Nothing Phone 3: A Quirky AI-Enhanced Flagship for Photography Enthusiasts

Nothing Phone 3 Review: A Quirky and Fun Phone for Photographers

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. As a brand hailing from Britain, Nothing has been around since 2020, and the Phone 3 is its first true flagship aimed at taking on the best in the industry. The company's name is a wide-open door for puns, but nevertheless, Nothing could be a serious contender in the Android space going forward. Its current rise reminds me a lot of the earlier years of OnePlus, which isn't all that surprising since both were founded by the same man, Carl Pei. He left OnePlus and started up Nothing as a grassroots alternative in a similar vein. This is a first for me, as I hadn't tested a Nothing phone prior to this, and one with a daring camera setup makes for an ideal start. The Phone 3 is readily available in North America starting at $800, yet also has the pedigree of Chinese brands to some extent. How it all comes together yields intriguing and vexing results. The Phone 3's physical design is open to interpretation. Does it look like a science experiment or a crafty take on otherwise common builds from others? For my eyes, it's a unique look that's easy enough to cover up with a case if a little too eccentric, though I personally don't mind it at all. I also appreciate that Nothing includes a basic silicone case in the box to add some protection from the start, retaining the transparent back's visibility with Gorilla Glass Victus offering its own layer of durability. Another unique element is the small red square that is actually an LED that lights up when recording video. One of the standout design elements is what Nothing calls its Glyph Interface, a circular LED display on the top corner that functions almost as an independent system. By default, it tells the time, stopwatch, and timer, battery level, and an odd spin-the-bottle game. It can do much more when making adjustments in the settings to include volume indicators, charging progress, and tying certain glyph animations to specific apps. For instance, you have one for WhatsApp, another for Uber, and yet another for email. I wasn't able to create one for the Camera app that actually worked, so it's more of a boon to the rest of the phone. Certainly a gimmicky feature, to a degree, but I've grown to like it because it makes it easier to leave the phone face down. The fact I can also set a "rule" for an animation to pop up when a specific contact messages me is convenient, though my smartwatch can effectively do the same thing in real time. On the flip side, the 6.77-inch AMOLED display (2800 x 1260) is gorgeous, with an adaptive refresh rate that will ramp up to 120Hz or down to 10Hz depending on what you're doing onscreen. Peak brightness (for HDR content) hits 4,500 nits. While pretty visible in bright sunlight, it's also fairly reflective, so a mixed bag in that regard. A responsive fingerprint sensor makes it relatively easy to bypass the lock screen. With IP68 dust and water resistance, this is Nothing's first phone you can submerge in clear water, making it far less risky to capture some stills or clips at a pool or lake. Nothing also makes a curious choice to go with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor over the 8 Elite other Android flagships adopted this year. Indeed, Qualcomm refers to the 8s Gen 4 chip as an "affordable flagship", which is marketing speak for a step down in performance, but it's also more in line with other devices in this price range. A 5,150mAh battery is adequate for a device this size, and it holds up quite well in daily real-world conditions, consistently lasting a full day. Configurations start at 12GB of RAM and 256GB and go up to 16GB and 512GB, respectively. The 50-megapixel main camera (24mm equivalent) uses the same OmniVision OV50H Type 1/1.3-inch sensor as the Vivo X Fold 3 and Honor Magic 7 Pro. The f/1.7 aperture is also in line with both devices, so we have an idea of what to expect from it. Unless you shoot at full resolution, all photos are downsampled to 12.5 megapixels through pixel binning. The 50-megapixel telephoto (70mm equivalent) goes with the Samsung Isocell JN5 Type 1/2.76-inch sensor with f/2.7 aperture -- one we've seen in a myriad of phones over the last three years. In certain modes, Nothing offers a 6x hybrid zoom 140mm equivalent that's basically a crop of the telephoto's focal range. While you can shoot at full resolution at 3x (70mm), you can't do it zooming in further than that. Otherwise, you have to settle for pixel-binned 12.5-megapixel shots. Finally, the 50-megapixel ultra-wide uses the Samsung Isocell JN1 Type 1/2.76-inch sensor with an f/2.2 aperture, a sensor that is fairly common among other brands. Unlike the other two rear lenses, this one isn't stabilized