Nothing’s original Glyph Interface was the perfect level of gimmick — it added a bit of flair to the back of its first few phones, but always felt like it had a purpose. I trusted it for everything from following the charge of my battery to watching for an incoming phone call, and it was one cool thing I could always show off to my iPhone-toting friends.
Unfortunately, the Nothing Phone 3 took everything I loved about the original Glyph Interface and sent it back to the drawing board. It replaced the simple LED bars with a circular Glyph Matrix, and it’s made me stop using the light-up feature altogether. Here’s what I think Nothing got wrong by fixing what wasn’t broken.
It’s not a substitute for screen time
Prakhar Khanna / Android Authority
I know I just finished calling the Glyph Interface a gimmick — and it is, I stand by that — but at least it’s a gimmick that knew what it wanted to be. Its purpose was to complement the overall experience by making it so you didn’t always have to look at your phone screen. You could get a general idea of incoming notifications and countdown timers without boosting your daily screen time. And yet, you could just as easily go a whole day without using it.
The Glyph Matrix… isn’t so simple. It’s more detailed than the Glyph Interface, so you have to pay more attention to it than the Glyph Interface, ultimately pushing you to use your phone more than you might have wanted. Yes, sometimes it’s helpful as a way to check the current time without flipping your phone over, but because you already have to press the button on the back panel to activate the Matrix (which I don’t like, either), it makes the whole process take just as long as picking up your phone to check in the first place.
Unfortunately, as soon as I have my Phone 3 in my hand, I’ll probably check it. It’s kind of like the children’s book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” in that it’s a slippery slope for me to start out checking my remaining battery on the back of my phone and very, very quickly end up scrolling the day away on Instagram or Reddit. With the Glyph Interface? Not a chance. It automatically kicked on for timers, notifications, and charging indicators, which meant I could leave my phone sit face down while I worked my way around the kitchen.
Nothing’s “toys” don’t add to the experience
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
If, in theory, you can get me to use the Glyph Matrix without being distracted by my phone, I think you’ll quickly find that I don’t know what to do with it. See, outside of the digital clock, every little feature, which Nothing calls Toys, feels useless. I like to be able to glance at the time, but I can also do that from my watch, which is always, always, always going to be on my wrist, so I rarely toggle the Matrix to show the time.
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