Nothing compares to this bold shake-up of modern phone…

Nothing compares to this bold shake-up of modern phone ennui

For the uninitiated, the Nothing Phone sounds like it might be a bare bones callback to the brick phones of yore with maybe the addition of Google Maps. But the London startup’s third iteration of their disruptor phone is really about combatting iPhone ennui.

“Tech has become boring; every phone looks the same, feels the same, does the same,”says Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing. He hopes that the Nothing Phone 3 will “spark creativity”.

And there’s definitely some fun stuff going on. One of the new gizmos is the “Glyph Matrix”, a mini circular LED screen on the back of the phone that can be personalised in all sorts of ways. It can display the time, or flash with different emojis for calls, texts and alerts. Could this be the new BlackBerry flashing red light?

There’s a nostalgia to it that reminds me of my old Tamagotchi - it can even do a game of spin the bottle featuring a little LED beer bottle. And I love the look of all the exposed hardware on the back of the phone -- Richard Rogers would approve.

For an iOS princess like me, the Android interface took a little getting used to. I had to go cap in hand to Google’s inbuilt Gemini AI to ask where I could find the settings.

Tech startups can often have a strong tone of voice which verges into the annoying. Every time you open the recorder app, a pious message pops up saying “Please be mindful of other people’s privacy when recording”. Don’t lecture me, phone!

This irritation was mollified by the option to focus on voices in the recording (the iPhone technology on this is still pretty shoddy) or background environment.

Meanwhile, there is a clever “essential key” which you can press to make screen and voice recordings at the click of a button -- none of that 3, 2, 1 record annoyance. These all go into an “essential space”. This is wonderful for me -- I have my best ideas just as I’m drifting off to sleep but don’t want to look at my phone screen to write them down.

The main camera is excellent with some seriously impressive zoom, though the selfie camera made me look a bit grey and washed. My major gripe is the size. With a 6.77" screen it’s iPhone Max big, but there’s no smaller version. Not good for squeezing into pockets or little handbags.

At £799, Nothing 3 is on par with the latest iPhone and significantly pricier than the brand’s other offerings. But it has some clever features which make life easier and quicker, and certainly more fun.

Tech specs