Nothing Phone (1) : Immense hype !

 Here we have, "The Most Exciting Launch of 2022 !"

NOTHING ! No, there's much more than that.😜 Know what? My shirt hasn't changed in the last 24 hours. But my impressions of this phone have definitely changed. When I opened the boxes, I didn't expect I'd say this. I thought that its design is going to be the #1 thing to talk about. But no, with design it's definitely an all round package for everyone! And you'll get to know the reason, as you keep on reading further.

This is something new, this is something different, this is something unique! Now I don't really know its pricing, but I'm expecting it to come around Rs 30-32k. If it comes at that price, it'll be great! It comes with 2 colours on it, the Black and the White. I personally like the white one. The Black, too, looks good enough but the Black colour charm fades away once you put on the case. It shows many fingerprints, so if you go with Black, make sure to use it without a case.

DESIGN

This phone's in-hand feel is beautiful! It feels dense in the hand. It isn't very wide, nor is it big, nor is it tall. It's got an ideal size. Even in terms of weight, it isn't too heavy nor too light. It's actually 195.8g. But it doesn't feel like it's around 200g. It comes with a Gorilla Glass protection on front & back. This phone came with a pre-applied scratch guard & it seems of good quality. There's no 3.5mm jack, has a noise cancelling microphone below, a type C port & stereo speakers as well. It has an in-display fingerprint sensor. The SIM card tool is very nice. I'd say, there's a lot of attention to detail from Nothing👏. The SIM1 & SIM2 print, is also based on their theme. There's no expandable storage but you get a rubber gasket. And you also get an IP53 certification.

DISPLAY

The Nothing Phone (1) comes with a big 6.55" 120Hz OLED display with HDR10+ support & Gorilla Glass. The difference is that the upper bezel & the chin are very symmetrical. The side, upper & lower bezels make it look very modern & beautiful. The OLED panel used supports adaptive refresh rate & is high quality as well. The brightness at normal is 500nits, but the peak brightness is 1200nits.

OS -

The Nothing Phone (1) comes with it's very own Nothing OS which is based on Android 12. Nothing has promised total three years of Android OS updates and bi-monthly security patch updates for four long years on its first device. It's a near stock Android phone with no bloatwares. There are 26-27 Google apps & that's about it. It also comes with some customizations like widgets & enlarged icons. And it adapts to the size, according to your usage.

GLYPH INTERFACE -

Let's come to the most stand-out and the most interesting feature of the phone - THE GLYPH INTERFACE. There's a lot of effort gone into the design & implementation of the Glyph interface. Those LED strips in the back are so prominent. It lits up the back completely.

The Glyph interface is worth the money. If you're taking a video, you'll get a red light at the back, just like a camcorder. And the Glyph (LED) lights can also be your ring light if there's low light around. And the lights can also be used to click Macro shots. You get around 10 ringtones in the Glyph interface customisation. And you also get around 10 notification sounds. You can customise it according to the beats of the ringtone too. The LED strip at the bottom can also be used as battery indicator while the phone is being charged. That's pretty beautiful.

SPECIFICATIONS -

The Nothing Phone comes on with SD778G+ SoC, which although being an old processor has a too good and a balanced performance. And there are 2 variants - 8GB+128GB & 12GB+256GB. You get an LPDDR5 RAM & UFS 3.1 storage type, which adds up some extra speed to all your loading. There's a 4500mAh battery & not that good to hear, but it supports a 33W fast charging support, that's pretty decent at this price point. The 4500mAh battery will easily last you the whole day as we've tested it. Google Ventures is a key investor in Nothing so there won't be any problems in terms of software updates. And Nothing has promised to provide 3 years of major updates with 4 years of security updates. Meaning, you get Android 12 out of the box & you'll get an additional Android 13,14 & 15. Having SD778G+ SoC, it supports 15W wireless charging. And it also supports reverse wireless charging. So you can even keep the Nothing Ear(1) TWS on the phone to charge them.

PERFORMANCE -

It has an Antutu score around 5.98 Lakhs that can be approximated to 6 Lakhs & we've played games on the highest settings. In fact, we played Apex Legends on the highest settings & we got a constant 58FPS. The gaming is smooth so big thumbs up for performance.
The thermals are very much controlled & it just gets a little warm during extensive gaming sessions. So, Nothing has managed the overall performance and outcome of the phone to the best.

MULTIMEDIA -

With a good display, you get good loud stereo speakers. So your multimedia experience would be great on the Nothing Phone (1). It's just that there's no 3.5mm headphone jack but then there's Nothing's TWS. We also noticed that the haptic feedback is one the better ones out there.

SENSORS -

You get all sensors including an in-display fingerprint sensor & face unlock. The phone comes with a 100% recycled aluminum frame. The in-display fingersprint is really fast while the face unlock comes with a pretty decent speed.

Cameras -

The Nothing Phone (1) comes with 50MP+50MP dual cameras. And they're triple function cameras so the primary sensor is Sony IMX766 & the other is Samsung GN1 ultrawide & it doubles up as a macro sensor. On the front, you get a Sony IMX471 which is usually found on OnePlus phones.

Talking about photos & videos, both the sensors are the best out there in 50MP. Sony IMX766 performs really well & clicks good photos under normal conditions. I'd only say that in mid range phones, the photos go through a lot of post processing. You get punchy colours & photos get saturated. This sensor gives out natural colours. Talking about Samsung GN1 sensor, the Ultrawide photos are sharp & good. You'll definitely see the colour shift. Talking about selfies, they could have been better as they're average. There's one good thing, all 3 sensors come with Night Mode.

The camera UI is very clean & it's not like there aren't many filters. If you're taking a video, you'll get a red light at the back, just like a camcorder. And the Glyph (LED) lights can also be your ring light if there's low light around. And the lights can also be used to click Macro shots.
Talking about videography, you can click videos on 4k@30FPS(rear) & 1080p(front).

Other Features -

You get Widevine L1 support & you can stream videos at FHD. But we noticed that there's no HDR support on Netflix yet.
There are 3 microphones on the phone, above, below & one next to the camera. And the whole back of the phone is a notification light for you! It lights up as soon as you get a notification.

CONNECTIVITY -

The SD778G+ is a 5G processor, you get 12 5G bands support. There's dual 4G VoLTE, WiFi calling support, WiFi 6, BT 5.2 & NFC as well.

Like I said before, my first impressions were that it would be only a design oriented phone. But I was so wrong! Nothing Phone (1) is an all round phone! And it comes with theatrics. Some light & sound theatrics! If you go out & people notice the lights, it'll surely be a head turner. It's an all round because I don't have anything to complain about performance.
The battery performance is quite good, decent charging speed, excellent display. So you get all features that you'd expect in a premium mid range phone. You get it all including the ice on the cake kinda design! If it comes around Rs 30-32k(base variant), it'll be a big recommendation!
And finally it's a big fresh of breath over the boring smartphones that launch nowadays.