The wait is over. Nothing has officially announced the Phone 3, its first flagship smartphone since entering the market in 2022. Nothing CEO Carl Pei said the company would go "all-in" on the Phone 3 with "premium materials, major performance upgrades and software that really levels things up," and the device Nothing showed off at its launch event in London certainly seems like it will be competitive with the best from Samsung and other Android OEMs.
In a departure from the company's previous handsets, the Phone 3 has a new "Glyph Matrix" instead of the usual Glyph Interface. The Glyph Matrix trades the bright LEDs of its predecessors for a small, micro-LED screen that occupies the top right corner of the phone. Nothing says it designed the feature to reduce user screen time. The idea here is that you'll be able to see app alerts, contact notifications and real-time progress indicators from the back of your phone, without the need to wake the Phone 3's primary display.
The Glyph Matrix also comes with a software feature Nothing is calling Glyph Toys. These essentially act like widgets. For instance, the micro-LED can act as as a digital clock, stopwatch or battery indicator. It's also possible to play simple games like Spin the Bottle on the display with the help of a dedicated button on the back of the handset. Nothing is releasing a public SDK to allow people to create their own widgets and games for the Glyph Matrix. In the near future, the company also plans to release a caller ID feature that will allow people to long-press on Glyph Button to show the name of a contact or a phone number during calls.
As for the primary display, it's a 6.67-inch AMOLED with a 1.5K resolution and 4,500 nits of peak brightness on tap. It also offers a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. Those specs make it the brightest and sharpest screen Nothing has shipped on one of its phones.
For photos and video, the Phone 3 comes with a triple rear camera setup and a single selfie camera. All four cameras come with 50-megapixel sensors, and there's optical image stabilization on the main and periscope cameras too. For video nerds, it's possible to shoot footage at 4K and 60FPS across all of the Phone 3's lenses.
Internally, the phone comes with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 system-on-a-chip that includes a eight-core CPU capable of running at 3.21GHz. The processor is 36 percent faster than the one found inside the Phone 2's Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. GPU performance is also improved, with Nothing promising a 88 percent uplift over the Phone 2's graphics processor.
For memory, Nothing plans to offer two configurations of the Phone 3, with the base model offering 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. For those who want more storage, the 512GB model also comes with 16GB of RAM. Powering everything is a 5,150mAh battery that supports 65W wired and 15W wireless charging. Nothing claims people will be able to get up to 80 hours of uptime out of the battery, and with the right power adapter, it's possible to charge the phone to full in under an hour.
Like the Phone 3a and 3a Pro, the Phone 3 comes with a button Nothing calls the Essential Key, which you can use to launch the company's Essential Space app. Think of it as a notes app that comes with a few nifty AI features. With the Phone 3, Nothing is adding a few new features to the software, including a shortcut called "Flip to Record." When you long press the Essential Key and turn your phone over, it will start recording and later transcribe what was said so you have a summary for later use. Out of the box, the Phone 3 comes with Android 15. Nothing plans to support the phone with five years of platform updates and seven years of security patches.
Pre-orders for the Nothing Phone 3 open on July 4, with global availability to follow on July 15. In the US, the 12GB model will cost $799, while the 16GB variant will set you back $899. That puts the Phone 3 in same price range as a the Galaxy S25. This time around, Nothing plans to sell its new handset through Amazon, in addition to its own website.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/the-799-nothing-phone-3-has-four-50mp-cameras-and-a-secondary-micro-led-display-173014537.html?src=rss
