Nothing's new launches are its most important ever – here's why

We've been looking forward to this for months – Nothing's next big swing. This time, the still fledgling brand is coming for bigger rivals' lunch money, launching what it's calling its first truly flagship phone, the Phone (3), along with some premium over-ear headphones: Headphone (1).

They're just as potentially disruptive as the leaks and teasers suggested, too, not least from a pricing point of view. I'll break down each product momentarily, but the headlines are these:

• Phone (3) starts at £799, $799 or €799
• Headphone (1) is priced at £299, $299 or €299

For the specs that each brings, those are prices that basically undercut their competition by something like 20%, which means that they're not budget options, but do look at first glance like potentially excellent deals in competitive markets.

First up, the Phone (3), which has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 at its heart, powering the whole affair (which is notably not the fastest Snapdragon chip out there). The big headline-grabber on the design front is that the old Glyph interface from previous phones is getting a total rewrite. Now, instead of some disconnected lights, there's basically a white LED dot-matrix screen on the back of the phone in the top corner.

It's called the Glyph Matrix and it's made up of 489 LEDs, complex enough to play animations and widgets, or even some basic games. It'll be totally customisable, too, as you'd expect.

The phone is 18% thinner than Phone (2) and packs a 1260x2800 AMOLED display behind Gorilla Glass 7i on the front, while the back is made from Victus. It's IP68-rated for water and dust resistance, too, so should be fairly durable. On the battery side, things are also really impressive. It packs in a 5,150mAh battery, with 65W fast charging and 15W wireless charging, which should mean you can make it through at least a day and a half of normal use easily enough.

There's a new camera on the block, too, in the form of a 50MP periscope lens, which offers 3X optical zoom, which can be boosted up to 60x using AI. That's added to a 50MP main shooter and a 50MP ultrawide, covering off all the expected shooting options.

All in all, it does indeed look like a flagship – but with a price that could threaten some of its big Android rivals. That's just half the story, though, because there's also Headphone (1).

These are headphones that look like nothing else we've seen recently, with a totally fresh design that will divide opinion. Some people see cassette tapes that you wear like a Princess Leia hairdo, but others will see a stark and interesting design choice.

They sport 40mm drivers custom-engineered with the help of Kef, active noise-cancelling, 35 hours of battery life and sound quality that you can find more about in our full in-depth review (we've had them for a fortnight, lucky us).

They also bring some innovative new controls – a roller button that lets you smoothly change volume levels, along with a rocker for skipping tracks or scrubbing through them. There's a third button that can launch an AI assistant, or a few other options that you choose from in Nothing's app.

Crucially, these look and feel like very premium headphones, which is quite right for £299. Still, that price is extremely canny, just like the Phone (3)'s. It puts them cheaper than big-name options like the Sony WH-1000XM6, but still makes it clear that they're premium and high-end themselves.

If they can get enough word of mouth, then these could be breakthrough products for the ever-growing Nothing brand. It's the first time it's attempted to build something that punches in the same weight class as Apple, Samsung, Sony and other brands' top-end products. That's a big fight to start, but based on what we've seen so far, it could be a winning one.