-screen fingerprint reader with good responsiveness, wireless charging, and generally everything I expect from a top model today. If you like the charming attitude and are not put off by the phone's size and weight, it holds up well against other phones at the same price point.

Questions and Answers

What accessories are included? No charger, but a transparent case is included.

How is the battery life? Average. The screen time is good, but the phone is not immune to apps that drain the battery.

How many system updates is the phone promised? Nothing promises five years of major system updates and seven years of security updates. 

An Alternative

The Oneplus 13 can be obtained for about the same price and has similar features, but perhaps slightly sharper cameras.

Camera Example

The colour calibration in the camera is quite okay, and the sharpness is excellent.

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