When I heard that the Phone 3 was going to be the first flagship, like real
flagship from nothing, I was like freaking finally. Because up until now,
nothing has been the phone brand that I desperately want to love. I mean, their
design is cool. Their skin is clean. Their features stand out in a sea of
bland black boxes. I mean, how can you look at this and not like it? Okay, the
camera placement has been a bit of a source of controversy on this phone. I
can kind of see where people are coming from. But I mean, come on. You can see
through to the motherboard. How freaking cool is that? It's just that every time
they launch one of their phones, there's some kind of deal breaker. Like, I know
that in some regions, NFC is not that big of a deal. But for me, I use it
quite a lot. And when I ran the phone 3A, there were enough bugs that it was
distracting. But who knows, maybe the software has improved. Anyway, with all
that said, imagine my disappointment when I found out that their first true
flagship is not quite a flagship. And yes, the price
is also a little lower than a current gen flagship. So, you're making up some
ground there. But is it lower by enough?
Let's take a look at it. On the bottom, you've got your USB type-C, your SIM
tray. Do we have storage in here? I'm actually not sure. I'm going to have to
find out. Don't tell me. Don't tell me. I I don't want any spoilers. Oh,
included clear plastic case. I have to say this really does highlight the whole
camera placement thing. Uh, what is this
fingerprint sensor? We're going to find out later. Okay, what are you? Anywh who
included USB 2 charging cable, USBC to
C, and a SIM removal tool. No board.
Also, no documentation. Do we lose it? We got another one, right? Is there
documentation here? We got the black one, too.
Nope. Okay, then. Dual SIM, but no
storage. On the right side, we've got our lock button as well as our action
button. Sorry, sorry, excuse me. Uh, what do they call it? Right. Essential
key. Very essential. Up top, noise cancelling microphone. And what are you?
Is that an extra speaker for better stereo? We shall see. On the left side,
you've got our volume rocker. And then on the back, ah, yes, the back to the
controversial cameras. Now, there are good things about the cameras. Every
single one of them is 50 flipping megapixels. So, that includes your
telephoto, your wide, and your ultrawide, and even includes your
front-facing selfie camera, which I think is pretty cool. But yeah,
PE, the layout is a little funky. Rounding out our physical tour, we have
uh well, okay, I don't know if this is controversial, but it's certainly a
divisive change to the Nothing Phone 3. Gone is their traditional glyph
interface like we saw in the Nothing Phone 2 with the lights and the flashing
and the blinking and the fling. And here is a little LED display in the corner.
Now, I know that some people are kind of upset that they've abandoned this design
language, but I got to admit that for me, the new way is probably more useful.
See, it's neat to assign different patterns of flashing to different
contacts, for instance, but I would have a really hard time retaining that in my
memory banks, whereas like this, you could just have a different picture.
That's a lot easier for me. And it's got more utility. Apparently, there's little
games and stuff that you can play. So, we're going to check that out after a quick word from our sponsor, Dbrand.
What now? I'm already suffering enough today. Can
you not hear me? I have bite blocks. Uh,
>> oh, >> I'm getting these out. I told them no.
>> Uh, they said to treat the whiteboard as if you're in The Shining and write it
over and over again. >> No tech and no tips. Make Lionus a short
boy.
There there. Now Dbrand just has to find the message
I left for them in there. Go to shortlinish.com.
>> You can also erase it. >> Why' I do that?
>> They asked me. No.
Hey, there we go. Man, like nothing,
don't like nothing? You got to respect the design. This is just so cool. Super
usable. Questionable, but definitely
cool. And I know cool.
And wow. Yeah. Something I didn't mention before when I was just looking at it physically. This thing is flipping
heavy. I guess a part of that is the silicon carbide battery that
unfortunately didn't result in the kind of battery life that we might have
expected from such a large capacity battery. So here's the thing. By using
the last gen Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 versus
the newer Snapdragon Elite, nothing didn't just miss out on one generation
worth of performance. The 8 Elite was a
big leap both in terms of performance and in terms of efficiency. So, what we
found was that battery life for the Nothing Phone 3, in spite of its large
battery, was not really that comparable to a modern Snapdragon 8 Elite phone. It
is worth noting that we've changed our process for testing battery life a
little bit, but both the S25 Edge and the Phone 3 were tested in the same
manner, and the Edge already isn't known
for having tremendous battery life. Now,
back to the pre-races Linus, who recorded the rest of this video. Our SD
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before it's too late. No, I'm not doing that again. All right, let's poke around
in the latest Nothing OS. It's got a pixel density of 460 PPI, can do up to
120 Hz refresh rate, including support for dynamic refresh rate, and boasts a
whopping 4500
nits of peak brightness in HDR, which we
were able to validate with specific HDR
test files, not in any actual HDR video
playback, but hey, that's a minor detail, right?
