Nothing Phone (1) — Review & Full Phone Specifications
This is a smartphone that’s been hyped up for quite a while now the Nothing phone won it comes from carl pay who helped found the og flagship killer brand oneplus a few years back so was the Nothing phone one another revolution in the making or something else entirely. the oneplus brand was all about providing a ton of bang for your buck even on some levels offering flagship grade quality Nothing on the other hand seems to be going in a bit of a different direction rather than providing cutting edge specs the Nothing phone one is pretty middle of the road for a 2022 mid-ranger
but where it does stand out is its unique design sure the flat back and sides are really similar to the iphones but the transparent glass is something special you can’t exactly see the inner workings of the phone most of it is hidden behind plastic covers but you still get the effect that this is some kind of futuristic prototype this feeling gets even stronger when you see the other reason the back is transparent to let the Nothing phone once glyph leds shine through did you ever wish you had a set of flashing neon lights in your pocket well there you go except these don’t light up in different colors well that’s not a hundred percent true there’s one red indicator that can light up when you’re shooting video you can also use the leds as a fill light for the rear camera
if you need it in a darker situation otherwise the glyphs provide you info on what’s going on with the phone lighting up for calls or notifications there’s even a separate one for charging where the light lets you know how much juice you have so far the glyph interface lights look flashy and they’re practical on paper but the problem is most of the time you’re probably not looking at the back of your phone you’re using the front and if your phone is sleeping on a desk a regular always on display would do the job to make use of the Nothing phone one’s unique feature you’d have to get used to resting your phone face down instead the build quality here on the Nothing phone one feels pretty solid and you do get ip53 rated splash proofing here too
it’s not full waterproofing but at least it’s something official the display is a 6.55 inch oled with a 1080p resolution gorilla glass 5 protection and a 120hz refresh rate the high refresh rate is adaptive sort of it’ll dial down to 60 hertz in some scenarios like when you have static pictures on the screen to save energy you also get a responsive 240 hertz touch sampling rate here too the phone one screen is pretty nice especially for a mid-ranger you get equally thin bezels all around then there’s the great contrast typical of an oled plus support for 10 bit color and HDR 10 plus the colors here are quite accurate too and we really enjoyed the haptic feedback here this panel is pretty bright but in this regard it isn’t quite flagship gray
Specifications of the Nothing Phone (1)
we measured a maximum of around 460 nits with a manual slider and this boosted to 660 nits in auto mode in bright conditions the Nothing phone one has a stereo speaker setup with the earpiece doubling as the top one they earned a score of very good on our loudness test but the sound quality is just average with nice highs but weak mids and bass there is one thing we wanted to talk about which we usually don’t the audio quality through headphones we typically don’t run into issues here but the Nothing phone one has some real problems when it comes to the frequency response it’s all over the place and that’s regardless of whether you’re using wired or wireless headphones
the crosstalk between the two channels through wired headphones is probably the worst we’ve ever measured things really don’t sound right and we’ve confirmed it on two units on two different continents just last week so we guess all the devices are affected hopefully it’s possible for Nothing to fix it through a software update regardless it’s a pretty weird problem to have for a company whose first product was a pair of earbuds for biometrics the Nothing phone one has an optical under display fingerprint reader it’s well placed and accurate and you can get the phone with 128 or 256 gigs of storage but that’s not expandable the interface of the Nothing phone one is a pretty minimal skin on top of stock android 12 and as a result it feels a lot like using a google pixel phone everything is quite smooth and snappy
one unique touch they’ve done here is the font you get these dot matrix style headings here and there there are a few custom widgets here too these include a gallery to show off your nfts and some clock and weather widgets there’s a pretty minimalistic game mode which basically just adds do not disturb and miss touch prevention for your selected titles and of course you get your controls for the glyph leds on the back side one thing we were a bit disappointed in is that there’s no special synergy with the Nothing one earbuds you have to install their app and they work the same as on any other phone let’s move on to this phone’s chipset performance and like i mentioned earlier Nothing isn’t going for flagship killing specs here but they’re still quite respectable
the Nothing phone one is packing an upper mid-range snapdragon 778 g plus 5g which is basically just the next step down compared to flagship grade silicon in benchmarks it sits right below phones that run on a snapdragon 870 and we were able to pull off smooth gaming and multitasking too and even better the Nothing phone one is quite stable when it comes to thermal management and it did an excellent job in our stress test for sustained performance with no overheating on the battery life the Nothing phone one has a 4500 mAh power pack and with it was able to score a good endurance rating of 108 hours in our battery life tests the phone supports up to 33 watt wired charging through usb power delivery you don’t get a charger in the box though with a proper adapter we were able to charge the Nothing phone one from zero to 48 percent in half an hour it’s Nothing too exciting there is support for 15 watt wireless charging too as well as reverse wireless charging
Camera Features of the Nothing Phone (1)
now let’s talk about the Nothing phone ones dual cameras on the back there’s a 50 megapixel main cam with ois and a 50 megapixel ultra wide camera with autofocus that can take macro shots the main cams 12.5 megapixel photos are pretty good there is a lot of resolved detail well developed foliage and the sharpening isn’t over the top the colors are a bit on the saturated side and the dynamic range isn’t extremely wide but it’s natural looking portrait shots look great they’re well exposed with plenty of detail and low noise the separation is quite accurate too shots from the ultra wide look nice with plenty of detail and low noise and the distortion correction is also well done while the colors are realistic looking they’re a bit different from those of the main cam
the dynamic range here is just average since the ultrawide has autofocus you can take close-ups with it these are sharp enough with pleasant colors and contrast in low light photos from the main cam are great with a true-to-life exposure and dynamic range there’s plenty of detail thanks to balance noise reduction and the colors are saturated turn on night mode and you get a brighter exposure and punchier colors there’s more detail and shadows and blown highlights are restored nighttime photos from the ultra wide cam are surprisingly good there’s again balanced noise reduction more than enough detail and a natural looking exposure with night mode
the ultra wide photos have a brighter exposure and boosted colors but there’s less detail and an over processed look selfies are taken with a 16 megapixel front facing cam and they’re good the sharpness could be better but there’s enough detail and you also get low noise and great colors contrast and dynamic range you can record video with both rear cameras and up to 4k resolution at 30 fps and electronic stabilization is available in all resolutions and frame rates 4k footage from the main cam is great with natural looking processing plenty of detail and low noise the colors are lively and the dynamic range is praiseworthy 4k clips from the ultra wide cam are pretty good for this sort of camera
there’s a lot of detail and low noise the colors are a bit muted though and the dynamic range is average so that’s the Nothing phone one sure it came with a ton of hype but the features here besides the glyph lights on the back are Nothing too out of the ordinary for a mid-ranger still even though the specs don’t blow anyone out of the water they’re pretty solid all around and the price is competitive too the only places that Nothing phone one really falls behind are the charging speed and the audio quality through headphones also it isn’t going to be sold in the us for now if you do find it available it’s a mid-ranger worth recommending as long as Nothing does something about that horrible headphone audio.
Originally published at https://www.technews20-21.in on August 18, 2022.
