Nothing Phone One Smartphone Review

Nothing Phone One Smartphone Review – Nothing Phone 1 smartphone is the most hyped smartphone of 2022 because the Nothing company is trying to do something that the mainstream smartphone makers lack nowadays. Yes, we are talking about innovation and uniqueness in the affordable range that doesn’t give much toll on your bank. Before this device, Nothing also launched wireless earbuds.

Yet, the Nothing Phone 1 would be the first smartphone released by the company. After several tease info, Carl Pei unveils this phone to the world in a pretty simplistic and straightforward manner, which feels right at the spot. The device arrives with a slender retail package, designed with eco-friendly material, and as expected, you won’t receive a charger inside the box. You have to purchase a charger as an external accessory. There’s a striping interface, LED pattern, and many more things that need to be covered, so let’s dive into the Nothing Phone 1 smartphone review.

Nothing Phone 1 Smartphone Review

Highlights

1. The Nothing phone 1 arrives with multiple blinking LED lights on the back panel.
2. It offers a 6.55-inches OLED panel that renders an advanced 120Hz refresh rate and HDR 10+ crispness with 1200 nits brightness.
3. The entire performance is driven through the Snapdragon 778G+ chipset, while visuals are handled via Adreno 642L GPU.
4. A minimalistic approach is attained by the Android 12-based Nothing OS custom skin, which doesn’t have bloatware apps.
5. In terms of camera, the phone houses a 50MP + 50MP lens camera setup with a 16MP selfie.
6. As for the battery juice, a 4500 mAh battery capacity gain 33W wired and 15W wireless charging support.

Design and Display

The Nothing brand doesn’t try to mimic any other smartphone brand design. Due to this, the design aspect is one of the key selling points for the Nothing phone 1. At first impression, you will be mesmerized by the attractive appearance, and the unique transparent back panel design gives the phone aesthetic looks. It’s similar to their Nothing ear 1 earbuds that were released last year.

However, the overall appearance feels like a rip-off of the iPhone 13 Pro as you are getting the same aluminum frame with a glass body at the front and back. But there are a handful of things that makes the Nothing Phone 1 stand out from the rest of the Android ecosystem smartphones. It definitely includes the Glyph interface that can be utilized for notification, charging and calls.

Although, you won’t receive various customization options, which are offered in the RGB lighting configuration as the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro. But, it’s a completely different LED setup from what you get on a gaming-centric phone. Anyway, it’s good to say that the phone doesn’t have a bulky body; it only weighs around 193.5-grams. Alongside this, the device also equips IP53 rating gives splash resistance.

The 6.55-inches OLED display has thin bezels with a dot-notch selfie lens at the corner and renders an in-display fingerprint scanner. With this OLED display, you will obtain vibrant colors and HDR contrast that make Netflix binge-watching immersive and interactive. Moreover, the 120Hz refresh rate will enhance smoothness and touch response. Lastly, the outdoor experience with 1200 nits peak brightness is pretty good.

Memory and Internal

The hardware section of the Nothing Phone 1 phone is nothing compared to the flagship smartphone, but the company is not trying to achieve that level either. You will obtain satisfactory performance support with the 6nm Qualcomm SM7325-AE Snapdragon 778G+ 5G chipset, and yes, it’s the upgraded version of the vanilla SD 778 with a better cloaking speed option. On top of that, this chipset can be par with the Snapdragon 870 chip and give tough competition overall.

With this chipset, the processing speed goes up to 2.5GHz cloaking speed, which is considered good from the price point aspect. Besides this, it includes a 1+3+4 octa-core processor in which the least processing speed is 1.8GHz, while it also has a Snapdragon X53 5G modem with Adreno 642L GPU. Through this combination, it got plenty of power to handle the majority of multitasking tasks and gaming.

The Nothing Phone 1 renders three internal storage options, 8/128, 8/256, and 12/256, all with UFS 3.1 storage and LPDDR5 RAM. The 8GB RAM with 128GB space would be more than enough to provide an immersive experience. Although, the company doesn’t produce secondary storage unit inside the SIM tray. But it’s a good choice as you can utilize Dual SIMs.

On the other hand, the software end delivers a near-stock android feeling with minimal design and features. Hopefully, you are getting various in-built customization perks of the Android 12-based Nothing OS 1.1.0, which makes the overall android ecosystem visually appealing and attractive. Yet, the classic font style with various Glyph interface features steals the whole show. Furthermore, the phone doesn’t even have a single bloatware app, so rest assured that you will obtain a clean UI experience with this phone.

