Nothing Phone (1) officially launches – price, specs and release date confirmed

After months of teasing, Nothing has finally unveiled the Nothing Phone (1), and we now know everything there is to know about the new Android phone.

There are three possible Nothing Phone (1) configurations available: 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, 8GB with 256GB and 12GB with 256GB. The 6.55-inch OLED delivers HDR10+ with a resolution of 2,400 x 1,080 and 500 nits of brightness; it’s an adaptive display capable of 60 to 120Hz refresh rates.

The Nothing Phone (1) primary camera meanwhile is 50MP with a Sony IMX766 sensor and 50MP ultrawide with a Samsung JN1, and the front camera is 16MP with a Sony IMX471. The main camera can record 4K video at 30fps and 1080p at up to 60fps.

The starting Nothing Phone (1) price is a very affordable £399 (UGX 1,776,762) for the entry level model, too.

While the Nothing Phone (1) release date is confirmed, in terms of open sales, as 21 July from 7am BST.

What are the Nothing Phone (1) specs and features?

Despite the affordable price point, the Phone (1) has some impressive enough specs to offer – though certainly isn’t a true flagship.

Design

The most tantalising element of the phone is its design, first revealed on 15 June.

The design language is immediately familiar to anyone who’s seen the Ear (1) headphones, with a mix of opaque and transparent plastic that hints at the phone’s internals without explicitly revealing too much of them. It’s available in either white or black.

Most strikingly, the phone packs a set of LED light strips on the back. Called the Glyph Interface, these are able to flash in white (though only white) in various patterns, and they have a few neat tricks:

Flashing for notifications
Glowing around the charging coil when reverse wireless charging
Slowly filling the bottom bar when using wired charging, as a battery indicator
All illuminating at once as a fill light when using the camera
Flashing in distinct patterns in time to a number of pre-set ringtones and notification alerts

As for materials, the phone’s frame is made out of recycled aluminium, while much of its plastic is also post-consumer recycled. The front and back of the phone are finished in Gorilla Glass 5 for protection, and the handset also boasts an IP53 rating for dust and water-resistance.

Core specs

While the design is unusual, the specs of the phone are a little more familiar – though not unimpressive.

The phone uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ chipset, dashing hopes that it would use the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or the more recent Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. It’s paired with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, and 128GB or 256GB of storage.

Carl Pei told Input that the “custom-tuned” version of the chip was made specifically for Nothing, and that Qualcomm added in support for wireless charging and reverse charging just for this phone.

We already knew the phone would feature wireless charging – which you can see in the big circular coil present in the middle of the design – and it’s now confirmed to be Qi-compatible at up to 15W speeds, with support for 5W reverse wireless charging too. The trade-off is that wired charging is only 33W – decent but far from the fastest around – and Nothing also ships the phone without a charger in the box. The battery itself is a fairly typical 4500mAh capacity.

As for display, the Phone (1) packs a 6.55in screen – a fairly average Android size – using 120Hz OLED tech. It supports HDR10+, a 240Hz touch sampling rate, and an under-display fingerprint sensor – again, all fairly typical for a modern mid-ranger, albeit at the upper end of what you might expect.

Cameras are a little different. The 16Mp, f/2.5 selfie camera is standard enough, but the pair of 50Mp rear lenses are less so. Most phones at this price pack a single decent camera and then pack the rear with dubious extra lenses, but Nothing has instead focussed on including two cameras that should be able to hold their own.