This is NOT innovation | Nothing Phone (1)

THIS is not innovation, But THIS is.

Introduction / What the Nothing Phone (1) Gets Right

What the Nothing Phone gets Right, it’s a lot of small things adding up. And really, the key is attention to detail.

So let’s talk about those things. There is a certain refinement with the Nothing Phone (1). Right from its branding, to its packaging, to the sim ejector tool, to the industrial design and build with the clear back, it’s very clear that Nothing wants to position itself as the pirate in the phone industry as Steve Jobs’s Apple once was. How much they’ve succeeded… we’ll come to that in a bit.

The User Experience

There are things about the Nothing phone that we really love. The first amongst those things is the experience of using the phone. It’s been a few days since I’ve switched to it as my daily driver and there have been ZERO stutters, crashes or anything else. What’s also impressive is that they haven’t given in to the temptation of adding bloatware or unnecessary apps – so far. 3 years of Android updates and 4 years of security updates is a good promise for all of us.

And you know – time will tell if this holds – to us – it’s very impressive that a 2-year-old company can create a product like this in this VERY crowded smartphone market. It’s clear that care and attention has gone into the software experience here. Not all software features are a slam dunk though. The launcher is nice – but it’s basically fancy wallpapers and a couple of cool widgets which actually didn’t stand out against the wallpapers. Those frosted glass wallpapers are – right out of the 80s. Keeping with the vintage theme, the ringtones are retro sounding. I don’t know about you guys but I haven’t enabled ringtones on my phones since forever. It’s pretty much all vibration all the time.

And the glyph interface… we’ve saved that for later.

Build and Design

In terms of the phone itself – that transparent back is nice. The flat edges and lines are very reminiscent of newer squared-off iPhones. Carl Pei’s open admiration of Apple and basically not acknowledging any other phone shows where the inspiration comes from. Interestingly when you lock the phone, there’s a solitary circle for the fingerprint reader, which might be a tribute of sorts to the design of the iPhones with a TouchID. The camera bump isn’t huge – there is a bit of wobble when you lay it on the table but nothing disconcerting. This is a mid-sized phone and we were a bit surprised – maybe we should have done more research on it, but this is not a one-hander. And it’s not because of the length but because of the width. Getting to the top left diagonal is near impossible.

A big miss here is the IP rating – the Phone (1) is a measly IP53 – and it’s the 3 number in that equation that’s worrying. It’s ok against ‘sprays’ of water, but not ‘splashes’ of water. The 4500 maH battery did really well for me in real-life use and I was averaging close

to 5 and a half hours of screen time. Which I think is a little over a day for me. This supports 33 watt fast charging, but in terms of charger – there’s Nothing in the box! The hole punch front camera on the top left still bothers me and I much prefer the symmetrical central alignment on the Galaxy S22 he used before.

The hole punch front camera on the top left still bothers me and i much prefers the symmetrical central alignment on the Galaxy S22 he used before. Nothing also has very even bezels – which give it quite a premium look because making that actually involves folding part of the screen down inside the device. So this is something they’ve really splurged on. The vibration motor is nice, especially for typing.

When it comes to notifications, we think they could be a bit stronger, especially if they’re in a bag or if you have a looser pocket but we’re just nitpicking at this point. And considering this is a phone you would want to rock naked – the phone, not you – please don’t rock stuff naked – it’s especially slippery. The phone, the phone is slippery. I dropped it once when it slid out of my pocket and luckily there were no dings or scratches on it. So it does feel like that premium feel is not just eyewash. The buttons are a bit too flush with the body to our liking though.

The fingerprint scanner was pretty good and very comparable to the Galaxy S22 which is a flagship model – until now at least.

Dem Glyphs!

Now let’s talk about that glyph interface. Look – this is how I – and I think most people – have learned to use their phones in the last decade or so that smartphones have been mainstream. When we want to use the phone – we look at its front. When we don’t want to use the phone, we turn it upside down. Nothing wants you to unlearn all that. Because when you flip that phone, the phone is still interacting with you. Not just that – while the glyph thing is well thought out and very configurable, it can actually be socially undesirable in so many situations – like a movie theater or a dark room or a professional setting.

