Another day brings another teaser for the Nothing Phone (3), which is set to launch on 1 July. This time, though, rather than leaving cryptic hints, the company has decided to reveal an important piece of information about the smartphone. Specifically, Nothing has confirmed that the device is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, putting the rumours and speculation to rest.
It is worth noting that while the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is a high-performing processor, it is not quite on par with the Snapdragon 8 Elite or the MediaTek Dimensity 9400, which are currently among the top tier Android SoCs. So it is likely that the Phone (3) may not be on par with other high-end phones, which might come as disappointing news for some. That said, this is still the best chipset Nothing has used thus far, so the Phone (3) should still be a noticeable upgrade from the company’s previous offerings.
It is possible that the company decided to go with this chipset to keep the overall cost of materials lower. Nothing CEO Carl Pei mentioned a price of GBP800 (~RM4,569) for the Phone (3), while a leak claimed a price tag of US$799 (~RM3390) for a base variant with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. On that note, Nothing has not confirmed whether the device will come with different memory configurations and has remained pretty tight-lipped about specifications thus far.
Other than bits and pieces of the design and now the chipset, we know that the Phone (3) will not be featuring the brand’s signature Glyph Interface. Instead, it seems the brand will be using a dot-matrix display, which should be more customisable. We have yet to see how it looks in practice, though, so whether it will prove to be a good replacement for the Glyph is a question to be answered in the future.
