The Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro may not be the best-looking phones by some arbitrary measure, but they are two of the most bizarre. I wish more companies took a chance on releasing something this bold.

?Sadly, Most Smartphones Look the Same?

We live in a world where most smartphones resemble the next. Were it not for the logo, I would not blame anyone for confusing an iPhone 16 with a Samsung Galaxy S25. Good luck telling the difference between an iPhone 16 and a Pixel 9 when they're both lying face up with their screens off.

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In the US, you know you're looking at a OnePlus phone like the OnePlus 13R when you see a giant camera bump. Outside the US, you see this same massive bump on Honor, Huawei, and Oppo phones. It's easy to start to feel that giant bumps are actually more common than smaller ones, at least on flagship phones.

How many phones truly have their own iconic look? I think back fondly to the HTC One M7. That phone functioned like any other smartphone, but it didn't look like anything else on the market. And while I never owned one, I lusted over the yellow Nokia Lumia phones that ran Windows Phone. Those phones seriously had their own vibe.

Nothing Phones Stand Apart?

Nothing's phones are all about looks. Every Nothing Phone has had a translucent back with a striking design underneath. I'm not saying the look is cool. These look like phones that C-3PO would carry. It's a look that you're either very into or very not, but there's no denying it's a stark contrast from other phones, where the general impression is "meh."

If Nothing's phones had great hardware but otherwise ran a vanilla version of Android, that probably wouldn't be enough. We might just think of them as quirky Pixels—which, to be clear, is a separate concept for a phone that I would love to see become a reality. No, there's more to these phones than just their shell.

Nothing Phone's original standout feature was the inclusion of glyph lights that provide something new to tinker with. You can have the lights flash in a custom variation for each of your favorite contacts. The lights can show progress on a timer or indicate how close your phone is to being fully charged. You can think of these as gimmicks, but they're a stylized combination of fun and functionality that I wish my phone had.

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Phones Are a Fashion Statement

Phones are something we carry with us everywhere. For some of us, they're as recognizable as the cars we drive.

People notice. Ever since I started carrying a Galaxy Z Fold 6, I regularly get questions about this phone in public. I used to attract attention with an entirely different type of phone, the minimalist Light Phone 2, a few years ago (soon I'll try out the newer Light Phone 3). When something does something different, especially in today's landscape of near-identical-looking slabs, people have their interest piqued by something novel.

Part of the reason I prefer the Z Fold 6 over competing foldables is that I think it looks by far the best. Aesthetically, it feels like a perfected version of the current Z Fold form factor. It feels to me like the most strikingly minimalist design since the Essential Phone PH-1, one of my favorite-looking phones ever made.

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Phone Makers Should Give Us More Options

As much as I like Samsung's current smartphone design, it feels like an iPhone without the garishly large cutout for the dynamic island and the giant Apple logo on the back. The differences between them are subtle.

I'd like to see more phones on the market where the differences are striking. Consider the CMF Phone 1. It's more of a genuine budget phone, with a starting price of under $250. If you gave me this same body with more capable internals and features like NFC, I'd absolutely want one. This phone just so happens to also be made by Nothing.

The most similar-looking phone with better specs might be the transparent version of the Fairphone 5, though that phone's vibe is more rugged than trendy.

We won't see this phone in the States, but if you caught glimpses of the ZTE Nubia Music 2 phone at Mobile World Congress 2025, that phone has the right idea. Would I buy a phone that looks like this? No. But I'd love to see someone else rock it.

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We all more or less have to carry phones at this point. The software is mature. The features have become much less exciting. But there's no reason their physical design can't be fun. Come on. Let's go crazy with it.

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