A Rule-Breaking Telephone for Rebels

I perceive the frustration with the Telephone 3’s not-quite-2025-flagship-level chipset, or that the display isn’t pretty much as good as the newest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy’s shows, or the truth that Nothing is charging $800 for a slab that—on paper—falls brief in some locations in comparison with opponents. However you had been by no means going to think about shopping for the Telephone 3 if tech specs had been the one factor that mattered. Like all of Nothing’s merchandise—the excellent Ear wireless earbuds and over-ear ANC Headphone 1—the Telephone 3 is a press release that tells everybody that you just’re not a sheep following the herd.

I’m going to handle the so-called “flaws” of the Telephone 3 first as a result of the echo chamber has been probably the most vocal about them, beginning with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 4 chipset. Tit for tat, the 8S Gen 4 chip is a step under the extra performant and “flagship” 8 Elite (Gen 4), with the CPU being roughly 35% slower and the GPU round 44% slower. These artificial efficiency benchmarks misplaced all that means way back; no individual—I really feel sorry in case you are that individual—is counting cores and clockspeeds for telephones. Perhaps the 1% of professional cell esport avid gamers are shedding sleep over a number of dropped frames in League of Legends: Wild Drift or PUBG, however us normies aren’t. Nothing might have gone with final yr’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite (Gen 3), which is fairly shut on paper, and the Telephone 3 would run with equal responsiveness.

I’ve examined each telephone that Nothing has launched for the reason that authentic Telephone 1 in 2022, together with the entire modular CMF budget ones, and I can’t recall any main hangups with Android working on them. That’s not as a result of Nothing used one of the best chipsets (it by no means has), however a testomony to optimizing its Nothing OS model of Android for what’s perceptible to shoppers—the faucets and swipes of the animations that make a telephone really feel and seem quick and fluid. Bouncing across the OS on the particular mannequin that Nothing despatched me to attempt, with 16GB of RAM (the bottom mannequin has 12GB of RAM), felt no much less easy than on a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 or OnePlus 13. All of my apps opened immediately, and whereas I’m in no way a hardcore HoYoverse gamer, the sport developer and writer’s graphics-intensive titles like Genshin Influence and Honkai: Star Rail run simply fantastic on the Telephone 3. Anybody complaining in regards to the 8S Gen 4 chipset is bitching only for the sake of bitching. I haven’t felt the chip or the Telephone 3’s efficiency was less than snuff in a month of each day utilization.

Subsequent on the checklist of complaints is the show. Positive, you may get a barely bigger show on the OnePlus 13, however everybody’s gripe is that the Telephone 3’s 6.67-inch, 120Hz AMOLED display is LTPS (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline) and never LTPO (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide). The latter is present in nearly all premium smartphones and easily means the display’s refresh charge can drop all the way down to as little as 1Hz in standby or when content material doesn’t want to attract as many frames as incessantly. The advantage of an LTPO show is potential battery longevity. I admire having probably the most cutting-edge specs in new units, and I’ll by no means refuse longer battery life in a telephone, however the Telephone 3 has such sturdy battery life (simply 1.5 to 2 days) from its 5,500mAh cell that I’m undecided the minor upsides to LTPO would have prolonged energy by any significant metric.

Probably the most divisive factor in regards to the Telephone 3 is its love-it-or-hate-it design. Nothing ditched the Glyph Interface that was comprised of a bunch of LED strips on the Telephone 1 and Telephone 2 for the Glyph Matrix, a round dot matrix display made up of 489 particular person LEDs. The combination of straight strains, circles, and an deliberately misaligned periscope telephoto digicam lens can solely be described as Mondrian meets Picasso. It’s an opinionated design that makes many individuals weirdly uncomfortable as a result of it’s not one other solid-colored iPhone. Like my colleague Kyle Barr, I’ve grown to love the Telephone 3’s oddball panel—unusually aligned triple-lens cameras and all. It does really feel like Nothing has dialed again on the clear parts that allow you to see the uncooked elements beneath, however general, I don’t hate the route.

The Glyph Matrix shouldn’t be as—actually—flashy because the Glyph Interface, however the LED arrays have the potential to point out extra widget-like data (dubbed “Glyph Toys”) than the sunshine strips. About two inches under the Glyph Matrix is a touch-sensitive haptic button that you just faucet to shuffle via the assorted Glyph Toys; a single faucet switches to the following one, and a protracted press will activate its secondary operate (if it has one). On the time of this writing, there are a number of “helpful” Glyph Toys—stuff just like the time, battery degree, a stopwatch, and even a dot matrix “mirror” of your self while you take a selfie with the rear digicam. You can even set customized animations for contacts and notifications, although I discovered doing so much less amusing and extra annoying, because it was laborious to recollect which one was mapped to who/what after a number of hours. The Glyph Matrix doesn’t look as cool because the Glyph Interface, nevertheless it’s extra versatile for displaying icons and numbers, which the sunshine strips couldn’t do. Then there are the opposite Glyph Toys which might be only for enjoyable—spin the bottle, a magic 8 ball, and a rock-paper-scissors. I don’t know why you’d ever wish to play rock-paper-scissors with a telephone or spin a digital bottle to, uh, see who pays for dinner (Nothing’s unconvincing use case instance), however I suppose it’s all innocent enjoyable. You shouldn’t purchase the Telephone 3 with the expectation that there shall be tons of helpful Glyph Toys that might aid you cut back your display time; an SDK for developers to create their very own little dot matrix widgets is offered, however I additionally don’t anticipate there to be something groundbreaking contemplating how area of interest Nothing’s buyer base is true now.

Maybe someday Nothing will make a telephone with cameras that blow away the competitors, however there’s additionally not an entire lot of motivation to take action when images are largely shared on social media. The Telephone 3 takes good-enough images and movies. Whilst a digicam nerd, the 50 megapixels of decision for the principle, ultrawide, and periscope zoom cameras, in addition to the selfie digicam, meant little or no to me. Images and movies all look fantastic with extra dynamic vary than I really care to nitpick over and low-light pictures which might be greater than brilliant sufficient. Had been there occasions when the cameras took ugly images and movies? After all there have been, however so does each different telephone, flagship or not. The iPhone 16 Pro’s 5X telephoto digicam takes a few of the muddiest low-light images I’ve ever seen in a telephone.

Every time I pulled the Telephone 3 out of my pocket, I’d really feel a brazenness gently take over me. I wished individuals to have a look at it and ask me about it. I wished individuals to perk up as I fiddled with the Glyph Matrix. No strangers—within the subway or at espresso retailers or wherever in New York Metropolis—ever did strike up an off-the-cuff convo, however I wish to think about someday there shall be an individual who does. The Telephone 3 was a actuality test with myself. Is my telephone an expression of my very own individuality or someone else’s? Some individuals purchase a telephone for one of the best tech specs as a result of they’re going to slap a case on it and canopy up its uncooked supplies anyway. Some individuals purchase a telephone based mostly on value, and in addition slap a case over it to cowl up any low cost design. The Telephone 3 doesn’t have the perfect tech specs, nevertheless it does have an aesthetic and enjoyable vibe that you just gained’t discover wherever else. (The Important key and its AI “reminiscence” continues to be meh to me, and I actually want I might remap the button to do one thing else.) Is that value $800? At a time when everybody thinks they’re cool carrying the identical garments and identical sneakers, doing the identical dance challenges on TikTok, consuming on the identical Instagrammable foodie spots, and utilizing the identical iPhone, the Telephone 3 at the very least dares to problem the established order—and it all the time prices additional to be a trendsetter.