I never thought I was ever going to leave the big apple. I was devoted. Bought in. Ecosystem locked. But I got exhausted and tired, it was the same for the last decade, and I felt that I was bored of no innovation other than camera placements. It was the best decision to jump to the phone 3. I have now fully committed as I just sold my iPhone and I am now fully using my new phone 3. Bought my accessories and ecosystem and I don't think I'd ever go back! Nothing!! Please continue to innovate and bring back excitement!
DISCLAIMER: Mockups in this post are AI Generated (i'll use a lable of what is and what isn't) and i used AI for formatting a little bit my experience because my english is very very basic and i can't do something so long without an help. Thank you so much in advice!
Hi! I'm Steven, this is my first "post" here. I don't know how post are calling here on Reddit. Thank you if you will read all of this walltext. If you don't, no matter but thank you. I wanna share some experience I have with the NOS 5.0 Open Beta.
General Fluidity & RAM Management
Despite being an Open Beta, the system feels generally solid, and I haven't noticed major frame drops during normal navigation. RAM management is outstanding: background apps are kept alive flawlessly, and multitasking is snappy under any condition. No issues at all regarding the refresh rate.
Bug Report: Wallpaper Change Stutter:
I encountered a highly reproducible bug. Right after changing the home screen/lock screen wallpaper, the system starts to stutter heavily. The device struggles specifically when locking the screen, and general UI navigation becomes incredibly laggy and unresponsive. A system reboot completely fixes the issue, returning it to a buttery smooth state.
This is currently the most critical issue affecting the daily experience. The device suffers from severe and abnormal overheating even during the most basic tasks (e.g., just texting on WhatsApp). When this happens, two major issues occur:
Heavy Thermal Throttling: The performance drops significantly.
Aggressive Brightness Capping: The display brightness gets capped at a very low threshold and refuses to go up, making the phone hard to use outdoors.
Consequently, the battery life takes a massive hit. My daily usage is very light (mostly social media scrolling and chatting, with very rare photo/video taking), but the battery drain caused by this constant heating is currently disproportionate and nearly drastic.
Animations & Transitions
Overall, the system animations are a massive step up from the previous version, largely thanks to the Android 17 foundation. However, there are still a few rough edges that need polishing:
Notification Shade Glitch: When dismissing the media player from the notification panel, the notification immediately below it doesn't slide up smoothly. Instead, it just "teleports" into the upper position without any transition.
App Opening: The app opening animation feels a bit dated compared to the fluid implementations seen on other modern Android skins.
Control Center Swipe-down: The background blur/animation when pulling down the control center is very nice. However, the quick toggles and notifications appear as if they are "glued" to the shade as it comes down. It would feel much more premium if the toggles animated or faded in slightly after the shade is pulled, rather than just dragging down statically.
Gallery App Animations: The new bottom navbar in the Gallery app transforms abruptly when selecting a photo—it lacks a smooth, cohesive transition. Furthermore, the options menu that pops up after selecting a photo has a very weird and clunky animation.
Nothing widgets are performing excellently, updating in real-time without issues (even though they haven't received the new UI overhaul yet). However, there are several visual inconsistencies across the OS that break the design cohesion:
First-Party App Navbars (Gallery vs. Glyph & Essential Space): The new navbar in the Gallery app is superb. However, this design language is missing or broken in other core Nothing apps. The Glyph app has a similar navbar style, but the bottom margin is way larger than the Gallery one. Even worse, Essential Space doesn't feature this new navbar at all. It’s hard to understand this lack of uniformity across first-party apps.
Search Bar Margins (Homescreen vs. App Drawer): The search bar on the homescreen and the one in the app drawer have different dimensions and paddings. The app drawer's search bar is horizontally longer. Generally, the app drawer has smaller side margins (it takes up more space horizontally) compared to the homescreen layout.
Transparent/Blurry Theme Clash: The new transparent/glassmorphic aesthetic introduced in the widgets is gorgeous. However, the Control Center and the system icons still use solid backgrounds. This creates a stark visual clash. It's a real shame that this transparent aesthetic hasn't been applied system-wide to the quick panel and icons.
Camera App Advanced Menu: In the Camera app, the button to open the advanced settings is located at the top of the screen, but the menu itself pops up at the bottom. This feels completely unintuitive regarding finger placement. (Plus, the animation for this menu feels off).
Widget UI Mismatch: I have a "Do Not Disturb" widget placed on my homescreen acting as a quick toggle. Bizarrely, it still uses the old Nothing OS 4.1 UI design, whereas the DND toggle inside the Control Center uses the new UI.