In terms of utility – the glyphs can have custom patterns for specific ringtones that you can associate with specific contacts. But this is for now only for phone calls. I mean I’m not sure about you – but I hardly ever call people using the cellular network – it’s mainly apps that do the calling and that isn’t supported here. So all calls from non-phone apps don’t adhere to that contact-specific calling. There’s also an Easter egg for music visualization – we’ll let you figure that one out on your own. But the most useful thing you can do with the glyphs is to assign different glyphs to different apps and even change the type based on specific notifications in the app! It’s a bit hard to find though – since you don’t access it from the Glyph settings but need to go into the app’s notification settings.

Shout out to the Verge for that tip! And as we said – this phone is slippery, so you’re probably gonna need a case. What does that mean? That lovely nothing back with those lights – they’re gonna be diffused – and over time – the case is gonna get dirty. And your lights are gonna look meh.

Sight and Sound, What doesn’t look meh though – is that screen. The smooth refresh rate and the very solid color reproduction are a joy to look at. The Full HD + screen is very dense and isn’t going to please everyone but the most exacting pixel peepers. Where it falls a bit behind is at peak brightness. I mean it’s ok – but it’s not gonna beat your flagships. To give you an idea – if you’re out on a sunny day and you’re using polarised sunglasses, the screen is gonna look very dim. The speakers also get plenty loud – very comparable to the Galaxy S22 – but they sound tinny and are kinda distorty at higher volumes. Here’s a sample – listen for yourselves. In terms of wireless audio – both of these support whatever Android supports – so LDAC.

Nothing Ear (1) and Ecosystem Integration

With the Ear(1) Since Nothing’s going for the whole ecosystem – if you’re the proud owner of a Nothing Ear (1), you’ll be happy to know that you do get some of that ecosystem goodness. If you start off a game on your Nothing phone, your Ear (1)s will automatically switch to a low latency mode. Pretty nice idea. But not much else has changed and disappointingly it doesn’t sound any better on the Nothing Phone (1). You’re still listening on AAC and although it’s very passable, we’d have liked to see more happening here.

Camera

Cameras From hearing to seeing – let’s get to the camera. With the main Sony IMX766 50-megapixel sensor, you know it’s going to be a mid-ranger unless Nothing did something crazy with its processing. And it does – pretty much nothing. To give it credit, the colors aren’t super poppy and do look quite accurate. Look the cameras are… good-ish. Admittedly I’m comparing the camera with a premium flagship – the S22, but in almost every case – I like the S22’s output better.

The real compromises seem to me are the front facing cameras, the wide angle lens, low light performance and representation of skin colors. In terms of video, the Nothing maxes out at 4k 30fps without HDR. With HDR it goes down to 1080p. Recently, Nothing pushed an update to the phone with better ultra wide camera performance and all the samples we’ve taken have been after this update.

Check out the video for phone and video samples

Should you Buy it?

So – should you buy the Nothing Phone (1)? Well – if those fancy lights at the back grab your attention or throw you off – they shouldn’t because – those lights are like the thumbnail on YouTube videos. They’re made so that people click on the video. What really matters is if the video itself is something you enjoy. So what we thinking is – it’s impressive that the Nothing Phone (1) has managed to put out a very solid device for a first attempt. The real success is not the glyphs, but the marketing and the product they’ve made. They say smartphones are boring and this is a step in the right direction to change that.

They’ve made a solid phone that looks good and performs well enough for most people. If you’re someone who’s thought ‘I don’t wanna spend too much on a phone, but I want one that looks great and does the basics well. Instead of choosing from the confusing Samsung A series or one of the numerous mid-range Chinese Android phones out there, Nothing’s saying ‘We got you’. So – the real innovation is not this, but the price. They’ve made a mid-range phone that everyone is talking about – and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Stay tuned for full reviews with video, photo, and audio samples of the Nothing Phone (1) compared to the Pixel 6A – and whatever phone you want to know about.

You’ve been getting over the hype and we’ve been DHRME.