Nothing Phone 3 review: a quirky, slick Android alternative

The Guardian

16-07-2025

The Phone 3 is London-based Nothing's latest attempt to get people to ditch Samsung or Apple phones for something a bit different, a little quirky and more fun.
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As the firm's first high-end Android in several years, it has most of what you'd expect a flagship phone to have. But where it tries to set itself apart is with slick, dot-matrix-inspired software and a design on the back that includes a small, unique LED screen.
Costing from £799 (€799/$799/A$1,509) the Phone 3 is double the price of the company's great mid-range efforts, making it a direct challenger to the Samsung Galaxy S25, Google's Pixel 9 and the iPhone 16.
Nothing first introduced its semi-transparent design with earbuds and then followed up with the Phone 1 in 2022, which added 'glyph' LEDs on the back that flashed in fancy patterns for notifications. For the Phone 3 those glyph lights have morphed into a small round matrix of LEDs in the top right of its back displaying icons, animations and patterns.
It is used for more than simple notifications and can now display various gimmicky 'toys' such as a magic eight ball, a stopwatch or, cringingly, a spin the bottle game that can be triggered by a touch-sensitive button the back. More useful is the ability to show the time, the volume, charge status or a persistent icon for a notification or app of your choice.
The rest of the back of the device divides opinion with a quirky arrangement of shapes and elements. Those who crave symmetry will hate it.
The front screen is, at least, a regular 6.7in OLED display with slim bezels and a smooth 120Hz refresh rate. It is crisp, colourful and bright, though a little subject to glare on very sunny days.
Screen: 6.7in 120Hz QHD+ OLED (460ppi)
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4
RAM: 12 or 16GB
Storage: 256 or 512GB
Operating system: Nothing OS 3.5 (Android 15)
Camera: 50MP main, 50MP 3x tele and 50MP ultrawide, 50MP selfie
Connectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6 and GNSS
Water resistance: IP68
Dimensions: 160.6 x 75.6 x 9mm
Weight: 218g
The Phone 3 has Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chip, which is a step down from the latest top Snapdragon 8 Elite processor used in most flagship Android competitors. Its slightly weaker performance isn't noticeable in day-to-day usage and it simply flies along. It can even handle games pretty well, though those seeking the absolute best performance should look elsewhere as the phone got uncomfortably hot with demanding graphics tests.
The battery life is a solid, though not class-leading, 40 hours between charges with plenty of 5G usage. Most people will need to charge it every other day, or less if used more sparingly. That matches the two-year-old Phone 2 and is a little behind similar rivals.
The battery fully charges in about 55 minutes using a 65W or greater USB-C power adaptor (not included), hitting 50% in just 19 minutes. The phone also has 15W wireless charging.
The phone ships with Nothing's take on last year's Android 15, which is highly stylised with a dot-matrix look and is easily customisable. A more regular Android style is available for those who need colour to identify their apps.
Otherwise the software is slick and clutter-free, with all the usual services from Google available, plus a few Nothing apps such as the weather or voice recorder. The Essential Space app, first launched with the Phone 3a Pro, now includes the ability to voice-record while face down with an animation on the glyph screen and transcription using a cloud service. Essential Search is an AI-powered search of content across your phone and data, plus the ability to answer simple queries.
Nothing is promising an upgrade to Android 16 in the third quarter of 2025 and will provide five years of Android version updates and a total of seven years of security updates. That's a couple of years short of the best from Google and Samsung. Also note that media apps such as Netflix currently do not support HDR content playback on the Phone 3 due to certification restricting it to SDR video.
The Nothing has three 50-megapixel cameras on the back and a 50MP selfie camera on the front. The main camera is the best of the bunch, shooting detailed and solid images, while the 3x optical zoom camera is almost as good, maintaining great detail and sharpness in bright scenes. The in-sensor zoom to 6x is OK, as is the digital zoom to 10x in good light, but the image degrades as you magnify further. The ultrawide camera is the weakest of the three, producing photos that look great in full view but lack detail when zoomed in and with obvious warping around the edges of the frame.
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Outdoors in bright light they capture great photos, but switching between the three cameras can result in different colour balances and tones, which isn't ideal. They can also be oddly grey when shooting indoors, with inconsistent tone, sometimes shooting great photos but at other times coming out dull with repeated shots.
The selfie camera is pretty good and captures a lot of detail. The 3x telephoto camera has a macro mode for closeup shots from about 10cm away, which is always fun.
Overall, the Phone 3's camera can be good but inconsistency keeps it from being as great as rivals at this price.
The battery will maintain at least 80% of its original capacity for at least 1,400 full charge cycles. The phone is generally repairable in the UK.
The device is made of recycled aluminium, copper, plastic, steel, tin and other materials accounting for 17.6% of the weight. It has a carbon footprint of 53.2kg CO2 equivalent. The company publishes sustainability reports.
The Nothing Phone 3 costs from £799 (€799/$799/A$1,509) with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
For comparison, the Phone 3a Pro costs £394, the Google Pixel 9 Pro costs £999, the Samsung Galaxy S25+ costs £999, the Samsung S25 Edge costs £1,099 and the OnePlus 13 costs £899.
The Phone 3 is a good but not great Android from Nothing. It is more interesting than rivals, but you have to actively want something different for it to make sense as you can easily get better-performing and longer-lasting handsets at about this price.
Nothing's software is a strong point. It's slick, customisable and well optimised. Seven years of security updates is good, even if isn't launching on the latest Android version and you only get five years of upgrades. The glyph screen on the back is certainly novel, and the back's semi-transparent design is eye-catching, even if it divides opinion. It is well made if a little on the heavy side, while the phone's performance and battery life are solid if unremarkable.
The inconsistent camera shows there's still work to be done from Nothing, while its Essential Space AI tools show some merit, even if they're a little basic at the moment.
If you want a something a bit quirky-looking then the Nothing Phone 3 is it.
Pros: great software, eye-catching back design with dot-matrix screen, solid performance, 3x telephoto camera, good screen, solid fingerprint scanner, fast charging, sub-£1,000, seven years of security updates.
Cons: camera is inconsistent and can't match the best, battery life could be better, AI features still a work in progress, not the latest version of Android and only five years of upgrades, lack of symmetry not to everyone's taste.