15 jul 2022 om 11:01 | Update: 4 uur geleden
It takes some guts to release a brand new device in a saturated phone market. The Phone (1) from British Nothing manages to stand out with its transparent back and built-in lights, but has not forgotten to make a good phone as well.
By: Rutger OttoCarl Pei has already succeeded in introducing a successful smartphone brand: OnePlus. Now he starts again with Nothing. The Phone (1) is the company’s first phone that only released a set of wireless earplugs for this purpose.
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The new company looked at existing phones and came to the conclusion that they all look alike these days. “A stalled industry,” Pei calls the current telephone market.
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You can say what you want about the Phone (1), but not that it doesn’t stand out. The innovation is mainly in the rear. A transparent housing ensures that you can see the separate parts, such as the camera module and the place to charge the phone wirelessly. In addition, nine hundred LEDs have been placed to illuminate different lines in the design. The ‘Glyph Interface’ Nothing calls it.
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The blinking lights are unique
The device therefore looks as if it were from the movie Tron coming. The LEDs flash for different notifications and phone calls and they do so in a different way. For example, you can place your phone with the back side up on the table and you can set different light patterns for people who call you and notifications you receive. This is often accompanied by buzzing and electronic sounds as ringtones, which in combination with the lights gives the effect as if you see the current flashing through the housing.
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Nothing speaks of a new way to communicate and wants to help reduce users’ screen time. In practice it looks cool, but we found it more practical to just keep the screen up. This makes it easier to recognize the messages.
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The Phone (1) is reminiscent of a new iPhone with its angular design, but it works with the Android operating system. Nothing has placed its own software shell over it: Nothing OS. We can be brief about that: it works pleasantly, quickly and clearly, without too many pre-installed nonsense apps.
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Specificaties Nothing Phone (1)
- Screen: 6.55 inches (2,400 by 1,080 pixels)
- Processor: Snapdragon 778G+
- RAM: 8 GB or 12 GB
- Storage: 128 GB or 256 GB
- Rear cameras: Standard and wide angle (50 MP)
- Front camera: Standard (16 MP)
- Battery: 4,500 mAh
- Weight: 193.5 grams
- 5G: Yes
- Price: from 469 euros
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Cameras are ok, but not excellent
On the back, the phone has two cameras: a standard lens and a wide-angle lens. Especially in daylight you can take great photos with natural colors, although you notice from the lenses that this is a phone from the middle segment of the market. In less light, for example, you lose details fairly quickly, and with portrait photos, the software sometimes has some difficulty highlighting the subject.
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It is smart that the Glyph can be used as a camera light. That gives a somewhat softer light than a flash and can help to illuminate a subject in a dark room just a little more. Also useful for macro photos with the wide-angle lens. Zooming up to twice, photos look fine, but the zoom range goes up to twenty times. That is actually always inadvisable, because then all details will be lost. The front camera is okay, but no more than that.
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Nothing makes a few more concessions to stay outside the high price range. The Snapdragon 778G+ chip is not the most powerful, but it does offer 5G. The screen has a refresh rate of 120 Hz, but sometimes stutters a bit. The phone can easily last a full day on a battery charge and supports wireless charging up to 15 watts. It can also be charged wired with USB-C (a light on the back indicates how far the battery is full, a nice detail), but you have to buy an adapter separately.
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Conclusion
The Nothing Phone (1), with its Glyph Interface and its transparent design, has truly unique features that will appeal to a new target audience. Other than that, it remains ‘just’ a mid-range Android phone that does a fine but not excellent job.
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In that respect, Pei’s new project is somewhat similar to that of OnePlus. That company once also started as a price fighter by not selling good phones for a top price. In that regard, it will be interesting to see what Nothing comes up with next.
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