The Nothing Phone 1, stylized as (1), is a striking Android smartphone with a transparent body and decent specs. Not exactly a household name, the company was founded by one of the creators of OnePlus and partnered with Swedish electronics company Teenage Engineering to design its products. So far, it has released one (1) set of wireless headphones and one (1) phone.
With a 6.5-inch HDR SuperAMOLED display that crams in 1080x2400px (a 9:20 aspect ratio and 401ppi) and variable refresh rate up to 120Hz, plus 50MP cameras and a multi-core Snapdragon chipset, it’s a phone that can take the best Android flagships, even stick it to some of the best smartphones (opens in a new tab) out there and a camera that rivals some of the best camera phones (opens in a new tab) for sale, but one (1) question remains: Is nothing really something?
Nothing Phone 1: Design and screen
Before we get to the phone, we need to take care of the packaging. Could nothing have topped Apple here? The box is black and thin – there’s no way a magazine will fit in it – and opens with a tab that tears all the way around the perimeter, allowing the end to fall out. Inside, the phone and a box of loose parts sit side by side, both accessible via another tab that you pull towards you. It’s sleek and feels premium, while having the device’s lifetime carbon footprint printed on the label is a nice touch too.
Take the Phone 1 out of the box and turn it on, and its design flourishes kick in. While the flat sides are reminiscent of a large iPhone 4, the Nothing logo, with letters made up of dots, and the transparent back of the phone are quite distinctive. The phone comes in three RAM/storage variants: 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB, and 12GB/256GB, which is the one sent to us for review. Pricing is reasonable, at around £500/$600 for the most expensive model.
As for its looks, the iPhone 4 is a classic for a reason. The sides of the slab are broken only by a USB-C port, a single speaker grille and large buttons that don’t protrude too much. The transparent back has two camera lenses, and the front camera is a punch in the top left. The fingerprint scanner sits below the screen, while the holes for a microphone and unlocking the SIM tray are barely noticeable at the top and bottom.
Clear Gorilla Glass on the back of the phone means nothing has taken the opportunity to bury some LEDs in the device’s innards, known as Glyph, and these can be configured as LEDs notifications that produce anything from Blackpool Illuminations brightness levels to a subtle blink. Perfect for use in silent mode, and with a setting that turns them off at night, they do the trick instead of keeping the handset in a protective case. Luckily, nothing makes a clear one that helps keep fingerprints off. Unfortunately, when activating the phone’s torch mode, only the camera flash turns on, but you can use the glyph as a fill light for the camera.
The buttons are positioned with the volume rocker on the left and the lock button on the right, similar to OnePlus phones (although it lacks that brand’s distinctive hardware switch to activate silent mode) and a change of Google and Samsung, which have put all buttons on the right side of the device when you look at it. They’re tactile and easy to squeeze, and the whole unit feels great in the hand.
The display is notable for its HDR10+ support and for the benefits of its OLED technology. It is bright and colorful, although many of its virtues are likely to be lost when used in a bright environment. The screen appears to be right above the phone, with no raised area around it, and the viewing angle is excellent. If you’re used to watching Netflix’s HDR content from an oblique angle in a brightly lit room, this won’t let you down. There’s no headphone jack, though, so you might want to invest in some Bluetooth headphones to avoid using the built-in speaker.
Nothing Phone 1: Camera
The phone’s camera sensors are tiny and 50MP is a lot to squeeze into that space, raising concerns about noise. Images are scaled down to 12.5MP when recording, helping to reduce visible noise. We were lucky enough to get the Nothing Phone 1 right after a software update that improved color grading and motion detection, so hopefully we should see the cameras at their best.
There are two actual cameras, plus Android 12’s digital zoom mode which produces a 2x image off the main lens, which uses a Sony sensor and has a 24mm equivalent focal length, maximum aperture of f/ 1.9, phase detection autofocus and optical image stabilization.
There’s also an ultra-wide camera, again 50MP, with an f/2.2 aperture but a slightly smaller sensor than the main lens. Its 114° FOV puts its equivalent focal length around 11mm, so it’s very wide, but suffers from the distortion often seen in ultrawide images.
Video goes up to 4K 30FPS, but if you want to record in HDR you’ll have to settle for 1080p. All the standard Android camera modes are present, with computer portrait mode blurring the background, macro mode allowing close focus, as well as panoramas, bursts, slow motion video and night mode .
On the front, there’s a 16MP f/2.5 camera capable of 1080p 30FPS video. Expert mode, which lets you change many photographic settings and save raw files, only works on the main camera.
Nothing Phone 1: performance and interface
The Nothing Phone 1 runs Android 12 (an Android 13 beta is promised for later in 2022), a mature and secure operating system. The Snapdragon 778G+ chipset is from late 2021 and is also found in the Honor 70 and Motorola Edge 30. It features eight CPU cores, four 2.4GHz Cortex-A78 and four 1.8GHz Cortex-A55 cores in the big one. configuration that has been in Android phones for years now. There’s an Adreno 642L GPU and up to 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM.
It’s a general-purpose package, and we don’t expect any app to have trouble running on it, but probably now counts as “mid-range” after the Snapdragon 8 family launches, found in phones such as the Xperia 1 IV, Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and OnePlus 10T, which push base speeds to 3.2GHz and also boost memory speeds. Connectivity is handled by Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6, and there’s 5G cellular data if your SIM card supports it.
Glyph lights have their own section in phone settings from which you can configure how bright you want them to light up when you receive a notification.
Like many builders, Nothing places a skin on stock Android. It’s not the most notable addition, as it’s just the dotted Nothing font, Glyph settings, and a few custom wallpapers.
Nothing Phone 1: battery life and charging
You’ll have a day with the Nothing Phone 1, but to get much more than that, you’ll have to indulge in some heroic power saving. The battery level drops quite slowly when the screen is off, but all those pixels and the high frame rate take their toll, and running the screen at a high refresh rate eats away at the available power.
Charging is fast, accepting 33W of power through the USB-C port (nothing sells a charger, but there’s just a C-to-C cable in the box) via Power Delivery 3 and Quick Charge 4. There is 15W of wireless charging via Qi, and the phone can return 5W of power to another device via reverse wireless charging.
Should you buy the Nothing Phone 1?
If you live in North America, you can’t. It is not available there. In the UK it is exclusive to the O2 network, although SIM-free handsets are available on popular online shopping sites. If you’re looking for a new Android phone, this is a good choice, as it undercuts competitors from OnePlus, Google, and Xiaomi while giving up very little in terms of performance.
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