Review: Nothing Phone 1

After about two years of use it is time to let go of my Xiaomi Redmi 10C in favor of something in a similar price class. For 3000 SEK I could get the Nothing Phone 1, which has 8GB of ram and 128GB of storage. For complete specs just check this link I have provided.

I got the phone from a Swedish retailer, it arrived just a few days later. The first experience was of course the unboxing. It comes in a flat black box, it is delivered with a screen protector, sim card opener, and a USB-C to USB-C cable. In other words, there is no case and there is no charger unit.

Booting it up it felt like a fresh experience and the gestures were familiar to that of a Motorola for example, and it was actually more nice than the Xiaomi. It also felt relatively comparable in snappiness, but in some cases it was faster.

One of the first things I did was connecting it to my wi-fi. After that I made sure to download all the upgrades, there are three ways of getting the system updates, but the easiest I found was to scroll to the bottom, press about phone, then click my way into the OS number. After many gigabytes of updates, I went from 1.x to 2.5.5.

After that it was time to move the sim card, install vital apps. Later on I also took one app at a time, made sure it was running on the new phone before deleting it on the old. Making sure all passwords are transferred properly is also of importance.

Last but not least, erase and delete the old phone from any tracking services.

I've had the Nothing Phone 1 for roughly a week now and I can only say that I like it, I am missing the phone case though and I need to get USB-C headphones as I don't want to carry my over ears bluetooth ones all the time.

For 3000 SEK this was a good buy. You can design the glyph lights on the back side with a studio app (using combinations of presets) and the light is only white. Battery life is quite alright and the screen is responsive. The fingerprint sensor, which is located on the front as opposed to the Xiaomi, is successful most of the time and the face recognition was not as good as other phones. The speaker is average at best. Camera and video is good and the built in sound recorder has three modes for ambience, mixed and voice-focus.

You can not expand the storage with an external card, you can however boost the RAM. So in numbers it went from 8GB to 16GB but I have yet to see if it really makes any difference. Google Assistant and Home Automation apps like Deltaco seems responsive.

Overall, it is a good phone.