and is fixed focus, limiting its versatility. This also applies to the 50-megapixel front camera, which uses the exact same sensor and specs. Instead of a separate mode for shooting full-resolution images, you select the resolution from the drop-down menu. The problem is that it inevitably resets to the lower resolution after a while with no warning, so if you're walking around snapping photos along the way, you're forced to double-check that 50MP capture is still active. This happened to me a few times, and I was lucky enough to catch it without losing the high-res capture I wanted. Unfortunately, that's the only way to go full-res, since Expert mode only lets you shoot in RAW with pixel binning. This can pay dividends in low-light conditions, but otherwise feels pointless in brighter settings or when capturing a dramatic landscape. For a flagship, it feels far too limiting. Nothing presents a few interesting software elements that can affect how you take photos with the Phone 3. Tap the bottom arrow in the camera app, and various presets appear in a menu, including Black and White Film, Retro, Soft Focus, and Lenticular. What's really neat is it lets you import or create your own. To import, simply scan the QR code to add it to the list. Another way is to create a .cube file to bring in a LUT or preset from apps like Lightroom and DaVinci Resolve (among others) by uploading it directly from the phone's camera app. Simply select the filter menu from the drop-down menu, tap the + icon and you have the ability to bring it in, either from local storage or pulled in from Google Drive. Yet another option is to create a preset from any photo, even if you've transferred or downloaded it from elsewhere. Why make all this available? The phone's Gallery app has a decent editing toolset, except it lacks any sort of curve tool or deeper color grading. I tried this out in different ways, one of which was to use the Gallery app first, upload to Lightroom to work on the finer details more accurately, and then download the result back to the phone. That way, I could create a preset using the color grading that the phone and its imaging pipeline would then work to emulate. While not a perfect solution, it is one of the more interesting methodologies I've seen that caters to mobile photographers of all stripes. It's also the most creative outlet in a device that otherwise ignores AI-driven editing features or special modes. The Phone 3 isn't devoid of AI, however, and one feature tied to the Essential Key -- the button under the power button on the phone -- is applicable to photography. Press the button with anything onscreen and you can write down a note or ask a question for context. This is great for two reasons. First, it makes it a lot easier to snap a quick photo as a reminder or to look something up. Second, it opens up access to contextual information with the assistance of ChatGPT. To test out a good example, I used a photo I took of the lunar eclipse and asked it when the next eclipse would be. It then listed the upcoming dates for both partial and full lunar eclipses based on my location. It's true that Google's Circle to Search essentially does the same thing, only the key difference here is that all of these Essential Key screenshots save to the Essential Spaces app. It essentially (pun intended) acts as an offline resource that's always there to reference anytime. Granted, it's far from perfect, as evidenced by the fact that it doesn't always offer much insight, but it can be great at helping find information. On the other hand, ask it to suggest how to make a photo look better, and it won't offer much insight at all. I will address the two main sticking points for the camera before discussing the positives. There's a noticeable shutter lag that afflicts every mode except Action and Video. In some cases, it's so bad that it can take up to two full seconds before it snaps the image. It's also inconsistent in ways that are hard to discern or explain. I could never figure out why it would be slow to capture a photo in outdoor settings, only to feel much more instantaneous when taking other shots in the same general area. I will update this review once Nothing responds to queries, but if I were to take a stab at it, I would guess that the HDR processing engine immediately sets how many images it needs to quickly snap and merge. The other issue is lens flare and ghosting. Nothing needs to look at whatever coating it's using for the Phone 3's lenses because it happens in varying scenarios where it doesn't impact other phones in the same spots. The photo of the rabbit is a good example of how it can create glare that not only hazes the composition but also plants ugly ghosting in the frame. All I was trying to do was lower the perspective to get a more interesting shot, but the flaring never let