– How do you launch a new phone with a new tech company in 2022? If you’re Nothing, and that’s literally the name of the company, Nothing, you get some big name investors on board, generate a lot of hype, and stage a big launch event at your London headquarters. It’s not clear yet whether that’s a winning formula, but it’s a different approach at least. Recent attempts to break into the smartphone market from well-established tech companies like Red, Essential, Palm, and even Amazon have all flopped. What makes Nothing think it can stand out? Cue the light show. The Nothing Phone One is a really good mid-range phone with one very unusual feature. You’re not gonna see it from the front. The phone’s 6.5 inch screen and the aluminum frame look pretty run of the mill. But when you take a look at the back panel, everything is illuminated. Literally. There’s transparent glass on the back, and underneath that, you can see the guts of the phone, along with some LED light strips. When you get a notification, they blink in combinations called glyphs, and the phone plays a retro tech-inspired beep or chirp when they light up. And that’s pretty much this phone’s whole deal. There’s some neat retro touches throughout the user interface. And some distinctly modern features like a widget that displays your NFTs. But if you ignore all of that then this is just a really good mid-range Android phone. It starts at 399 pounds, which is about 475 US dollars. And that’s a totally fair price for features like an OLED screen with a fast 120 Hertz refresh rate. Stabilized main camera, wireless charging, and fast wired charging. That’s not a combination of features you get in most mid-range phones. It’s a really appealing combination of price and features we don’t often see in the US, but unfortunately, the Phone One won’t be sold here. Nothing says it plans to bring other products here in the future, but it won’t be this one, since it’s not FCC certified. The Phone One has also been the subject of a ton of hype from Nothing leading up to its launch. Its website says stuff like “Phone One can bring us back to us” and “Less distractions, more soul.” It’s a little much. The design and glyph notifications are neat, but they’re more of a style statement than anything.
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It’s not gonna reconnect you with your inner purpose, but the Phone One is as good as any $500 phone out there, with or without blinking lights. For starters, they’re really bright at default settings, but you can adjust this if you want. There are 20 different glyphs, 10 ringtones, and 10 notification alerts. And you can assign them to different contacts and alert sounds. You can pick one glyph for all of your alerts, or if you wanna get really fancy, you can assign glyphs to specific app notifications. This all becomes more useful when you turn on Flip to Glyph. That’s a feature that automatically silences notifications when you turn the phone over, so you’ll just see the glyph flash. This would be helpful if you’re in a situation where you don’t want notifications making noise, or text splashing across your screen, but you still wanna know when certain alerts come in. It’s also a neat accessibility feature for people who might need it. The glyph system does a few other things too. It acts as a status indicator when the battery is charging. And there’s a little red light that blinks when you’re recording video. You can also light up the glyph while you’re using the camera, to act as a fill light, which is sort of neat. It has a kind of cool color cast as opposed to the regular flash, but as a bonus, it will definitely get a 10 month old baby to look at the camera. These are sort of narrow use cases, so the glyph lights are really more of a novelty, which is fine. When you see the glyph feature in action, you know immediately that this isn’t an Apple or a Samsung or a Google phone. It makes a statement, just like a nice pair of sneakers, or some fancy sunglasses. Most importantly, there’s a good device underneath that flashy exterior. So you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth, even if the glyphs are more ornamental than useful. Looking at Phone One from the front, it’s a lot more familiar. The rounded corners, flat screen, and aluminum frame all look pretty similar to recent iPhones. It’s easy to mistake it for a 13 Pro Max with the screen off, which I actually did a bunch of times when they were lying side by side facing up. In any case, the Phone One includes a good 6.5 inch 1080p OLED screen, with a fast refresh rate up to 120 Hertz. There’s a quick, reliable fingerprint sensor under the display, too.
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The phone is also rated IP53 for a little water and dust resistance. Not as robust as pricier flagships, but better than, you know, nothing. Nothing went with a Snapdragon 778 processor for the phone, which surprised a lot of us who were expecting the company to use a current flagship chip set, like the Eight Gen One. But the mid-range processor was a smart choice, because it delivers really good daily performance, and it helped keep the overall cost of the phone down. Coupled with the smooth refresh rate, the Phone One feels like a really responsive device, and it’s just nice to use. There are just two rear cameras on the Phone One, which Nothing makes a big deal about. Rather than cramming in more low-resolution sensors to up the lens count, it offers just standard wide and ultra wide cameras, both 50 megapixels. That’s a good thing, and maybe other Android phone makers will follow Nothing’s lead. The Phone One’s cameras are good, but not great. They take nice photos in good light with a healthy amount of saturation. Night mode is effective for static subjects and really dark conditions. And the camera does okay in moderate indoor lighting like a bar. Portrait mode photos are passable, though in dim light, they get pretty grainy. The main camera is stabilized, which isn’t too common for mid-range phones. And it seems to help in moderate lighting. Video clips are stabilized with a combination of optical and electronic stabilization, which keeps footage looking smooth and doesn’t require a drastic crop.
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Overall, there’s nothing too flashy about the Phone One’s imaging system. They’re just good middle of the road cameras, on a good middle of the road phone. My testing was limited to wifi, which should be easier on the battery than wireless data. Even so, battery life has only been okay. The phone gets through a day of moderate use without a problem, but streaming a lot of video would probably make an afternoon battery top off necessary. The good news is that Phone One supports 33 watt fast wired charging, that takes the battery from zero to 100% in a little bit over an hour. There’s also 15 watt Qi wireless charging, so you have options. But the other bad news is that there’s no charger included in the box, so if you don’t already have a fast charger, you’ll need to spend another $30 or so if you wanna take advantage of that feature. On the software side, the Phone One’s Nothing OS is based on Android 12. It’s a light touch without duplicate virtual assistants, or a lot of unwanted apps. There are nice little features throughout the OS that pay tribute to vintage tech, like the dot matrix weather widget, and an analog-inspired voice recording app. There’s also a home screen widget to display your NFTs, which, I can’t say I’m too interested in personally, but on the whole it’s a nice clean take on Android. Nothing is also promising four years of security updates, which is on the high end for a mid-range phone, if the company sticks to its promise. The Phone One isn’t all it’s hyped up to be, but that’s because no phone could possibly live up to all the claims that Nothing makes about it. What matters is that underneath all of the hype there’s a solid, well-priced device. The light features and unique design give it a personality that stands out from the crowd, and you don’t have to pay flagship prices to get it. This isn’t the phone of the future, and it remains to be seen if Nothing will successfully break into the smartphone market. But, it’s definitely something.