NOTHING IS BETTER THAN SOMETHING
claims its new Phone 1 can “Bring us back. To us” with “deeper interactions” and “brave simplicity.” It’s not the life-changing phone that Nothing makes it out to be; it’s just a good midrange device with flashing lights on the back.
GOOD STUFF
- Snappy performance
- Smooth-scrolling, pleasant-to-use OLED screen
- Some unique use cases for the glyph notification system
- Four years of security updates promised
BAD STUFF
- Battery life is just okay
- No charger included
- No track record of success yet
The Phone 1’s unique light-up notification “glyphs” are somewhat useful, but more than anything, they’re a fashion flourish. Given that it’s backed up by solid performance and fair price, there’s nothing wrong with that at all.
One important note: Phone 1 is not coming to the US. When it goes on sale on July 21st, it will cost £399 (that’s about $475 US) for a model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. A version with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage (the version I tested for this review) will go for £499 (around $593). It will be available in the UK, parts of Europe, India, and Japan, among other markets. Nothing doesn’t rule out bringing a future product to the US, but it definitely won’t be Phone 1 since it lacks FCC certification.
The light strips that makeup Phone 1’s most attention-grabbing feature blink in combinations that the company calls “glyphs.” There is 20 total in two sets, each tied to a corresponding sound: 10 glyphs for notifications and 10 for ringtones. (You can enable one without the other — lights-only for silent notifications or sounds without lights, but you can’t change which tone each glyph is assigned to.) On a high level, you can set a glyph for all incoming notifications and one for all calls and leave it at that, or you can get more granular by going into individual app settings.
Because the glyph lights are tied to specific tones, you can use them for any app or feature that lets you customize alert sounds. You can assign specific glyphs to individual contacts, though you’ll only see (and hear) the glyph you picked when that contact calls you, not when they message you, which is a bummer — who talks on the phone?
You can also assign different glyphs to different app notifications — even different kinds of notifications from the same app, depending on the app. To do this, you need to head to that app’s notification settings, where you can reassign the notification sound to the glyph of your choice — this changes the alert sound, but it also means you’ll see the corresponding glyph even when the phone is silenced. You can set a glyph for any app notification that lets you assign a custom notification sound — one glyph for work emails and a different one for personal emails, for example, or separate glyphs for Instagram likes and comments.
In theory, it’s a less obtrusive way to have your phone tell you whether a notification is worth interrupting whatever you’re doing — a modern revival of the good-old-fashioned multicolor notification LED (remember those?). With some time and a little fine-tuning, this is a feature that some people might find genuinely useful, especially if you want to triage notifications without details flashing across the screen. Personally, I didn’t exactly find it transformative.
For starters, I’m in the habit of putting my phone down with the screen facing up when I’m not using it, so I didn’t see the glyph flashing most of the time. I’m sure that’s a habit I’d be able to change without much trouble if I gave it some time, but it hasn’t happened in the couple of weeks that I’ve been using the phone. Probably because there’s another part of the phone that lights up and tells me what kind of notification I’m getting: the screen.
As a differentiating feature, the glyphs are maybe a little useful, but probably mostly gimmicky. But it’s smart. It stands out and makes a statement to anyone else who sees it, and it doesn’t take anything away from the experience of using the phone if you’re not into it. If anything, it will motivate you to keep your clear phone case clean — Nothing will sell accessories tailored to the Phone 1, but I didn’t get to test them out for this review.
Most importantly, it doesn’t feel like something that needlessly drove up the cost of the phone. That’s a point I keep coming back to as I use the Phone 1 — if this was a $1,000 flagship phone built around this supposedly life-changing, blinking notification system, I’d feel cheated. But this is a $500-ish phone, and if the lights are only sometimes useful, then it feels more like a bonus feature, not a rip-off.
But the good news is that the 4,500mAh cell in the Phone 1 supports 33W fast wired charging. Qi wireless charging at up to 15W and 5W reverse wireless charging is also included — not something you find in most midrange phones. There’s no charger included with the Phone 1, which means you need to budget another $30–40 for a fast charger if you don’t already have one, so I tested fast charging with an adapter from a company that does include one with its phones: OnePlus.
A 65W charger (overkill but got the job done) took the Phone 1 battery from totally flat to 100 percent in a bit over an hour. For a mid-range phone that also offers wireless charging (i.e., not OnePlus’ midrange models), that’s very good. The phone’s battery performance isn’t among the best for the money, but at least a quick 20-minute charge in the middle of the day will go a long way.
AGREE TO CONTINUE: NOTHING PHONE 1
Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. We can’t read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.
To use Phone 1, you must agree to:
- Google Terms of Service
- Google Play Terms of Service
- Google Privacy Policy (included in ToS)
- Install apps and updates: “You agree this device may also automatically download and install updates and apps from Google, your carrier, and your device’s manufacturer, possibly using cellular data.”
- Nothing end user license agreement
- Nothing privacy policy
The following agreements are optional:
- Back up to Google Drive
- Provide anonymous location data for Google’s services
- “Allow apps and services to scan for Wi-Fi networks and nearby devices at any time, even when Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is off.”
- Send usage and diagnostic data to Google
- Access your Assistant with Hey Google
- Activate Voice Match for Hey Google
- Access your Assistant without unlocking your device
Final tally: six mandatory agreements and at least seven optional agreements.
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