up. Meanwhile, two competitors' phones didn't seem to suffer from the same problem. Nothing has just released a firmware update to improve its Ultra XDR processing and address this issue. I'll update this review if that leads to better results. Those two significant drawbacks aside, the Phone 3 surprised me in good ways, with the Action mode turning out to be one of the biggest gems. Nothing wisely offers it in both the main and telephoto cameras, and much like other competing phones with a similar feature, the idea here is to increase shutter speed and utilize HDR processing to manipulate both ISO and virtual aperture to freeze everything. Tougher lighting conditions get in the way, yet broad daylight can lead to fabulous results. The skateboarder is a good example -- not only did I take the shot with the telephoto lens, I also cropped in further and retained good detail. Action doesn't support burst shooting (only Photo mode does), but quickly tapping the shutter can deliver multiple good shots. Equally impressive is the way the Phone 3 handles HDR, although time of day and light exposure play a significant role. It may struggle to pull out the blues in the sky on a bright sunny vista, only to then wonderfully subdue the sun's intensity in a horizon sunset. When it works well, you love having that kind of power in your pocket, despite how it cuts both ways. One thing I appreciate is that the Phone 3 handles exposed light sources well enough to avoid outright clipping or underexposing shadows -- again, owing to the Ultra XDR's efficacy. However, the angle is your only real defense against flare or glare creeping in, so tilting ever so slightly might be enough to ward it off in those instances because it can happen indoors or outdoors. General results will look great on a phone screen, though you may notice more imperfections when pixel peeping. It's one of those things where really good photos are obvious and forgettable clunkers equally so. That's not to say the Phone 3 is inconsistent, more that it nudges you to use some of the available tools to close the gap. The telephoto lens is a great example of what I'm referring to, mainly because it sometimes captures brilliance and then mediocrity all in one sitting. It impresses more often than not, but I would like to see more consistency. For one thing, you could take two shots from the same vantage point and come out with different color tones in each. Blue skies are the most obvious example of when this happens, though other rich examples, like foliage, vehicles, and graffiti, can lead to similar results. Despite all that, I leaned heavily on the telephoto to get me the shots I wanted from a distance. Even the 10x hybrid zoom (240mm equivalent) can produce a decent result with the help of AI Zoom when it kicks in. It also doubles as a macro shooter and accords itself well in that role. Rich and detailed, it's one of the more surprising elements to the broader camera system. This ultra-wide sensor has been around for a while, and it shows. The lack of both OIS and broader focusing tend to affect performance but it's more that the XDR processing just isn't as effective here. While it is a 50-megapixel sensor, Nothing doesn't let you shoot with it in full-res where you might salvage some detail in good lighting. Apart from the LUTs and presets, this is one of the main anchors for the camera system. It can produce action shots that simply aren't possible on an iPhone or Samsung phone without doing a lot more work. Action mode takes both multiple photos and a super short video clip in the backend to help render a still that freezes a subject in motion. We've seen this sort of thing from OnePlus, Xiaomi, Vivo, and Honor before, but it's yet to truly catch on from the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Google. As I noted earlier, it's also the fastest shutter available on the camera app. Rapidly pressing the button enables you to capture the action in fairly short intervals -- under a second long -- to increase the chance of capturing something dynamic. The one caveat is the subject's speed. People and (most) animals are easier, whereas objects can be tougher to precisely nail down at higher velocities. Mind you, distance also matters like it does with any action photography, so the same rules generally apply here, too. In low-light conditions, including indoors, you have to watch out for ramped-up ISO to offset the higher shutter speed, which could lead to a noisier result. I focused more on still photography, but also tried out video. For whatever reason, Nothing doesn't enable using the same LUTs and presets to capture footage. Select a preset, and it reverts right back to Photo mode. Otherwise, you can record in 4K or Full HD resolution at 30p or 60p frame rates. The only other video modes are Slo-Mo and Time-lapse. Video