It might be named Nothing, but it is definitely worth looking at.
After a year of releasing its truly wireless earbuds, Nothing came up with their first phone, Nothing Phone 1.
The goal of the London-based startup company seems quite simple - they want to offer the most straightforward designs while being unique and transparent (quite literally).
Nothing Phone 1 is currently available in the Bangladeshi market, with the price starting at Tk58,990 for 8GB RAM and 128GB ROM version.
If you are willing to go through the unofficial channel, you might be able to get it in an even lower price.
Aesthetic
There are certain things that have lots of places for changes.
Like cars. It can come in various shapes and sizes.
There are just too many elements that can be changed.
Unfortunately, smartphones do not fall into that category. A smartphone is just a box-shaped device that can do certain things.
But Nothing Phone 1 showed us what can be done even with so many limitations in terms of design while being available in only two colours — Black and White.
Don’t get us wrong, we have seen transparent phones before.
For HTC U12+, the components underneath were only partially visible.
While the back of Xiaomi’s Mi 8 Explorer Edition did not exactly show what was inside. It was just something they wanted us to see.
Nothing Phone 1 designed the exposed parts of its back both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
The phone supports wireless charging and the reverse wireless charging and the shape of its wireless charging coil is clearly visible, surrounded by a light which is the part of what they are calling the “glyph interface”.
As much crazier as it sounds, Nothing actually placed a series of 900 small LEDs arranged across the back of the phone in order to create this glyph interface.
This is one of the primary selling points of the phone.
What can it do? While you charge your phone, the below portion of the glyph interface acts as a charging bar.
Whenever your phone rings, the interface lights up following the rhythm of the tone.
This can help in case you didn't hear your ringtone. For different contacts, you can set a different pattern of lights.
The Glyph interface can also serve as a dedicated notification LED for SMS, WhatsApp chats, app updates, and other general notifications you get throughout the day.
As mentioned earlier, the Nothing Phone 1 has wireless charging with reverse wireless charging capabilities.
So, whenever you put the phone on a charging pad, or your earbuds on the back of the phone, the LEDs surrounding the wireless charging coil will light up once to let you know that the charging is activated and in progress.
The glyph interface is quite bright and it can also help as a fill light while taking portrait shots.
Fear not, the phone still comes with a flash in its camera unit.
To further enhance privacy and use the phone without looking at the display, the glyph interface also indicates when the Google Assistant is listening.
Taking privacy another step further, the back of the phone also comes with a small LED that turns on every time the user turns the back camera on.
This is a very clever way of letting people within the frame that they are being recorded.
This is something interesting because smartphone companies usually focus on the privacy of their users.
But Nothing went beyond that and made sure that the people who are being recorded also knows about it.
The Nothing Phone 1 team, during the launch, said that the glyph interface is here to stay.
They will keep evolving the tech in their future phones.
One thing to mention here is that the phone looks surprisingly closer to iPhone 12.
But I do not think that it is anything bad, to be honest.
iPhone 12 is a stunning device in terms of design and Nothing phone just took that design to a whole new level.
Performance
Nothing Phone 1 is powered by a 6nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G Plus chipset, which scores 4% better than the regular 778G chipset in AnTuTu benchmark.
In Geekbench 5, the multi-core score of 778 Plus is 5% better than the regular 778G and the single core score is 6% better.
Snapdragon 778G Plus is surely a nice choice for a phone at this price range.
It handles everyday tasks quite fluently and is also very battery efficient.
Gaming on the chipset will mostly be lag free. According to Nanoreview, Snapdragon 778 Plus will be able to play PUBG Mobile at 59 FPS with High graphics settings, Call of Duty Mobile at 42 FPS with Ultra graphics settings and Mobile Legends Bang Bang at 60 FPS with Ultra graphics settings.
We earlier wrote about Samsung Galaxy A73, which used a Snapdragon 778 chipset.
On paper, Nothing Phone 1 should perform better than Galaxy A73, even with a significant price difference.
Display
Nothing Phone 1’s display is unique because it used a flexible display that bent inside the phone, providing a narrower bezel at the bottom.
The display is a 6.55 inches OLED panel with 1B colour support.
It also comes with a 120Hz refresh rate and has a peak brightness of 1200 nits.
The phone’s punch hole camera sits on the top left corner of the display, and that’s the only black spot within the whole front panel.
The phone also comes with an in-display fingerprint sensor around the bottom, which is quite fast at detecting the fingerprint.
Despite the fact that Nothing Phone 1 has an OLED panel, there are no Always on Display features yet in the interface.
Nothing also didn’t tell anything about it yet. But we can expect the feature to come via a future software update.
While the phone is off, it shows a fingerprint sign on the in-display fingerprint sensor and the user can easily unlock the phone by placing their finger on the spot, which is quite convenient and time-saving since the user does not need to press the unlock key first, and then need to place the finger on the sensor.
The Full HD+ panel shows perfectly bright and sharp images.
The multimedia experience on Nothing Phone 1 is also outstanding.
The Android 12-based Nothing OS 1.1.0 is paired with two colour profiles — Alive, the default one and a more muted and natural-looking Standard.
It also provides a little extra fine-grain control, thanks to a colour temperature slider.
The phone feels and looks very snappy, thanks to the 120Hz refresh rate along with a 240Hz touch sampling rate.
The display can also automatically reduce the refresh rate depending on the task, which saves battery life.
Nothing Phone 1’s display is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5.
Camera
Nothing Phone 1 comes with a dual camera setup on the back.
Both the primary and ultrawide cameras are 50MP each, with the main camera supporting optical image stabilization (OIS).
The main camera uses Sony IMX766 sensor while the ultrawide camera uses Samsung’s JN1 sensor.
The shutter of Nothing Phone 1 is reasonably fast in daylight or in an artificial lighting situation.
The images from the main 50MP Sony sensor offer a pleasing amount of detail with lots of colours.
The main camera captures social media-ready shots.
When shooting stuff closer to the primary sensor, there's an attractive level of bokeh (background blur) that puts out better close-up shots than the phone's dedicated Macro shooting mode.
Without a dedicated macro camera, the Macro mode relies on the ultrawide, rather than the main sensor.
Just like many other phones, images captured with the ultrawide camera does not look as pleasing as the images captured using the main camera.
The images from the ultrawide camera look a little weaker and more muted
In low light, the difference between the sensors becomes more prominent. But both of the lenses can take usable nighttime shots.
It is just that the main camera can do it better than the ultrawide camera.
Using the glyph interface as a fill light instead of the phone's dedicated single LED flash provides a softer, cooler light source to work with.
But it is best used when subjects are nearer the camera.
The front-facing 16MP selfie camera can capture decent shots with a nice portrait mode.
Battery
Nothing Phone 1 packs in a 4,500 mAh battery.
It supports 33 Watts fast charging, which should be able to charge the battery halfway in 30 minutes.
The phone also supports 15W wireless charging and 5W reverse wireless charging.
Do note that the more expensive and previously mentioned Samsung Galaxy A73 does not support wireless charging.
With Snapdragon 778 Plus and the glyph interface, the screen on time usually varies between 5 to 6 hours, depending on the usage.
The phone will last around a day, or maybe a day and a half without plugging in.
Verdict
Is Nothing Phone 1 a phone worth recommending? Definitely.
It has a great value for money and the phone is very much unique in its own way.
If you are into new styles and unique phones, you can go for it.
