Nothing Phone 3 arrives July 15 with a tiny dot matrix rear display

Summary

Nothing, a startup from OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, has announced its first flagship phone since 2023. The company bills its new Nothing Phone 3 as a "true flagship" device, but it doesn't have the absolute best hardware you can get in a mobile device. Neither does it have the highest price, clocking in at a mere $799. That's shaping up to be a good value, but it's also the highest price yet for a Nothing phone. A few weeks back, Nothing teased the end of its trademark Glyph interface. Indeed, the Nothing Phone 3 doesn't have the illuminated panels of the company's previous phones. Instead, it has a small dot "Glyph Matrix" LED screen. It's on the back in the upper right corner, opposite the camera modules. Nothing has a few quirky games and notification icons that will flash on the screen, and it can be used as a very low-fi selfie mirror. Nothing is committed to the new Glyph screen, going so far as adding a button on the back to control it. The rest of the design maintains the Nothing aesthetic, featuring a clear glass panel with a visible mid-frame and screws. The phone will come in either black or white—Nothing isn't really into colors. However, the company does promise the Phone 3 will be a little more compact than the 2023 Phone 2. The new device is 18 percent thinner and has symmetrical 1.87-millimeter bezels around the 6.67-inch OLED screen. That panel supports 120 Hz refresh and has a peak brightness of 4,500 nits, which is competitive with the likes of Samsung and OnePlus. Nothing’s first “true flagship”? Nothing has continued releasing budget phones during its break from high-end devices. While the Nothing Phone 3 is supposedly five times faster than the Phone 3a, it probably won't be able to keep up with the fastest phones on the market today. Rather than the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Elite, the Nothing Phone 3 has a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, which was released earlier this year to expand premium silicon features to slightly cheaper phones. It doesn't ha...