quality is quite good in ideal settings, and with HDR mode, you have the option to record in H.265 for extra control in post-production, if desired. The Nothing Phone 3 is in an interesting spot. The brand doesn't have the kind of imaging partnerships Chinese brands have, nor is it a household name in North America like the Big 3. NothingOS is one of the best Android overlays I've seen for the simple fact it strongly resembles stock Android. The build quality and hardware are solid, and battery life is excellent, so this phone ticks off a lot of the right boxes. I can understand how some might view the cameras as a drag on the overall package, especially given the competition at similar prices. But for an upstart brand trying its hand at a flagship, this is a very good debut. I tested the Nothing Phone 3 at the same time as the Vivo X200 FE, and the latter proved to be a more capable shooter in varying circumstances. On the flip side, NothingOS is a pleasure compared to Funtouch OS. The OnePlus 13R is closer in both price and performance in that it lacks Hasselblad's input, and is a worthy option given how good OxygenOS is as an Android overlay. The Xiaomi 15 may cost a bit more but it retains many of the imaging trappings of the Ultra model. The upcoming Xiaomi 15T Pro (or something similar) may also be in the same wheelhouse. The Honor 400 is compelling as a cheaper option -- except if you want a telephoto lens, get the Pro version. Maybe. NothingOS is a draw for sure because software is so vitally important to our daily interactions with phones. It's not clear how much Nothing will try to fix on the camera side through further updates but if you like something fun and quirky, the Phone 3 is it.

Nothing Phone 3 Review - IGN

Nothing bided its time before releasing the Nothing Phone 3. Where the Nothing Phone 2 was a solid mid-ranger, and Nothing's Phone 2a and 3a were pushing the upper limits of the budget phone market, the Nothing Phone 3 comes in with a $799 price tag to go squarely against flagship phones from Apple, Google, Samsung, and OnePlus. That's no easy task for a still fairly recent upstart with less than five years to its name, but Nothing does an impressive job delivering a quality phone with respectably all-around performance and a quirky design that some may enjoy. The Nothing Phone 3 puts style first. Whether you like its style is a different matter, but the phone certainly goes for a remarkable and unique look. Its clear back offers some insight as to what might be going on inside, though the actual internals are still all covered up, so it's not quite like the clear side panel of a gaming PC. It's also no longer clear to show a host of different LEDs spattered around the phone. Now, there's just a small coin-sized dot matrix display in one corner, which Nothing is calling the Glyph Matrix. The 489-pixel screen is interesting, though something we've already seen done in slightly different fashion on the Asus ROG Phone 9. This can display some fun little gimmicks, like a spin-the-bottle game, notification animations, or a magic eight ball. It has some more useful features as well, like a battery meter, spirit level, and a selfie mirror - though this last feature was rather confusing to use, requiring me to cycle through the options to it, long press to activate it, and then long press again to take the photo (it doesn't open the camera app on the other side of the phone, doesn't work with the volume buttons, and doesn't appear when taking a photo normally). Some features of the Glyph Interface are still pending, like per-contact notification visuals. Beyond that special display and transparent back, the only quirky thing about the Nothing Phone 3's design is its camera layout. The modules are simply laid out unusually, with the wide and ultra-wide sensors sitting side by side, albeit at some distance from each other, and the telephoto sensor sitting offset from either of these. Folks who favor 90-degree angles and straight lines will likely be put off by this. The rest of the phone is a mix of mid-range and high-end design. The Nothing Phone 3 is slightly thick at 8.99mm and heavy at 218 grams, up from the 8.5mm of competitors like the OnePlus 13 and Pixel 9 Pro, which are 210g and 199g respectively. Its dimensions are otherwise reasonable for a phone packing a 6.67-inch display. The phone boasts an aluminum frame typical of devices in this category and uses Gorilla Glass 7i for scratch and drop protection. It's tough to say how that stacks up to the higher-end Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on something like Pixel 9 Pro, but Nothing at least includes a preapplied screen protector with the phone. The device is also IP68 rated to keep up dust and survive dips in 1.5 meters of water for up to 30 minutes. For an $800 phone, I'd expect no less. The