Nothing confirms death of a fan favourite feature before its Phone (3) launch

Nothing is preparing for the launch of the Nothing Phone (3), which has been confirmed for July. We currently don’t know much about this device, but if the latest tease from the company is to be believed, it's about to ditch one of its most defining features.

The Glyph Interface was one of the mechanisms that Nothing used to differentiate its phones from all the other Android devices when it launched in 2022. The use of LED strips on the back allowed a new interface on the rear, but it never really did anything, apart from look different.

It now seems that Nothing is moving on from the Glyph Interface, sharing a post on X that reads “We killed the Glyph Interface”. Beneath this, company founder and CEO Carl Pei simply adds “RIP”.

Taken at face value, it looks like Nothing is removing a feature that’s become synonymous with its phones. But you can’t take anything at face value with Pei's firm. Everything is a carefully crafted message and there’s no value in telling people that the Glyph Interface is dead.

What’s likely to follow is something about the Glyph Interface being reborn. While is current implementation doesn’t do much more than add novelty, the company could be looking at something more exciting – a different novelty to adorn its devices.

There’s a suggestion that Nothing will turn to a dot matrix – or Glyph Matrix – system instead, allowing some sort of customisable detailing on the rear of the phone. This wouldn’t be unique, however, with ROG using such a system on the ROG Phone 9 and other devices.

Still, as it stands, we can expect some sort of change.

What do we know about the Nothing Phone (3) so far?

In truth we don’t know much about the Nothing Phone (3), although the CEO has confirmed a couple of details. First, it’s the phone that Nothing always wanted to build, with an AI system that it has wanted to put in its devices from the off. Second, it’s going to cost around £800 ($1065, €950).

It’s been confirmed that it will be on sale in the US too, which not all previous Nothing phones have, but beyond that, we’re starting to move into speculation.

It’s thought that the codename for the phone is Metroid, we’re expecting flagship hardware, but it’s not certain whether that’s Snapdragon 8 Elite or Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, while the battery is expected to be larger than 5,000mAh.

For the cameras we know very little, but we’re expecting a triple lens arrangement that's rumoured to have a larger main and telephoto sensor than the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro. That's about it for now.