TWO WEEKS WITH THE NOTHING PHONE 1
With its transparent design and glyph lighting, it’d be easy to dismiss the Nothing Phone 1 as a glittery gimmick – so Tom Morgan-Freelander looks through the hype
from £399 / stuff.tv/Nothing1
DAY 01
Meet the smartphone equivalent of a freshly-launched pair of Yeezys. Excitement for Nothing’s Phone 1 was so frenzied that the first 100 handsets changed hands for almost ten times their retail value – and that was before the final hardware had even been revealed. Talk about hype…
On taking it out of the box for the first time, the flat glass and recycled aluminium frame gives off serious iPhone 13 vibes. It costs a third of Apple’s most expensive handsets, but does a good impression of them from the front and sides – just with a punch-hole selfie camera instead of a notch. It feels pretty premium too, and while its IP53 rating means it’s not as hardy as some pricier flagships, an IP rating of any kind is a rarity for less than £400.
The flashing LEDs are perfectly synced to the ringtones… there’s potential for glyphs to become a different way to use a phone
The iPhone comparisons go out of the window when you flip the Phone 1 over. The rear panel is completely transparent, showing off hardware elements like the wireless charging coil, as well as the head-turning glyph LED lighting. You can’t see any internal circuitry, like you can on Nothing’s Ear 1 headphones, and the effect isn’t so in-yer-face on our black review unit as it is on the white version, but it demands attention like no other mid-tier phone design.
The perfectly symmetrical screen bezels are a little on the chunky side, but the 6.55in OLED display between them is a good ’un. It delivers vibrant, detailed images with exceptional contrast, with HDR content in particular having real visual impact. Colours are a bit on the warm side but you can use the temperature slider to balance things out a bit, and everything is easy enough to read when you step outside. With a 60-120Hz adaptive refresh rate, scrolling is wonderfully smooth in some apps but not others. We’d have preferred a permanent 120Hz option, even if it came at the expense of battery life.
The under-display fingerprint sensor sits a little too close to the bottom of the phone for our liking, but is quick to pick up your digits. Fingerprints in general are a problem for the glass, which is hungry to pick up smudges and smears.
Nothing’s take on Android 12 adds custom fonts, icons and widgets, but there’s no bloatware.