display on the Nothing Phone 3 is excellent. It's a modest size, and with 1260x2800 pixels, it's perfectly sharp. Nothing may not be at the cutting edge of bezel thinness, but they're even and narrow all the way around. The screen is satisfyingly bright in outdoor conditions and boasts the color and contrast I've come to love on AMOLED displays, making for especially poppy HDR content while watching TV, movies, or YouTube. The display can reach up to a 120Hz refresh rate for smooth visuals, and it will dynamically lower its speeds to conserve power necessary. In my testing, it always felt smooth. The display is flanked by speakers on either side that offer respectably loud audio and are reasonably balanced between the sides for clean stereo sound. On the bottom of the phone, you'll also find a tray that can hold a pair of SIM cards, though the phone also supports eSIM, providing some pleasing flexibility. That is disappointingly set next to a USB-C port that only offers USB 2.0 transfer speeds. I'm not sure what excuse Nothing has for that, but I'm sure it can't be a good one in 2025 - a full 16 years after USB 3.0 was introduced. In testing the Nothing Phone 3, I ran into an issue I've heard of on phones but never personally encountered before. After running a demanding test on the phone, I discovered condensation on the inside of the camera lenses. For the primary and telephoto cameras, this condensation didn't readily show up in photos, but it did cause blurring in areas of the ultra-wide sensor's photos. After some time, the condensation went away. The weather was a bit extreme, with high temps outside and strong air conditioning inside. And the benchmark test I ran raised the phone's temperature considerably. While it may have been a fluke or a confluence of extreme factors that led to the moisture inside the cameras, it was no less concerning. On the right side of the phone, you'll find an extra button below the power button. This is for a special AI-centered experience called Essential Space. Tapping the button will take a screen shot and holding it will let you record a voice note for future reference. Notes can also quickly be appended to screenshots for more context. If you flip the phone over and hold the Essential button, the phone will begin to record, showing a sound wave on the Glyph Interface and blinking a red light near the cameras to indicate it's recording. From there, Nothing will process the recording and provide a summary. Google launched a similar screenshot-centric feature with AI analysis on the Pixel 9 lineup. Nothing's implementation so far seems a little more seamless to dive into thanks to its dedicated button, though it doesn't appear to work as hard to provide useful insights into things or provide a quick way to dig up old screenshots by searching for them. Some features require use of a Nothing account, like quickly adding to-do list items via voice (something Google Gemini will also do). The service includes 300 minutes of audio analysis per month - a bad sign for on-device AI inference. The Nothing Phone 3 comes with Android 15 out of the box. This runs Nothing OS 3.5 as a skin of Android, and it's a clean one. It has some funky icons that aren't always easy to interpret and a couple of Nothing apps, but otherwise comes with no bloatware that I could see. Some of the hardware controls, like the Glyph Interface, aren't part of apps but are baked into system settings. It's not always intuitive where seeings will be or even how to access the full settings when you find the right spot, but overall it's been at least a clean and pretty Android interface. Impressive for a company that didn't have very clear support lined up in the past, the Nothing Phone 3 comes with a promise of 5 years of Android updates and 7 years of security patches.That said, a skeptic might note that Nothing hasn't even been around that long. The Nothing Phone 3 is built around the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 SoC, a notable difference from the Snapdragon 8 Elite floating around in most Android flagship devices. While it's no slouch, it also falls well behind that flagship chip where performance is concerned. In my testing, it tended to line up closer with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That's not the worst news, as that was also a high-performing chip and gave phones running it speeds competitive with Apple's latest iPhone 16 family. The Nothing Phone 3 also puts up that kind of performance. In Geekbench 6's CPU and GPU tests, the Nothing Phone 3 is a worthy rival to the OnePlus 13R, RedMagic 9 Pro, and OnePlus 12, albeit about 10-25% slower in single-core performance. It also outpaces the Pixel 9 Pro. It puts up solid gaming results in 3DMark's various graphical benchmarks, continuing to nip at the heels of these other phones, even if