Since the Nothing company appeared. It has been launching smartphones under budget range. Moreover, it has been doing so well that its smartphone surpassed many smartphones and turned out to be best under budget category. Last year in 2024, the Nothing phone (2a) received the best budget smartphone award by mkbhd. In the same year, Nothing’s CMF phone 1 received the best budget smartphone award by mrwhosetheboss.
On 1 JULY 2025, it jumped into the flagship market by launching nothing phone 3. The company is now directly competing with Samsung, Apple and Google. This Nothing phone 3 has been heavily marketed as a flagship smartphone and they are charging 799 dollars, which is the same as Samsung galaxy S25 and iphone 16. They both were launched at 799 dollar price. The point here is that, is this smartphone really a flagship or are they charging flagship smartphone prices but selling it with some compromises.
lets deep dive into the review
It is easy to identify nothing phone amongst all the smartphones since the transparent back and glyph light easily hijack the attention of smartphone users and this is the only reason that separates Nothing phones from the rest of the smartphones out there.
As always, we get to see transparent back, but the glyph lights are gone and has been replaced by glyph matrix which is a small circle display having 489 LED which acts as a small secondary display. This phone has no camera bump, but we get to see three camera rings which seem ugly, but we should neglect the design and look into the product itself because people get used to design over time
Is the glyph matrix really useful?
The glyph matrix don’t seems useful since the primary display is always there to do what the glyph matrix do.
Things glyph matrix can do.
It shows timer, battery percentage, stopwatch and you can play some games with this glyph matrix such as rock paper scissors and spin the bottle, but these stuff can be done with the primary display as well, but there is one thing which the primary display is unable to do while the glyph matrix can do well.
If you often record videos and capture photos of yourself with the back camera, then the glyph matrix can help a lot. You can see yourself in the glyph matrix while recording videos and taking photos. Even though the content on the glyph matrix would not be visible, but it would still be enough to let you whether you fit in the frame or not.
Camera
| Main Camera | Triple | 50 MP, f/1.7, 24mm (wide), 1/1.3″, PDAF, OIS 50 MP, f/2.7, (periscope telephoto), 1/2.75″, PDAF, 3x optical zoom. OIS 50 MP, f/2.2, 114˚ (ultrawide), 1/2.76″ |
|---|---|---|
| Features | LED flash, panorama, HDR | |
| Video | 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60fps, gyro-EIS, OIS |
Display
A 6.67 inch display with 120 hz rate and 4500 nits of peak brightness and it even has thick bezels, but it relies upon LTPS technology instead of most premium LTPO we see on Samsung and most android phones at this price segment since this LTPS display tech causes display refresh rate to vary from 30hz to 120hz instead of 1hz to 120hz which a LTPO display does.
The glass protecting the display is gorilla glass 7i, which is mostly used in mid-range lineup. Instead, there must have been gorilla glass victus or gorilla glass victus 2.
We see two downsides in display, first is the cheap glass protection and second is the LTPS display tech instead of LTPO which is used in most of the flagship smartphones.
Battery
This phone has packed 5150 mah of battery whereas the Indian version has 5500 mah capacity. In the battery department, this phone is really flagship and it can easily outlast the galaxy S25 and iphone 16. In sum, it is literally a two day battery phone unless you run some power hungry stuff such as camera and gaming.
| Type | Si/C 5150 mAh – International model Si/C 5500 mAh – India model |
| Charging | 65W wired, PD3.0, PPS, QC4 15W wireless 7.5W reverse charging 5W reverse wireless |
Processor
The processor of this smartphone is literally something which push this phone under a mid-range category since this phone is powered by snapdragon 8s gen 4, which is the same processor we see in a mid-range smartphones such as the Poco F7 and IQOO Neo 10, these two smart phone comes under 30000 of rupees.
If the company is charging flagship price then there must has been a flagship processor which is the snapdragon 8 elite.
Clear downsides of this smartphone.
- LTPS DISPLAY INSTEAD OF LTPO
- GORILLA GLASS 7I INSTEAD OF GORILLA GLASS VICTUS & VICTUS 2
- SNAPDRAGON 8S GEN 4 INSTEAD OF SNAPGRAGON 8 ELITE
- CAMERA QUALITY IS NOT BEING AT FLAGSHIP LEVEL