Jay Nothing, stone, 1

Product Information

This means the device has evenly thick bezels all around – a small (and expensive) design touch that gives the Nothing Phone (1) a polished and refined appearance and should please perfectionists. The phone has a flat screen, but uses a flexible OLED panel to “tuck” the bottom edge of the display underneath itself, creating extra room along the bottom of the phone.

Out of the box the software experience feels squeaky clean and fuss-free, and we like the option to tweak things such as the sizes of icons in the settings tray and of folders on the home screen. Charging is quick however, and Android software should be capable of squeezing more efficiency out of hardware as the phone learns and adapts to your usage patterns. The brand is now best known for its premium flagship Android devices, but OnePlus was once a disruptive outsider infamous for producing super-optimised, smartly designed phones costing a fraction of the competition. Whether it’s sitting on a table and flashing aggressively like an alien spaceship coming in to land, or it’s making sounds like a Yamaha keyboard falling down the stairs, the phone will never fail to elicit a “what the actual hell is that?

We paid close attention to its standout features and custom Android software, testing the camera in a range of lighting conditions and putting the battery through its paces, using high-drain gaming apps.

These lights all ring and flash in tandem with the Nothing Phone (1)’s unique library of notification sounds, a set of snickety-snackety pings and whistles that are utterly unlike the gentle digital chimes of more boring phones. And as software becomes more demanding, we could notice the Phone (1) slowing down more quickly than a better equipped device. With heavy usage throughout the day – gaming, filming, looking at dogs on TikTok – the phone would run out of juice well before we could make it back to the bedside charger. The phone is powered by a cheaper and older generation Snapdragon processor and starts with a just-about-adequate 8GB of RAM.The quality of the plastic ball was questionable… it had clearly been lying in wait as it was covered in scratches and dust. We tested the Nothing Phone (1) in the weeks leading up to the phone’s launch, as well as using the phone regularly ever since. The largest is a ring light surrounding the wireless charging coil, which hovers above an exclamation mark by the charging port. It’s a genuinely striking device, festooned in flashing LEDs and finished in a semi-transparent casing – though peel back the ridiculous bravado and hype around the launch and the debut smartphone brushes with cold, boring, inevitable reality. As anyone should have guessed, behind all of the revolutionary bluster, the Nothing Phone (1) is just a phone.

The glyph interface can be used as a makeshift ring light when shooting in portrait mode, and even features a blinking red recording light when filming, just in case you ever find yourself in the early 1990s tracking down a witch in the woods. I only bought it as it’s a gag gift and never seen anyone else sell something similar … (wish I’d just bought a balloon instead).Proof that affordable needn’t mean boring, it’s perhaps the most exciting cheap phone we’ve ever tested. The back of the phone is transparent, revealing not only the phone’s apparent innards, but a configuration of segmented white LEDs that can be illuminated in all sorts of ways and in concert with the notifications appearing on the phone.

When accompanied by the synchronised flashing LEDs, the audio-visual spectacle is a bit like being trapped inside The Cube while Philip Schofield chases you around doing sound effects. That’s a decent enough specification for most users today – apps open quickly, the phone doesn’t heat up and multitasking isn’t an issue – but in a few years this will be old technology. There are so many gift-giving occasions these days that we're all inevitably going to run out of ideas at some point. This gives the Nothing Phone (1) great picture quality in daylight and indoors, and decent enough results in low light conditions. The phone is also super-lightweight and feels secure in the palm, with clear attention paid to the placement of antenna bands and the machining of buttons and speaker grilles.phone, the cameras aren’t here to compete with super high-end flagships, but they’re functional enough thanks to a pair of 50MP sensors. Of course, both of these tricks can be achieved on any phone simply by leaving it face up on the table, so you can see the screen. The uniformly flat-edge design is reminiscent of the iPhone 12, so much so that you’d easily confuse the Nothing Phone (1) for an Apple device if it weren’t for the wild lightshow happening behind the back glass. But beyond the pomp and hype of the phone’s big launch, and looking past the novelty glyph interface, the Nothing Phone (1) is a perfectly decent mid-range Android phone with a great design and a premium finish.