I mean, it's a lot better than their last gen phone that under no
circumstances whatsoever were we able to validate their claims. Ah,
okay. In the real world, it's going to hit around 700 nits peak in SDR and
around 1550 to,600 in HDR. But
personally, I find that to be quite adequate and I will prove it by watching
a YouTube video by first connecting to the internet. Oh, speaking of
connectivity, this is, to my knowledge, the first phone I've ever touched that
features Bluetooth 6. It comes with better security, better latency, better
energy efficiency, and additional features, including better location
tracking. So, yeah, once the entire rest of the industry catches up and maybe
Apple will support Bluetoothle someday and all of that, then that'll be really
useful. Hey, do we have what glass they're using? >> Gorilla Glass 7i.
>> Huh. Okay, that's not their top product. So, it's the the almost flagship device.
Nothing. Maybe man, maybe you wouldn't be taking this kind of backlash if you'd
just been upfront that it's like almost flagship, you know, cuz it like feels
really good. Feels good, feels quality,
you know? It just isn't quite a flagship. With that said, flagship is
relative. Sorry, this is a bit of an aside, but like, okay, what's a flagship? you know, like in the 1600s,
you know, the English and the French, like they had their flagships and they
were, you know, big with big flags, but like the Ottomans, you know, they
probably had a flagship, but would they go toe-to-toe with the Dutch? Probably
not. So, it's like an Ottoman flagship.
That is an HDR display. All right. Can't
confirm. I feel like it's been a while since anything's like really stood out.
I would need Tandem OLED to blow me away. I want to see the latest iPad Pro
display make its way to a phone. Apple, make it happen. Oh, now's a good time
for us to listen to the speakers, though. I want to know if that's an extra amplification speaker. Get me some
crab rave. It's totally a speaker port. That's
wicked smart. I can't remember the last phone I've seen since like the HTC1
series that like really had another speaker at the top. Like I've seen a lot
of amplified earpiece speakers, but this has another speaker on this side that it
may be just another port for the same speaker. But either way,
good sound stage.
All right. It falls apart a little bit when the bass comes in. It kind of tries
to do it, but you end up with some distortion.
They're fine. Not on par with the best speakers, but much better than the
worst. Becoming a bit of a theme. I'm a
little surprised to see them default to button-based navigation. I feel like
everyone else has moved on, but I'm I'm still there. Also, was the back being on
the right default or did Labs just set it like this to appease me? Of course,
you can change it if you want. Gesture based navigation is absolutely supported. I don't know if it's in
customization or somewhere else. Where would you look for that? I would look in
customization. No, I don't want help. I don't want help. I want to be I want to
test the logic. All right, fine. We'll do the glyph interface now. Okay, that's
cute. They're all little walkmen. That
is so cute. How can you not think that's cute? You have to. It's law. Oo,
>> that would be my one for Ivon cuz my life is fireworks when she calls me. A
>> that would be my one for Ivonne because my heart pulses when she calls me.
>> A
>> this would be my one for Ivonne cuz she's the bomb. >> A
>> Oh, it's a pressure sensitive button. I
remember when Apple had those. Must be battery life. It's a clock. That's not
accurate. >> Stopwatch. >> Stopwatch. That makes more sense. Okay, I'm going to spin the bottle. Okay.
Okay, who am I kissing? Myself. Yay.
Okay. Where's my Where's my glyph toys at? Truth or dare? Long press to find
out. Have these people ever do they even know what spin the bottle is? Spin the
bottle's a kissing game. Truth or dare is a completely different game. You just
like ask people truth or dare and then they, you know, say truth every single
time because nobody does dare because everyone's chicken and then they just
probably lie anyway. That's truth or dare. Truth or dare is stupid. I knew we
weren't going to make it through the ShortCircuit without a hot take, man. Uh, okay. Spin the bottle. Not
necessary. I'm who I'm kissing. No battery. Forget it. You're out. You're
done. Uh, clock. No, I have a smartwatch. I forgot it today, but you
know, whatever. Or if I wanted to know the time that that you have to have two.
Why? What if I just want one? What if I
just want a solar clock? No, I would
just want the magic eightball. Hold on a second. You have a warning on your M.
Predictions can sometimes be accurate. Okay, that's cute. You know what? I'll
allow it. Is ShortCircuit the greatest channel of all time?
Hey, let's go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.
Cool it, mate.
Excuse me. I'm cool. You're the one
who's not cool. Those are really nice haptics. Like the
the vibe really nice flagship even, I would say.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So, that's me, which is
cool. But then what do I how do I take it?
