Nothing Phone 3: Reddit's Verdict on the Controversial Flagship

Worst deal of the decade.

Usb 2.0 pissed me off.. Android 16 Desktop Mode.. Hello? Nothing disappointed me so badly.

They mean 'Their' flagship.

Brands like Nothing and OnePlus don't understand that people only liked them for being flagship killers. Once they became flagships with flagship prices, there wasn't really a reason to buy them anymore.

Breaking news from the 'water is wet' category. It's a fuuuuugly phone that now has lost even its top selling point - a fair price. Nothing started enshittifying its phones at the very least one generation too early. they couldn't even get THAT right...

There's this top comment on mkbhds video that sums this up very well. This is a very good $499 phone and a terrible $799 phone.

It'll be a lot better once it's consistently on sale. It would be a really good value if it wasn't competing at the price bracket of the OnePlus 13 and other 8 Elite phones.

Nothing phones already work on T-Mobile (and can work on AT&T if they whitelist.) So Nothing is really doing nothing in terms of expanding access via greater network compatibility/increased bands. This still doesn't sound like they're serious about the US market.

Carl is stupid, he is demanding extra 30k just for good software experience.

Very eloquently put. Nothing and Carl had such good reasonings behind the glyphs to justify it not being a gimmick and I don't think they are, I use the glyphs daily. But the dot matrix screams tacky gimmick to me. Spending budget on custom designed parts instead of actual better components people actually care about is a bad look. Man I was beyond excited to upgrade to NP3. I really hope Nothing can recover from such a colossal misstep.

If it's priced at $1k it's a mostly dead on arrival product. The brand isn't strong enough to try and play in the big boy pool when OP, Samsung, Apple, and Google are already all over it. A unique look alone and maybe similar specs isn't going to magically make people move over from Samsung.

How bright is the matrix? Assume it flashes when you get a notification still, would you see it in a dark room, if you're in bed with the lights off for example? Can you use it as a torch?

Midrange priced like a flagship, USB 2 is the thing I dislike the most though I want my next phone to have remote desktop.

LTPS, USB 2.0 and 8sG4 for that price? What a huge misstep for Nothing, don't understand the 4.2 rating this phone got. And this is the 2nd review that has mentioned that it gets so hot that it's uncomfortable to hold, that's just insane.

My younger brother has the Nothing 2 and it looks way better than the 3. Plus, he bought it for less than half the price of the current Nothing 3. Nothing has zero reason to charge flagship prices for this phone. Their brand isn't even established enough to go the OnePlus route this fast. Their quirky marketing does nothing for the actual phone itself.

I still thought about the 3 because I like nothing and I'm gonna use a case anyway, but then I saw that an iphone 16 brand new costs the same. Imo if you want nothing buy either a 3a or phone 2, and hold off until the phone 4.

I've bought from less popular options in the smartphone market for a decade. There's a lot I can forgive to support competition and give a niche player a chance. I don't see anything they're doing to sell me a phone. Other than the aesthetic accents on the back, what am I getting? I don't get a price advantage.

I would probably get downvoted to oblivion for saying this but... That kinda looks sick in your hand.

The oneplus 13 is literally cheaper where I am. I get that this is a unique looking phone but does it looking nothing like everything else in the market improve my day to day? I don't think so.

This will be marked as one of biggest let down in tech industry I believe.

The phone got extremely hot during data transfer and app downloads - so much so that I couldn't touch it. That's the most intensive thing I've done so far. Battery has been great, lasting around a day and a half with standard use.

Sure you could get a case to hide the ugliness, but it won't make the display, display protection, camera, battery capacity, SoC or wireless charging speed better or faster. Maybe if you can get it for 500 and find a case that can somehow make the camera placements look less bad, then it might be worth it, but 799 is just horrible value no matter how you look at it.

White looks gorgeous.

No cooling system in nothing phone 3, they definitely don't listen to us. I was between nothing phone 2 and OnePlus when I bought np2 because of the design, but when the design fails, I'm trying Oneplus as soon as my phone malfunctions, sorry Carl Pei.

It's not bad. It's actually a really nice phone. It runs and performs very well. There's nothing I've needed it to do that it hasn't done, the battery lasts all day, the only bugs I've had are just android bugs that I've seen before. The glyph matrix is a gimmick, but it's pretty cool ngl.

With the comments I saw about it shortly after launch I thought it was going to be stupidly expensive. It's £800. The same as a S25, iPhone 16 or Pixel 9. The Phone 1 was £400 at launch and the Phone 2 £580 and those didn't have top spec hardware at the time. And meanwhile the 3a is still available for £330.

