A phone that has rules for rebels

I understand the disappointment with the phone level of the phone level 3 of the phone 3, or that the screen is not as good as the latest postings of the iPhone or the Samsung galaxy, or the fact that nothing invoices $ 800 for a slab that on paper – is only short in some places compared to competitors. But you never go to consider buying the phone 3 if the technological specifications were the only thing that counted. Like all the products of nothing – the excellent ears wireless earpiece and the ancient -over -ear 1 headphones – the phone 3 is a statement that tells everyone that you are not a sheep following the herd.

I will first approach the so-called “flaws” of the phone 3 because the echo room was the most vocal about them, starting with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset. Tit for tat, the 8S Gen 4 chip is a step below the more efficient and “light” elite (Gen 4), the CPU being about 35% more slow and the GPU around 44% slow. These synthetic performance benchmarks have lost all the meaning a long time ago; Nobody – I don’t feel sorry for it if you are that person – does not count the nuclei and the clock species for the phones. Maybe the 1% of Esport Pro Mobile players lose sleep on a few abandoned executives League of Legends: Wild Drift Or AdvertisingBut American standards are not. Nothing could have been able to go with the Snapdragon 8 Elite lighthouse last year (Gen 3), which is quite close on paper, and the phone 3 would work with equal responsiveness.

I tested each phone that nothing has released from the original phone 1 in 2022, including all the modular CMF budgets, and I do not remember major hunges with Android who courses. It is not because nothing used the best chipsets (it has never done it), but a testimony to optimize its Android Nithing OS version for what is perceptible for consumers – taps and animation sweeping that make a phone feel And appear Fast and fluid. Bouncing around the operating system on the specific model that nothing sent me to try, with 16 GB of RAM (the basic model at 12 GB of RAM), was no less smooth than on a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 or OnePlus 13. All my applications were instantly opened, and even if I am not Impact of GENSHIN And Honkai: Star Rail Run very well on the phone 3. Whoever complains of the 8S Gen 4 chipset is just for the good to complain. I did not feel the chip or the performance of the 3 phone 3 were not up to a month of daily use.

The next list of complaints is the display. Of course, you can get a slightly larger screen on the OnePlus 13, but everyone’s reproach is that the 6.67 -inch and 120 Hz AMOLED screen of the phone 3 is LTPS (polycrystalline at low temperature) and not LTPO (Polycristalline oxide at low temperature). The latter is found in almost all premium smartphones and simply means that the rate of refreshment of the screen can fall to a level as low as 1 Hz in standby or when the content does not need to draw as many frames as frequently. The advantage of an LTPO screen is potential battery longevity. I appreciate having the most peak specifications in new devices, and I will never refuse the lifespan lifespan longer in a phone, but the phone 3 has such a strong battery life (easily 1.5 to 2 days) from its 5,500 mAh cell that I am not sure that the minor versions of LTPO would have extended the food with a significant metric.

The most conflicting thing about the phone 3 is his conception of love-ou-hate-it. Nothing has abandoned the glyph interface which was made up of a bunch of LED bands on phone 1 and phone 2 for the matrix of glyphs, a circular points matrix screen composed of 489 individual LEDs. The mixture of straight lines, circles and a lens of an intentionally ill -aligned perisope telephotive can only be described as Mondrian meets Picasso. It is a design design that makes many people strangely uncomfortable because it is not another solid iPhone. Like my colleague Kyle Barr, I learned to like the Oddball panel of the phone 3 – Triple lens and everything cameras. It seems that nothing has taken up on the transparent elements that allow you to see the raw components below, but overall, I do not hate the direction.

The glyph matrix is not as – literally – flashy as the glyph interface, but LED tables have the potential to show more information of the widget type (nicknamed “glyph toys”) than light bands. About two inches under the matrix of the glyphs is a haptic button button that you type to cross the different glyph toys; A single TAP goes to the next, and a long press will activate its secondary function (if it has one). When writing these lines, there are several “useful” glyph toys – tones like time, battery level, chronometer and even a “mirror” of the points matrix when you take a selfie with the rear camera. You can also define personalized animations for contacts and notifications, although I found so less fun and more boring, because it was difficult to remember which was mapped to whom / what after a few hours. The glyph matrix does not look as cool as the glyph interface, but it is more versatile to display icons and numbers, which light bands could not do. Then there are the other glyph toys that are just for fun – the bottle, a magic 8 ball and rocky paper scrushes. I do not know why you would never want to play rock paper scrushes with a phone or turn a digital bottle, to see who pays for dinner (nothing is to convince the example of use cases), but I suppose it is a harmless pleasure. You should not buy the phone 3 while waiting for tons of useful glyph toys that could help you reduce your screen time; An SDK for developers in order to create its own Little Dot points matrix widgets is available, but I don’t expect something revolutionary either given the Niche Nithing customers.

Maybe nothing will make a phone with cameras that breathe the competition, but there is not much motivation to do so when the photos are mainly shared on social networks. The phone 3 takes photos and videos of good good things. Even as a camera’s nerd, the 50 megapixels of resolution for the main cameras, ultrairs and periscope, as well as the selfie camera, meant very little for me. The photos and videos are all good with a more dynamic beach than I really want to shift in low light which are more than sufficiently shiny. Were there moments when the cameras took ugly photos and videos? Of course, there were, but all other phones, headlights or not. The 5X telephoto lens camera of the iPhone 16 Pro takes some of the most muddy photos in low light that I have ever seen in a phone.

Whenever I pulled the phone 3 from my pocket, I would feel a terrifying good taking over. I wanted people to look at him and ask me questions about it. I wanted people to get back as I played with the glyph matrix. No stranger – in the metro or in cafes or anywhere in New York – has experienced a relaxed guest, but I want to imagine one day there will be a person who will. The phone 3 was a reality verification with myself. Is my phone an expression of my own individuality or someone else? Some people buy a phone for the best technological specifications because they will still slap a case and cover its raw materials. Some people buy a phone depending on the price and also slap a case to cover any cheap design. The phone 3 does not have the best technological specifications, but it has an aesthetic and fun atmosphere that you will not find anywhere else. (The essential key and its “memory” I have always been, and I would really like to be able to remap the button to do something else.) Is it worth $ 800? At a time when everyone thinks they are cool by wearing the same clothes and the same sneakers, make the same dance challenges on Tiktok, eat in the same Instagrammable gastronomic spots, and using the same iPhone, the 3 phone dares to challenge the status quo – and it always costs more to be a pioneer.