Camera

The Nothing Phone 1 does cut corners to make the finest camera module in the mid-range segment category. The smartphone makers are offering a 50MP Sony IMX 766 primary and a 50MP Samsung JN1 sensor ultra-wide lens, while on the other side, you will receive a 16MP Sony IMX471 selfie lens. Usually, mainstream phones added a useless secondary camera lens setup that doesn’t work properly in real-time.

Fortunately, the company did a great job and doesn’t include worthless secondary lenses. Generally, you won’t notice an adequate ultra-wide lens in the mid-range phone. Apart from the rant, the image processing algorithm is quite stable and render immersive result in most cases. Moreover, the Red LED light appears when you are recording a video, which is one of the amazing perks of the Glyph interface.

Undoubtedly, the camera app has identical features, modes, and interface design layout as the Realme and OnePlus phones. The stripe-like menu will provide features like Slow-Mo, Video, Photo, Portrait, and More options. In the More sub menu, you will further get options to take a panorama, telephoto, and especially export mode to manage shutter speed and color contrast saturation.

Although, you won’t receive a dedicated night mode inside the app, when you come across a lowlight situation, the viewfinder will showcase the moon sign below. Tap on the moon to access night mode. The night mode photos are crisp and have less noise, the same goes for the lowlight photos. But you will notice a drastic change when you switch from the main lens to ultra-wide. The main camera would bring 12.5MP resolution photos, which can be further improved with export mode.

On the other hand, the portrait mode doesn’t have a problem detecting the object or blurring the background even though the camera module doesn’t have a dedicated depth lens. Moreover, the ultrawide lens can take up to 4cm close picture to fulfill the requirement for macro photography. The colors are pretty much realistic, but when you switch to an ultra-wide or selfie lens, the color saturation drops a bit.

Besides this, the camera app will provide a 2X optical zoom feature, even though, it doesn’t have a telephoto lens. But still, the digitalized image doesn’t have that many details. Moving to the video recording aspect, the phone can effortlessly record up to 4K resolution with 30fps, while it goes can even record 1080p video at 30fps to 60fps. In terms of selfie camera video recording, it limits to 1080p/30fps.

Overall, the video recording quality of the Nothing Phone 1 is pretty much appealing as it provides a decent amount of sharpness that makes the 4k clips realistic, natural colors stand out, worth praising dynamic range, and less noise. However, if we compare the camera quality to the Samsung Galaxy A52s, the camera quality falls short according to the camera standards of 2022’s.

Battery and Others

The Nothing Phone 1 arrives with a similar battery size as the Poco F4, which is a Li-Po 4500 mAh battery. The battery endurance rate is pretty decent and the phone can stay active for more than two after being charged once. When you are playing games like Call of Duty and Apex Legends, you will attain an immersive gameplay experience, and even after playing for more than three hours, around 40% battery will remain.

Moreover, you can watch HDR content without thinking about running out of battery life anytime soon. Aside from this, you will get USB Type-C charging cable inside the box, but you have to purchase the 33W wired charge as well. With this charger, it will roughly take an hour and a half to refuel the empty battery to 100%, which is understandable. To charge 50% it will take 35-minutes. Following this, the phone is also supported by 15W wireless charging.

As for the additional features, the Nothing Phone 1 arrives with crisp sound output as you are getting stereo speaker support without any 3.5mm jack port. Everything is fine about the speakers and the audio output is loud enough and clear. But still, if the phone would have a 3.5mm jack, it would add a feather to the chip. Anyway, the starting variant roughly cost 450 euros on converting $745 (Rs 59,000 in India) approx. Although, the phone is currently not launched for the US market.

Nothing Phone 1 Pros and Cons

Nothing Phone 1 Specifications Detail

Down below you can see the full specifications of the Nothing Phone 1 smartphone.

Conclusion

The Nothing Phone 1 smartphone reminds the time when the OnePlus phones are user-centric instead of flashy specs. Being the first phone, the company does put several efforts to make the smartphone attractive to every set of users. It’s a thoughtful pick for decent features and specs with a pinch of innovation. The phone has an impressive design with transparent back panel skin with Gyphl UI, which is more like attention-grabbing gimmicking.

Still, the immersive OLED display colors and contrast are top-notch and near-stock Android experiences. The gameplay performance is good enough for casual gaming, while the sound output feels slightly underwhelming. But, the battery life is more than sufficient for your daily dose of internet. The Nothing Phone 1 does have to pave a great roadmap for the upcoming smartphone lineups too.

We will recommend you to purchase the Nothing Phone 1 for extraordinary features, decent performance, premium camera, and competitive price point. Though the phone might not look like the flagship killer smartphone, at the same time, it doesn’t fall in the mid-range category. But as we all know, there are some alternative options present in the market. In the same price range, you will get mainstream brands of smartphones such as the Xiaomi 12s Pro smartphone. It’s an all-rounder choice for smartphone in the same price range.