I came from iPhones. I personally love the design of it but it does have a lot of faults, while I'm still satisfied with my purchase. The OS is good but not great. The battery life is great, it's an all day phone.

I hate Carl's marketing bullshit... but... Nothing is one of the most OSS/custom ROM friendly manufactures out there right now, by a wide margin. Google has stopped publishing DTS and other important info for the Pixel 10, so I am extremely likely to end up buying a Nothing 3 rather than a Pixel 10.

'I don't know why people are so emotional about a phone design,' said Carl Pei. You literally made a company based on interesting design of hardware and software, at affordable price. And you go and fuck the whole thing up.

I actually just bought a OnePlus 13. Was going to get the Phone 3 until I saw it. Hope one day the switch to Nothing can be justified because this ain't it.

Weaker SOC, USB 2.0 in this day and age, pricier than their actual competitor, Optical fingerprint scanner really, and the opponent had better fucking specifications. NOTHING has fumbled so damn hard.

It's a OnePlus 13R-tier device with OnePlus 13 price tag. The chip is even weaker than 13R's 8g3.

The only real problem is the price. It shouldn't cost more than 550-600.

It's bad for the launch price. Although here in India they are selling as low as 40% of the original price with Nothing phones exchange or even normal credit card discount at times, and it's amazing for that price.

Absolutely love the phone - it looks and feels so good. My first Nothing phone so I wasn't sure what to expect. Bought it (UK) when it had a £50 discount from their official website. Was considering a Pixel 10 Pro XL as an alternative but couldn't justify the huge cost. The camera is very good and I'm still trying to force myself to use Essential Space. All in all an excellent phone.

The irony is that OnePlus went through the same phase. I was a big fan of theirs since I started using the OP3 and changed to the OP7T later. Eventually their prices crept upwards nearing the Samsung flagship price range with bland designs and eventually sold to Oppo. Seems like they've made a comeback in recent years and going back to their roots of offering flagships at a discount, inversely to Nothing's recent trend.

The OP 13 is 699 today even right now. Just trade in any old crappy phone for an extra 100 off. So nothing is now 100 MORE than the better phone. I like the N3 design but the internals are not good enough to be more money than the OP 13.

When we just knew about the SoC as the weak point, I defended the phone. But we now know about the LTPS screen, lower spec Gorilla glass, early reviews say speakers aren't amazing, and butt ugly design. I just can't think of anything to recommend it apart from NothingOS, and we can get that for a lot less money.

Got 512gb for 40k/449 USD and its a great phone for the price.

Using phone 2 now but won't be upgrading to phone 3. I definitely like the software but it is evident they cheap out on the hardware components. My phone 2 lasted a year before the speakers started to crackle. When you never really address the issues from the previous gen and instead pushes out a flagship model at flagship price but without quality hardware, it is hard to convince current owners to upgrade.

Awesome phone all around, bad price. That sums it up really....

Slightly overpriced, very overhyped by nothing. A very strong aesthetic, you really like it or you really don't like it. Removal of glyphs and addition of dot matrix can either be the biggest upgrade or the biggest downgrade of all time, depends on the user preference and the support. That's the most unbiased I can give.

While it is an excellent phone overall, it is just not worth the ridiculous asking price. In India, it was launched at Rs. 80000 and is now selling for half its price at Rs. 40000. However, the seller later cancelled most of the orders as, according to them, the excessive discount was wrongly given. Build quality is excellent, and Nothing OS offers the best user interface.

Personally, I love my Nothing 3. I am not biased at all, just thought it looked neat and wanted something a little different. It has no problems doing what all of the other phones do. Zero issues on my end.

I upgraded from phone 1 to phone 3, and the day to day experience feels the same. Apps load a bit faster but that's about it. However, phone 1 had a weak battery while phone 3 easily lasts an entire day (I get around 6-7 hours SOT). The cameras are MUCH better but I'm not a big photography guy so it doesn't affect my day to day usage that much.

Just bought phone 3 compared to its camera w samsung s24, s24 camera is shit at night time. Nothing is much better. Phone 3's speakers are lovely but it is a bit heavy tho.

Most important thing to note is the backlash is only because of the ridiculous base price of the phone. On the other hand if you get it at the sale price the whole scale shifts as it provides way better value than its competitors at that price range. Heating is an issue but I have experienced no throttling.