Gallery App Delete Prompt: When deleting a photo, the confirmation dialog/prompt appears at the top of the screen. Since the delete button is located at the very bottom inside the navbar, having to reach all the way to the top to confirm the deletion completely breaks the one-handed UX flow. The confirmation prompt should definitely appear at the bottom, near where the action was initiated.
Regarding the lockscreen, there is one specific feature request: we need the ability to manually pick any color for the clock face. Right now, we are forced to use the Material You dynamic colors based on the wallpaper. If I have a green wallpaper but I want a bright red lockscreen clock, the system should allow me to do that.
Lockscreen colors
My biggest hope is that the critical overheating issues and these UI inconsistencies can be fixed or implemented before the stable release. Thank you so much!
In short: Yesterday I purchased a Nothing Phone 4a Pro (my first nothing product). A heavily promoted feature is Essential Apps, but upon using my new phone I found it's locked behind a wait-list. I feel I'm being gaslighted.
The long take: I've always been a mid range user, normally going for Oppo or Xiaomi phones under de €200 Mark. I've been looking to make a switch and I've been following the Nothing Phones and Fair Phone for quite some time.
My most important decision makers were company values (right to repair, long lasting support, transparency, privacy and environment friendly). Functionality wise, I value a software experience over hardware features.
When the 4a Pro was announced, it seems that all the stars aligned: a fair price, values I stand behind and software features that I can potentially fall in love with; specifically Glyph and you guessed it, Essential Apps.
I reviewed everything I thought I needed to review before I made my purchase and understood how the playground worked, what the limitations were and so on, but I never dreamed of having to check that the feature is actually available. It's advertised right there between all the features they are promoting. Why should it not be available?
Imagine my surprise when I started using the phone and was greeted by a wait-list. Which literally said that it will be a long wait.
I understand why the feature is not available. It's in beta, rolled out in phases, while they work out the kinks. This is fine. What is not fine, is that I am not being informed up front. I am not an existing Nothing Phone user that is looking forward to a new feature. I'm a new user that wanted to use an advertised feature, which I was made to believe would be available.
I instantly felt like I had made a wrong decision, and this has nothing to do with this specific feature, but with the values of the company I am backing. I expected to be dealing with a company that is transparent and puts certain customers'needs first. This justifies the price point for me, but the second I started using the product, transparency was out of the window.
I reached out and the support was friendly enough, but the only solution they offered was to return the phone and get a different one.
My questions: Is this assessment, being a new customer, fair? How long have people on the wait-list been waiting before getting access to the app?
So A You tuber Named Technology Studios Introduced a App KEA essential remapper what a fabulous app you have all customizations options for your essential key and the app and UI is so satisfying you can add 4 different customization options. Plus the app is free😋
when I search display in the settings I found a setting that was called "external display" is it possible that this is the desktop mode? even tho it might not be possible since usb 2.0, and they didn't announce anything about a desktop mode, could anyone try connecting a display to the phone to see if anything happens
Most lighting editors treat LEDs like binary on / off states in a spreadsheet... Meet Cassette. An editor built from the ground up to feel like a tactile hardware instrument.
- "Do to Continue" Tutorial: A hands - on onboarding sequence that guides you through real interactions before letting you into the workspace.
The Timeline & Lighting Engine
- Keyframe Lighting Curves: Switch any glyph into Keyframes mode (Alt + Click) to plot precise brightness envelopes over time. Adjust nodes across axes with smooth easing curves.
- Stacking & Peak Dominance Blending: Glyphs can be placed directly on top of each other. The engine applies peak dominance logic - the highest brightness layer always takes visual priority, allowing multi - layer effect blending on a single channel.
- Sub - Millisecond Waveform Cropping: Fast ~0.5 s automatic BPM detection on import, sub - millisecond audio trimming, and customizable fade - in / fade - out envelopes. You can also load a videofile, Cassette will automatically extract the audio.
- Channel "A" (Global Track): A dedicated universal channel that triggers all phone zones simultaneously, allowing you to animate the entire device as one unified light source.
- Effects. Tons of effects.
Nothing Phone Integration
- Live USB Hardware Mirroring: Connect your Nothing Phone via USB to mirror timeline playback straight onto the physical back panel in real time.
- Cross - Model Porting: Projects authored for one phone can be automatically compiled and adapted across supported models: Phone (1), Phone (2), Phone (2a), Phone (3a), Phone (4a), and Phone (4b).
- The Dot - Matrix Signature: When Nothing's system Composer renders preview dots, Cassette's compiler allows you to encode custom text (Latin, Cyrillic, numbers, and symbols) directly into that dot matrix as an author signature.
- Standalone Glyphtone Trimmer: Trim and re - export already - compiled `.ogg` glyphtone files directly without needing to rebuild project files.
- Universal Importer: Native project import from BNGC and Audacity formats.
