Nothing Phone (1) coming to Nepal: Will it be something meaningful in the market?

Nothing Phone (1) has been officially released globally.

After all the hype and teasers from the company, Nothing has finally made the phone available to purchase for people. All the hype Nothing Phone (1) got was mainly due to Carl Pei as well. Carl was the co-founder of the reputed smartphone brand, OnePlus. He left OnePlus and founded a new venture, Nothing, and Phone (1) is the first smartphone from the company.

Nothing Phone (1) falls in the premium mid-range category. It has plenty of great features that place itself in direct competition with smartphones of a similar price category. The phone features a transparent design offering a fresh and new look. Similarly, good camera performance can be expected from the phone. There is a high refresh rate support display which is said to have enhancement in the contrast and colour of media.

Let’s get into the details of Nothing Phone (1).

Specifications

Design and display

One of the most hyped things about Nothing Phone (1) is its design. The phone has a flat glass front, glass back and an aluminium frame build, a standard build seen on most premium mid-rangers. The design somehow stands out from the rest of the android phones in a similar price range. This is because the design is hugely inspired by the iPhone. The flat front and back, the flat frame all incline towards the iPhone.

Similarly, the most standout part of Nothing Phone (1) is its back panel. It is displayed in almost every advertisement and on the website as well. The transparent design and the LED lights are something new and fascinating. There are more than 900 LED lights on the back covering four different strips. There is one around the camera, another on the top right corner, a huge one around the wireless charging coil in the middle and one exclamatory mark on the bottom.  

As fascinating as the light looks, it serves very little to no purpose. You will have to flip the phone over to see any lights and most of the time it is not the case. The LED lights serve as a notification or battery level display while charging. It does look amusing, but it does not precisely tell from which app the notifications are from or who the caller is.

The interesting part of these LED lights is that all of them serve a different purpose and can light up independently. The bottom exclamation light indicates notification as well as the charging level. The lights also synchronise with the ringtones and let the user match a specific contact.

The phone weighs 193.50 grams and is 8.30 mm thick. It is available in white and black colour options. There is a dual biometrics system on the phone, which means the user can use both face recognition as well an in-display fingerprint sensor. The phone also has IP53 splash, water and dust resistant certification.

On the front is a 6.55-inch OLED panel with a resolution of 1,080*2,400 pixels with 402 PPI density. The display has an adaptive refresh rate of 120Hz and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. There is also an HDR10+ feature on the display, which will enhance the colour and the contrast of the media. Furthermore, it can achieve a peak brightness of up to 1200 nits. Another interesting feature of the display is that the bezels are perfectly even. This is rarely seen on smartphones these days.

Cameras

Nothing Phone (1) has a simple dual camera setup on the back. The main 50MP Sony IMX766 sensor has an aperture of ƒ/1.88 and 1/1.56” sensor size. It is accompanied by another 50MP ultrawide camera. Though having a 50MP sensor, the 114 degrees FOV does not seem convincing. Nothing Phone (1) can be praised for not having an extra mediocre sensor just to add the numbers. On the front is a 16MP Sony IMX471 sensor for selfies and biometrics.

The main camera sensor includes OIS and EIS image stabilisation. The camera features include panorama night, portrait, beauty, bokeh, HDR, Google filter, scene detection, live photo, document mode, night mode, extreme night mode, night video, expert mode, panorama, slo-mo (120 fps) and time-lapse.

The main camera on Nothing Phone (1) can record video in 4K resolution up to 30fps while can record 60fps video in 1080p resolution. Meanwhile, the front camera can record 1080p resolution video at 30 fps.

Performance and storage

Nothing Phone (1) runs on Nothing OS based on Android 12. The phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ 5G (6nm) chipset while the graphics are handled by Adreno 642L. The company is offering three years of Android updates and four years of security patches every two months. The phone is also said to have 100 per cent bloatware and ad-free software.

Nothing Phone (1) comes with 8GB and 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM with 128GB and 256GB of internal storage. The phone does not support an external card for memory expansion.

Battery life, connectivity and others

Nothing Phone (1) features a 4,500mAh non-removable li-po battery. Under normal use, it should provide a decent backup. The battery can be charged with a 33W fast charging, which will charge the battery fully in 70 minutes. The phone also supports 15W wireless charging and 5W reverse wireless charging. Unfortunately, the charger is not included in the box and must be purchased separately. Nothing also has advised the user to only use chargers compatible with Quick Charge 4.0.

The phone features dual sims with both sims capable of supporting a 5G network. For better speed and battery life, the phone has Wifi 6. There is Bluetooth 5.2 on the phone for wireless pairing and connectivity while it uses a USB Type-C 2.0 cable for charging and wired pairing. Furthermore, the phone also has the support of NFC and GPS. For the audio, Nothing offers three HD microphones and dual stereo speakers. However, it does not have a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Overall, notable features on Nothing Phone (1) are:

• Transparent and flat design
• LED lights on the back panel
• Good build
• IP53 rated
• 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate support
• HDR10+ support
• 50MP dual camera
• 4K video recording
• Power-efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ 5G chipset
• Bloatware and ad-free software
• 4500 mAh battery backup
• Support of wireless and reverse charging
• 5G network
• Wifi 6

Nothing Phone (1) is priced at £399 for the base 8/128GB variant. The phone should be available for Rs 60,000 if it is released here.

This price will directly place Nothing Phone (1) in the premium mid-range category. It will compete against the likes of the OnePlus Nord 2T, Samsung, and Realme GT Neo 3 in Nepal.