It's a volume volume key maybe. Okay. Wait. So, it just previews it. You can't
take a picture. >> It's just a mirror. >> It's just a mirror. It's just the
world's worst mirror. Double click to open the camera. Love to see it.
No. Double click to switch. Switch camera. Oh, that's a bummer. Okay. Well,
that's fine. I can work with this. Damn. Well, hey, I can't criticize them
for putting too many beauty filters on it. That's for sure. Dude, I look like
ass. Okay,
the sharpness. Damn, that's pretty good. Good job. I guess one of the big focuses
for nothing in the marketing of this is that it has a better ISP and of course a
better neural processor cuz it has, you know, a modernish uh SOC in it. So
theoretically, this should cut out pretty dec. And it does. Yep, that's
foc. Okay, how about this? Oh, well that's
unfortunate. Okay, hold on. Hold on. I'm in portrait mode, though. That's
probably not helping because it's getting super confused. This like
vibrant color kind of situation it's got
going on here with the selfie cam. Yeah. Um,
yeah, not so much. It's uh light rejection compensation, lens flare
reduction is poo poo. I'm going to clean the lens though. Maybe that's it. So, I
hope you guys are able to see this. Like I bring it up and it's like, "Wow, good
job. Nothing. That actually looks pretty decent."
The good news is I suspect that means it's fixable. But you know what? If we
don't, you know, shoot straight into a light. You know, it's probably a
serviceable camera. It might just need some software fixes. Yeah. Yeah. The
sharpness is good. We got a lot of megapixels. Many millions of pixels. Oh,
we haven't even played around with the zooms, though.
See, Reese is directing nothing.
But this man
Oh, that's a lot of processing
on the telephoto. That's a yikes.
33 and we're really not sure over
something RPM. Last thing is I wouldn't mind getting my little classic video pen
here and just see if it has the Android stutter. I'm already getting a vibe.
Yeah, cool. It's no iPhone. Enough
goofing around with the camera, though. There's a few other things to talk about. It has up to 15 watt wireless
charging, up to 5 watt reverse wireless charging. This is the first of Nothing's
phones that's featured IP68 water and dust resistance. So, that's a huge plus
if you're the kind of person that, oh, I don't know, um, falls into their pool
with their phone in the pocket every once in a while and then nobody ever lets them live it down. Its wired
charging is also pretty darn quick, well under an hour, which we like to see. And
I mentioned Bluetooth 6, but I didn't mention Wi-Fi 7 just yet. That is
included as well. Not that I'm convinced it has a major real world implication
for mobile devices like this, but hey,
it's on there. Speaking of things that are on there, the essential button, I'm
going to add a note. Hey, can you let me know when AI is actually good? It's
essentially a talk boy on steroids with the ability to kind of catalog and
categorize and make searchable your little notes. And we just got to open up
the Is this the one? Yeah, Essential Space. Transcribe and summarize what's
on your mind. Take quick notes from memory. It'll give you like meeting summaries and stuff. Apparently, I I
don't know if I'm that convinced that it does a whole lot that other AI novelties
on your phone can't do. Place your phone face down, then press and hold the
essential key to start recording. That'd be pretty handy for just like discreetly
recording things. Of course, double check the legality of that in your state
or province or region. Mark key moments. This is cool. Okay, being able to be
like, "Hey, that's important." I could see this being kind of useful. I could
also see it being the kind of gimmick that I would really just prefer to remap the button for. Can you do that?
Seriously? Okay. I forgot about the navigation
method side quest. It's under special features.
Well, there you go. You can move the back button around and you can switch to gesture navigation. You can also touch
and hold the home button or the navigation handle to search using the
content on your screen. Sure, you can change the double click to do pretty
much whatever you want. Uh, open up your wallet, video camera. That's nice being
able to open the camera or go directly to video depending on what your
preference is. Nope. No essential button remapping though. I've had so many weird
buggy behavioral issues with my Pixel 9a. Do I want to give this a shot? Not
super impressed by the camera or the just like giant protruding bumps from
them. am tempted by the software,
but I did encounter some bugs when I tried the uh 3A from nothing. The price
is also bound to be a major deterrent to at least some folks. They've done away
with the 128 gig option, which I fully
support in this day and age, especially for something that you're going to try to call a flagship device, but they've
also increased the price of both the 256 and the 512 gig versions $100 over the
Nothing Phone 2. Is this worth $100 more than the Nothing Phone 2? Beyond any
question, absolutely yes. But is it
worth that much money compared to other more different flagships that have, say,
British or French processors in them or
Dutch? Hard to say. What I can say though is
you should subscribe to ShortCircuit.