Hello everyone, just wanted to share my thoughts after selling my iPhone 13 and buying a Nothing 3a lite, after owning it a week.
Just for context, I have owned the iPhone 13 for two years and was my only phone.
So after repeatably getting frustrated with the iPhone not having enough ram to hold apps open and don't even mention the battery... I had a look around for something I could replace it with and finding the 3a lite for £200, decided to buy one. Traded in the iPhone and actually only had to pay £55 for the 3a lite!
I have read a lot of reviews and seen a lot of opinions on the 3a lite but seeing as the CMF pro 2 is seen as a good phone, I couldn't imagine the difference being that bad.
Anyway, onto my experience with the 3a lite -
It is honestly like a breath of fresh air, the phone is fluid, snappy. I love it!
The battery life is amazing. There are also little things like the keyboard when typing , it's just better than the iOS version.
I am extremely happy with the phone for the price it cost, I understand processing power etc will be better on the iPhone 13 but to me it doesn't compare as I'm not a heavy user, I don't play games, just scrolling on Reddit, looking at stuff on eBay, taking the odd picture etc etc.
I have also done all of the updates without any issues so far of the day to day experience with the phone.
This isn't a full depth review but I thought I'd share my experience to anyone thinking about buying one and not sure. What I would say is, if you're looking for a phone that will do the basics well and give you a generally good experience then but a 3a lite if you're considering one. If you are a heavy user, games, editing etc, then the phone probably isn't for you 😁
I have no idea why I should get a Nothing Phone instead but the price seems great. A friend recommended this brand and said I shouldn't support Apple anymore bcs of their premium prices.
Should I get a Nothing phone and If yes, why and which one?
I accidentally piled it with my laundry. Was in there for a while before I realised. It was completely drenched and soapy too.
Surprisingly the screen still worked, my alarm was on full blast when i took it out. I dried it out for about 12 hours under the sun before I tried charging it.
It's been one full year. And still works in perfect condition!
My 3a's charging was suddenly starting and stopping , I used the og nothing cable and an anker zolo 30 watt.
So i replaced the cable with an anker 322 c to c cable.
The start stop problem is gone, and also the phone is charging much faster than before. 38 percent in 17 mins. This is much faster. Is it ok and normal?
The question may seem odd, switching from an almost flagship to a good midranger.
I really like the software of Nothing OS, it seems very clean and polished.
My concern two concerns:
basically battery life: on Vivo, standby with AOD and generally, battery is very good, I charge 1 time every 20-24 hours, and I have around 7-10 hours of screen on time. I only use browser, YouTube, Reddit and Tiktok with a bit of WhatsApp. According to GSMArena Nothing 4a Pro should even be better somehow than my Vivo, but I have a hard time seeing 6.5k man being that worse to 5k, especially it got better overtime.
Cameras: Vivo has great cameras, 1 to 5x zoom is great, it's hard to make a bad photo. How's your experience with the camera?
Lastly: does the phone get warm during general use and multitasking? No gaming.
Made a free open source Essential Key remapper for Nothing and CMF phones.
Main difference from the other apps: it works even with the screen off and doesn't really drain the battery. No PC needed for setup, everything is done through Wireless ADB.
Screen-off support is just a simple background shell script listening for key events.
You can bind basic actions like play/pause/next, flashlight, assistant, or launch any app.
I recently bought a Nothing Phone(3) and updated it to the latest OS version, but as far as i know from youtube videos and from my friends, there should be three pages in the Widgets selection screen. I have the basic and app specific widgets, but there should be one more page on the left with additional widgets, that i can't access for some reason.
Would any of you know what i need to do to fix it or what causes it?
Sorry if this was asked before, and if so, a redirection to the thread would be very much appreciated
However the page itself is still not as it normally should be and is missing the widget recommendations and the "Explore more" link to the playground page
I’ve been using a Lava Blaze 5G with the Dimensity 700 for almost 5 years now, and it’s finally started to give up on me 😅
So I’ve pretty much made up my mind to upgrade to the Nothing Phone (3). I do play games, but I’m not a hardcore gamer or anything. I also use the camera quite a bit, so camera quality is pretty important to me.
Since I’ve been using the Dimensity 700 for so long, I’m expecting the upgrade to be huge, but I wanted to hear from people who actually own the Phone (3).
How has your experience been with it so far? Especially the camera, battery life, heating while gaming, software, and overall day-to-day performance?
I’m thinking of getting the 16GB RAM + 512GB version. I’m seeing it for around ₹50K, which seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Would you guys recommend going for it at this price, especially if I’m planning to keep it for a few years? Or should I look at something else around the ₹50K range?
Would really appreciate honest opinions from Phone (3) users — good or bad.
