Nothing Phone 3 is a flagship device, as promised by the brand, and it even has a price tag of Rs 79,999 which matches those aspirations. But the Phone 3 is a classic case of trying to show above your weight, or at least that’s what you can gauge from how the company has been hyping the product.

The premium table is limited for a reason. You have the iPhones, the Samsung Galaxy’s and the Google Pixels. Some might say that Vivo and Xiaomi along with OnePlus are trying to gatecrash this legacy. 

And with Phone 3, Nothing is playing the similar game. It has a Snapdragon 8 Gen chipset, the design has the usual Nothing-ness, and other niceties. But does that warrant its status among the cream? We went looking for these answers in the last few weeks.

That Design 

Nothing Phones have awed us with their designs but the Phone 3 is definitely something. The cameras at the back sit away from each other, and one of them almost spills out of the body. You have the transparent design make its impact yet again, but instead of the Glyph lights for alerts, now you get the Glyph matrix which is based on the dot matrix system. 

The phone is built using premium materials, the glass at the back and the front, along with the aluminium frame typifying its eye on quality. The back panel also comes with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection which is also known for its durability and should handle minor scratches with ease. It comes with IP68 rating for dust and water resistance but misses out on IP69 rating which many phones offer in this range these days.

However, you are getting a 9mm thick phone that weighs 218 grams which does not fit into the lightweight category, and when you see a 5,500mAh battery packed inside, you don’t get the logic even more. No wonder the design has split opinions, and we’re not sure about which side to take on this front either. 

The Display 

The Phone 3 gets a 6.67-inch OLED 1B colours panel with 120Hz refresh rate. Yes, no LTPO panel here, and the screen gets Corning Gorilla Glass 7i protection, not the Victus version, which is again strange to see. Having said that, the display is bright with its 4500 nits peak brightness levels, HDR10+ supported and even without Dolby Vision available you have a decent panel on offer. 

The colours are punchy and the deep blacks make their impact while viewing content in hi-res quality. You won’t feel the absence of the features we highlighted in daily use but for the price tag, you expect them nevertheless. 

The Power 

The Phone 3 is a flagship device but comes with the new Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset with up to 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. Most people expected the 8 Elite under the hood, but the brand says it has optimised the hardware to run efficiently without any complaints. 

Well, does it? To be fair, the 8s Gen 4 has shown its mettle and is a decent sidekick to the 8 Elite SoC but this has already been made available for under Rs 40,000 in the market this year, which is why the questions are being asked about the choice of the chipset. 

And because of this, you get a USB C 2.0 port instead of 3 or 3.2 standard. Having said that, the 8s Gen 4 on the Phone 3 is reliable, and an effective performer, but not the best you’ll get. 

The Platform 

Nothing OS is one of the highlights of all Nothing phones, and the brand never compromises on its quality, experience and the overall interface. You’re getting the Nothing OS version based on Android 15 for now, with the Android 16 update rolling out before the end of 2025. The software has no bloatware, the UI is slick and fluid to use, the optimisation levels are a match for the flagship devices in the Android sphere. 

The Phone 3 experience is similar to every other Nothing device we’ve tested before and that shows a level of consistency that we now fully expect from the brand. You’ll be getting up to 5 OS upgrades which is good as it will get until the Android 20 version. 

The Cameras 

The Phone 3 features a 50MP triple camera setup with wide, periscope telephoto and ultra-wide angle sensors in the mix. The main camera manages to capture detailed and crisp shots with the right colour accuracy in the subject. However, switching between lenses shows some effect as the colour between the sensors look different to the eye. 

The periscope telephoto fares much better than we hoped but still not at the level that you have seen with other premium phones in recent times. We’re certain that a few updates can fix the niggling issues and it will improve over time. The low light shooting from the main camera does well but again the quality can be better with details even though you have minimal noise in the visual. 

The ultrawide lens comes without autofocus and that becomes evident with the lack of sharpness in the images even though the colours look fairly natural. The setup as a whole does a decent job but we expect better quality and consistency which should be fixable in the long run. 

The Other Sides 

The speaker setup on the Phone 3 is impressive. It is loud but doesn’t sound shrill, the bass impact is also audible through the stereo unit, and the top base carries the load to give you the right audio balance. 

The Essential key brings the AI element to the Phone 3 like the other recent Nothing devices. You long-press the button to capture notes, images and save them in the Essential Space app. It offers a good use case but feels limiting as you need to sign in or create an account to unlock all the features. 

The Glyph matrix at the back sits inside a small circular module. We were hoping for something bigger, going by the teasers but the actual design sits nicely next to the cameras at the back. You can activate the Matrix using the button on the side, which can show you the battery status, time, or even set it up for calls and messages. You get a host of customisation options in the settings for the Glyph and developers are likely to build more tools to make this version more functional.

The Battery 

Nothing Phone 3 Indian variant gets a 5,500mAh Silicone carbide battery that supports 65W wired charging, and 15W wireless charging speeds. Having the bigger unit does help get you more juice out of the Phone 3 and on an average we got close to 7 hours of screen-on time which usually translates into a day’s worth of use. 

With PCMark Battery tests we got over 19 hours backup which is comparable to most of the high-end phones we’ve used lately. The 65W charging support (without adapter in the box) gets you back up to speed in around one hour which is marginally better than what you got with the 50W support earlier. Getting the best third-party charger is the best trick to get the most of these speeds. 

Nothing Phone 3 is a flagship phone that delivers with its ‘different’ design identity, the new Glyph matrix and a display that will be fine for most users. The company knows that a price of Rs 79,999 puts the Phone 3 in a different and small universe in India and it seems fine with that situation. This is a product that wants to show what Nothing can do in the premium arena and the early signs are good, if you can live with the design quirks.