Carl Pei-led Nothing, recently unveiled its latest smartphone, the Nothing Phone 3. The company, which is known for offering mid-range smartphones, started receiving flak for the phone’s pricing and its polarising design. However, there seems to be some good news coming in for the UK-based smartphone manufacturer. A YouTube content creator, known for his teardown videos, has put the Nothing Phone 3’s durability to the test while performing a teardown, and it seems that the handset has done pretty well.
Nothing Phone 3 Durability Test
YouTube content creator, Zack Nelson (@JerryRigEverything), in his latest video performed a teardown of the Nothing Phone 3. During the teardown, Nelson performed several durability tests on Nothing’s latest offering. The tests included putting a lighter’s flame on the display, bending the phone to test its structural integrity, scratching the display, scratching the aluminium frame and the glass back with a knife etc.
Nothing Phone 3 gets Gorilla Glass 7i protection for the display. While the touchscreen started showing scratch marks at Moh’s hardness scale level 6, at level 7, Nelson was able to put deeper scratches on the display. This means that the Gorilla Glass 7i might protect the phone’s screen from getting scratched by keys and coins, but it might not prevent scratches from knives or steel nails.
However, the highlight of the video was the bend test. In the video, Nelson applied pressure at the front and the back of the phone with his hands, during which the phone did not visibly flex. He confirmed this saying that “surprisingly, even with the added antenna lines” on the Nothing Phone 3’s aluminium frame, the phone did not “bend at all”. This indicates that it is a well built handset that offers good structural integrity.
During the burn test, the 6.67-inch display of the Nothing Phone 3 got damaged, and it was unable to recover to its original state even after cooling off. Overall, Nelson said, the phone was able to pass his durability test.
Nothing Phone 3 Teardown
After the durability test, Nelson proceeded with the teardown. He took off the back panel of the Nothing Phone 3, which revealed that the rear camera bumps are integrated into the transparent glass. The cover of the touch capacitive button that is used for controlling Glyph Matrix is also part of the rear glass. Under the Gorilla Glass Victus protected-glass, the phone has a panel covering the internals of the phone. Additionally, the teardown shows that the red recording indicator at the back, is actually a white LED light that is covered by a red-coloured film.
Interestingly, Nelson’s video reveals that the rear wireless charging copper coils on the Nothing Phone 3 are not coiling around in a symmetrical circle, seemingly making room for Glyph Matrix’s rear touch capacitive button.
To refresh your memory, Nothing Phone 3 was launched in India on July 1 with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, paired with up to 16GB RAM. The phone sports a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with 1.5K (1,260 x 2,800 pixels) resolution, 460ppi pixel density, HDR10+ support, and 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. For cameras, it gets a triple camera setup at the back, with three 50-megapixel shooters. At the front, it features a 50-megapixel selfie camera. The Indian variant of the Phone 3 packs a 5,500mAh battery with 65W wired fast charging support.
