Stop moaning, the Nothing Phone 3 is an excellent Android flagship phone

Just because you’re a challenger brand, it doesn’t mean your products have to cost less. The Nothing Phone 3 is an excellent flagship phone, full stop.

What is everyone moaning about?

If you’re into your tech, you may have seen some online furore about the Nothing Phone 3, the latest smartphone from UK tech firm Nothing. It has an asymmetrical design and £799 price tag that seems to have sent fans and detractors of the brand alike into meltdown.

Take a step back and a deep breath. It’s just a phone. You don’t have to buy it. But after two weeks of testing, I think you’ll be happy if you do.

The Nothing Phone 3 is the most expensive Nothing Phone yet but it brings interesting design, great performance and battery life, and one of the best takes on Android software to a UK market saturated by phones from Apple, Samsung and Google that are increasingly devoid of personality.

You might not mind that, or even think too deeply about the phone in your pocket. The iPhone 16, Galaxy S25 and Pixel 9 are good phones that do everything well. But Nothing is doing something different, daring phones to be fun again, rather than just act as portals to timesucking apps, and that is actually quite remarkable in 2025. It just depends if you mind spending £799 - the same RRP as those three Apple, Samsung and Google phones - to get it.

It’s especially tricky for Nothing given the also-excellent Nothing Phone 3a costs just £329 and has a similarly quirky design, triple cameras, and virtually the same software.

The display, cameras, build quality and performance on the Phone 3 are all better than on previous Nothing phones including this year’s Phone 3a and 3a Pro, but the new device has ditched a signature feature of every previous model. Gone are the programmable lights that shone through the phones’ transparent backs, replaced by a ‘Glyph Matrix’, a small circular LED display.

This manages to be both useful and a gimmick. Nothing encourages you to place the phone face down, which can trigger Do Not Disturb Mode. Then, you can programme the little screen to show you fun icons when a certain contact texts you, for instance. So, you could have a heart show when your partner messages, but all other notifications will stay silent.

This is when the screen is most functional. There is a pressure sensitive button on the back that you can push that brings up so-called ‘Glyph Toys’ which are plainly gimmicks. I don’t want to play rock, paper, scissors against a phone. But the clock is handy, and the magic 8 ball is entertaining.

It’s all just fun, to be honest. Who cares if it’s not incredibly functional? What did you expect from a design-first company? The famous transparent 1998 iMac had a handle on the back, but it didn’t mean you carried it around everywhere, or complained about it.

Just like the lights on the older Nothing phones, the Glyph Matrix can be ignored - unlike the design. Available in black or white (I reviewed and prefer the white), no one will be mistaking this phone for an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy. Cameras sit askew, screws are dotted about at will, and there are several different shades of white going on. It’s a lot. But I still like it as much as when I first saw it, happy to carry around a phone that has, god forbid, a bit of personality.

Nothing has marketed this phone as its first true flagship, which makes sense. It has the firm’s best phone specs yet and the most features, and sits atop its range.

Those specs include the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, 12GB RAM and 256GB storage (£100 more for 16GB/512GB), three 50MP cameras on the back, and a 5,150mAh battery that is silicon-carbon, technically more efficient than traditional lithium-ion cells.

I’ve enjoyed using the cameras, and the main lens takes crisp, well balanced shots in light and dark, though it does have some issues with focus, sometimes images look too soft. But Nothing’s preset colour filters are excellent, and you can make your own.

The ultra-wide is solid, despite colours annoyingly differing between this and the main lens, and the telephoto is good up to its optical 3x, but beyond that the digital zoom struggles, which is disappointing. You can also use the telephoto as a macro camera, but it’s not as good as rival phones that use the ultra-wide lens for this.

The battery life has proven excellent. I’m not the heaviest of phone users, but the Phone 3 handily outperformed my iPhone 16, and could stretch to two days with light use. It can charge at 65W speeds, but there’s no charger in the box. Nothing does throw in a transparent silicone case, though.

Performance is stellar too. The phone flies through all tasks and can handle intense mobile games, though does run a bit hot after half an hour or so. If you’re a mobile gamer you may want to steer clear. I am not one.

I could also do without the dedicated button below the power button that fires up Nothing’s Essential Space. It’s too easy to push accidentally, but the idea is to quickly screenshot and add a note, which the on-board AI categorises and summarises for you in the app.

As someone who doesn’t care about having the very best specs, I think it’s OK that Nothing hasn’t used the most powerful available Android chipset

Better is the ability to place the phone face down and hold the button to start a voice recording, with fun waveform scrolling across the Glyph Matrix. Pressing the AI button when something important is said marks that point for you in the recording.

As someone who doesn’t care about having the very best specs, I think it’s OK that Nothing hasn’t used the most powerful available Android chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, but you will find that chip in the Galaxy S25 for the same price. The internet has whinged that this phone should have the more powerful processor considering the £799 price tag, but I don’t think it’s a big deal.

You’re paying for the design and the extra screen on the back, and the fact that Nothing is a small company. It can’t operate at the same scale as Samsung, so it can’t drive the price down in the same way. If I had to pick whether to use the Phone 3 or the Galaxy S25 for the next five years, I’d pick Nothing.

That’s handy, because for the first time, Nothing is offering five years of Android updates, and seven years of security updates. Not quite as good as Samsung’s seven and seven respectively, but much better than the three years of Android updates of older Nothing phones.

Chances are, if you buy the Nothing Phone 3, you won’t ever meet anyone else who owns it. Obviously, Nothing wants to sell enough phones that one day this isn’t the case, but for now the Nothing Phone 3’s scarcity is a selling point in my eyes. It’s fun to have something different from everyone else. If you like the look of Nothing’s hardware and software, I can easily recommend this device.

If you’re not as keen on spending £799 upfront for a brand you’ve not bought from before, I get it. Instead, plump for the Nothing Phone 3a, which costs £329. It just has lesser performance, cameras and software support, but glows with the same sense of individuality.

It’s not unreasonable for Nothing to charge the same as the incumbent phone companies. Just because you’re a challenger brand, it doesn’t mean your products have to cost less. The Nothing Phone 3 is an excellent flagship phone, full stop.