It’s official: the Nothing Cellphone 3 will use the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset.
Nothing CEO Carl Pei revealed the spec element in an interview uploaded to the corporate’s YouTube channel, confirming that Nothing’s “first true flagship” telephone shall be “36% sooner on CPU, 88% stronger on GPU, and 60% stronger on the NPU” than the Nothing Cellphone 2.
Massive numbers! Besides the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1-equipped Nothing Cellphone 2 is sort of two years previous, and by Nothing’s personal admission, it’s not a real flagship, so that you’d count on the Cellphone 3 to ship a severe bounce in efficiency. The even larger elephant within the room is that Nothing’s “first true flagship” gained’t be utilizing the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which by all accounts is at the moment the Quickest Gun within the West. Is that this a horrible revelation? I’m not so certain.
Look, it’s true that lots of the greatest Android telephones use Qualcomm’s newest top-end chipest, and it’s additionally true that, in not utilizing the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the Nothing Cellphone 3 will probably lag behind the Samsung Galaxy S25 Extremely and OnePlus 13 in benchmark assessments and push-your-phone-to-the-limits use circumstances.
In the event you’re somebody who likes to max out each setting in Name of Responsibility: Cellular or file prolonged movies in 8K, the Nothing Cellphone 3 gained’t be for you. However Nothing isn’t, and by no means shall be, a model for some of these energy customers.
Carl Pei based Nothing in 2020 with a mission to “make tech cool once more,” and that ethos has been evident in each Nothing telephone launched to date (we described the corporate’s most up-to-date effort, the Nothing Cellphone 3a Professional, as “essentially the most attention-grabbing telephone you should buy for lower than $500 / £500 / AU$850” in our evaluate).
Nothing’s subsequent problem is to make a “cool” telephone that isn’t noticeably slower or buggier than the greatest telephones available on the market. And any machine that matches that remit can, I believe, precisely be described as “a real flagship”.
Through the use of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, the Nothing Cellphone 3 will really feel like a flagship compared to Nothing telephones of previous, however I’m 99% sure that it’ll really feel like a flagship in relation to the iPhones, Samsung telephones, and Pixel telephones of the world, too.
As I wrote in a equally minded piece final yr: “In my view, we’ve reached a saturation level in terms of the pace of flagship telephones. Not essentially total cellular efficiency, thoughts, however the way in which these telephones really feel once you’re swiping via them.”
If the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset can ship a easy expertise whilst you’re scrolling, streaming, swiping, gaming, taking images, or doing any of the opposite issues one does with their telephone in 2025, I believe it’s a wonderfully acceptable chipset selection for a flagship handset geared toward those that worth aesthetics over uncooked, unmitigated energy.
Think about Google’s newest flagship telephone, the Pixel 9 Professional.
By all accounts, its Tensor G4 chipset is weaker than the competitors, but the Pixel 9 Professional sits fairly because the ‘greatest Android’ possibility in our listing of the greatest telephones and in addition scooped our Cellphone of the Yr award in 2024. Positive, these titles had been awarded subjectively, however nobody bats an eyelid when Google’s bona fide flagship ships with out the newest and biggest in cellular silicon.
The worth argument is a bit of tougher to rebuff. Rumors put the Nothing Cellphone 3’s price ticket at round $799 / £799 / AU$1,300, which might deliver the telephone in keeping with the Snapdragon 8 Elite-equipped Samsung Galaxy S25.
Naturally, Nothing’s upcoming handset gained’t be capable of compete with Samsung’s newest base mannequin for uncooked energy, however with Carl Pei promising “premium supplies and software program that actually ranges issues up,” I’m assured that the Cellphone 3 will ship on the CEO’s “true flagship” promise.