it generally doesn't overtake them. The Nothing Phone 3 can struggle a bit with heat, though, and it's been inconsistent in this regard. After running a benchmark stress test, I measured a 115 degree Fahrenheit hotspot near the cameras and 100-105 degree points along the frame near that end of the phone. The phone also aborted multiple runs of the Steel Nomad Light stress test because of overheating. It only once successfully completed the test in a cafe with especially cold air conditioning, and there it got a surprisingly high 80% consistency score. By comparison, the OnePlus 13 didn't struggle to finish the benchmark when it was tested (not in that cafe) but had only a 65% consistency as its score range started with a high of 2524 points and sank as low as 1662 - that low, notably, being close to the Nothing Phone 3's highest score of 1799. That heat can crop up some in everyday use. Of course, it built up while gaming. I felt the phone get a bit uncomfortable, though not intolerable, after a couple rounds of Delta Force. And even while watching a show on Netflix, I noticed the phone getting warm. On other occasions, the phone didn't seem to be unduly warm. Thankfully, the phone generally behaves well. It has more than enough performance for everyday use and plenty of memory (I was sent the 16GB configuration for testing) for quick app switching. Even after gaming for a while, I was able to go back to an app I hadn't used for hours and pick back up instantly. Wireless connectivity is also a strong point. Not every phone plays well with the carriers in the U.S., like Poco and RedMagic. But in my testing, the Nothing Phone 3 generally had a solid and speedy connection to T-Mobile much like I'd get, generally topping 40Mbps and sometimes ramping up upwards of 100Mbps. The phone also supports tri-band Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0, which gives it a good degree of future proofing Nothing tops off all this generally decent performance with a solid battery. You won't find anything mindblowing, with the Nothing Phone 3 sporting just a 5150mAh battery. But that's ample for all-day use and will likely last all but heavy users well into a second day. The phone can juice back up on a 65W wired charger, which is just peachy if you have a USB-C laptop charger. Wireless charging is a bit slower at just 15W. On a lot of phones, cameras can be a bit of an afterthought, or overhyped without the hardware and software to actually deliver. Nothing seems to have really put some effort into their camera stack with a full setup of quality sensors, not pulling a fast one with one good sensor and a handful of throwaway sensors to pad the specs. Here's what the Nothing Phone 3 includes: The Nothing Phone 3 starts off on a good footing. The main sensor captures lovely photos with clear details, plenty of light gathering potential, and lifelike color. In very bright sunlit environments, it wants to overexpose the scene, but this is quickly dialed back with a simple slider in the camera app. It's not always spot-on with focus, especially for close-up shots, but it performs well enough. The ultra-wide manages to provide consistent lighting and color, not straying too far from the main sensor. But it suffered from hard-to-miss distortion and aberrations to the image. It also struggled to focus close-up. While it can capture a larger field of view, its issues hold it back from being a solid addition to the setup. The telephoto proves more worthy. It's able to punch in nicely on distant subjects with a 3X optical zoom. 5X would have been more impressive, but 3X still helps. It shifts colors slightly from the main sensor, so there's not a perfect consistency there, but it's still fairly close. More importantly, the telephoto makes for some sharp shots. Whether you're trying to shoot a far-off subject or a close-up, the telephoto sensor comes into play. When switching to macro mode, it's actually the sensor used, and it does a good job bringing out texture. Nothing's computational photography isn't great at digital zoom, with the photo quality dropping off quickly even when pushing to just 6X zoom. The selfie camera also does a solid job. It captures sharp images with bold contrast. Interestingly, it appears to perform better than using the main sensor to take a selfie with the Glyph Mirror. While there's no easy way to account for subtle differences changing how the camera processes a photo, it appears that photos are noisier and more washed out when using the Glyph Mirror to take selfies. Overall, it's a good camera system, but doesn't quite push into exceptional territory. It may have higher resolution sensors than the OnePlus 13 and Google Pixel 9 Pro, but Google and OnePlus just do a better job processing and matching images between its sensors. And the Google Pixel 9 Pro has better zoom.