Nothing Phone 4(b) Review

Design

• Solid polycarbonate chassis
• Typically Nothing design
• IP64 water and dust resistance

Nothing’s phones have always had a certain look to them, and the Phone 4(b) sticks with its tried-and-tested formula of being funkier and more interesting than a lot of its contemporaries. You either like it, or you don’t, and admittedly, I’m quite a fan of it.

It is made of polycarbonate (plastic), as you’d perhaps expect for a more affordable handset, but I won’t hold that against Nothing with this phone. It’s comfortable to hold and feels quite durable compared to other cheaper phones out there. There isn’t any creaking or twisting at the corners, either.

As for colour options, the Phone 4(b) is available in black, white, or blue. My sample is the latter, adding a pleasant pop of colour against the other options, and certainly helping it to stand out.

The rear portion features a rectangular camera bump that doesn’t protrude too far from the main chassis, keeping the phone stable when you set it down. It comes with Nothing’s typical retro-futuristic touches, alongside a downsized Glyph Bar borrowed from the Phone 4(a).

The Glyph Bar has long been Nothing’s calling card when it comes to its phone design, and it achieves much of the same use cases as with the brand’s other phones. It can do everything from lighting up for notifications from specific people to letting you check charging progress, counting down shutter timers for the camera, or even pulsing red for severe weather alerts.

Ports are standard fare for a modern phone, with a USB-C port for charging and a SIM slot off to the left. There aren’t any other frills, either, such as a headphone jack or a microSD card slot for expandable storage.

We’ve got IP64 water and dust resistance for the Phone 4(b), which should protect it well against water and dust. This is ahead of the IP54 rating on Nothing’s own CMF Phone 2 Pro, although behind the IP68/IP69 rating of the Motorola Moto G86 5G.

This handset doesn’t ship with a charger in the box, although you at least get a USB-C to USB-C cable and a clear silicone case to help protect the phone.

Screen

• 6.77-inch 120Hz 1080×2344 AMOLED
• 2000 nits peak HDR brightness
• Optical fingerprint sensor

Nothing has kitted the Phone 4(b) out with a large 6.77-inch Super AMOLED screen with a 1080×2344 resolution. This makes it one of the larger screens kitted out to a phone at this price.

The resolution is more akin to HD, which provides reasonable detail at the price, plus as an AMOLED choice, there are deep blacks and good contrast to my eye.

If there’s one area where the Phone 4(b)’s screen isn’t quite as strong as its rivals, it’s brightness. A typical peak brightness of 1200 nits gives images some pop and means this phone is fine for brighter conditions, although the 2000-nit peak for HDR content isn’t as vivid as on other budget phones.

It’s up to 120Hz of refresh rate here, which gives an added slickness against the 60Hz we were stuck at for a long time, although the screen here lacks the more advanced LTPO tech we see in costlier phones, meaning the variable refresh rate works in a blockier manner. For the most part, the Phone 4(b)’s panel sticks at 120Hz in my experience, which isn’t much of a hardship.

Nothing has also included an optical under-display fingerprint sensor for this phone, mounted quite low down on the panel. It’s fine to use, although not quite as good as the ultrasonic ones seen on higher-end devices.

Cameras

• Main rear camera is reasonable
• Lack of a telephoto leaves long-range photography fuzzy
• Decent selfie camera and okay video options

In terms of cameras, the Phone 4(b) slices off the telephoto shooter found on the Phone 4(a) and opts for a dual-camera arrangement. The main camera is a 50MP 1/2.76-inch sensor optically stabilised snapper with an f/1.8 aperture, which is joined by an 8MP 1/4-inch ultrawide sensor with an f/2.2 aperture.

By default, the main sensor chucks out 12MP images, although you can switch to the camera’s 50MP mode to make full use of the resolution on offer for more detail, dynamic range and inherently larger file size.

Out-of-the-box images with the main snapper are perfectly pleasant, with natural colours and solid detail resolution. In general, the 12MP mode offers richer colours, while using the full 50MP resolution will give you stronger detail.

By comparison, the 8MP ultrawide is lacking in overall detail and only provides images I’d describe as serviceable at best. Finer portions are fuzzier if you pixel-peep.

The lack of a telephoto lens is the downfall of the Phone 4(b)’s camera setup, as it means anything beyond a simple 2x or 3x zoom can cause detail to fall off dramatically. For instance, the images taken of Spinnaker Tower beyond the advised 2x on the phone’s camera leave a lot to be desired, with a digital crop nowhere near as effective as proper optical zoom.  A dedicated telephoto would have resolved the fuzziness and given a lot more to work with.

For selfies, the 16MP snapper on the front is okay, with good richness of colour and a pleasant, vibrant tone. Video capabilities in any guise are locked to a max of 1080p/60fps or 4K/30fps, which is fine, if unremarkable.

Performance

• Reasonable mid-tier Qualcomm SoC inside
• Solid speed for more basic tasks
• More advanced 3D loads can lead to stutters

Inside, the Phone 4(b) is brought down a peg or two against its dearer brother by coming with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 SoC, paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage as its only configuration.

With this in mind, performance is stronger against the likes of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 15 4G model, with a much stronger CPU and GPU in the customary Geekbench 6 test. From Nothing’s own canon, the cheaper CMF Phone 2 Pro is rather similar in its performance, while last year’s Phone 3(a) is also faster than the 4(b) in this regard.

For general use, things are better than the benchmark numbers would suggest, with zippy performance navigating the operating system, streaming music or video or dealing with social media in my usual workflow.

In terms of 3D performance, more casual titles such as COD Mobile or PUBG fare absolutely fine, just as long as you’re happy to turn down some graphics settings for a smoother feel. With this in mind, don’t expect to be playing heavier and more intensive titles, as the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test posted single-digit frame rates for one of the lower scores I’ve seen.

For more prolonged intensive loads, expect this Nothing phone to get a little on the warm side, although it wasn’t uncomfortable to the point I had to put it down. The Phone 4(b)’s vapour chamber cooling apparatus seems to do its job decently well.

Software & AI

• Monochromatic Nothing OS or stock Android looks available
• Very basic AI features against rivals
• Reasonable OS and security update commitments

The Phone 4(b) comes with Nothing’s own Nothing OS 4.1 Android skin out of the box that’s based on Android 16. When you first set the phone up, you get a choice between a stock Android lock or the monochromatic, retro-future aesthetic Nothing offers.

I went full Nothing, and opted for its own skin, which is an interesting look against other budget Android phones out there. App icons appear in white on black circles, and it can be a little difficult to distinguish one app icon from another at first. If you’d prefer, going back to the more colourful traditional Android aesthetic is a few taps away in the settings menu.

With this in mind, I didn’t find any bloat or unwanted crud here, and the OS is remarkably clean for such an affordable phone. The OS itself has some useful features, such as a hidden vault called Private Space to store sensitive documents and photos, as well as its clever freeform window sizing where you can make any app any size, which is neat.

Pressing the Essential key on the phone’s left side opens up the Essential Space, where the Phone 4(b) uses AI to organise screenshots, recordings and notes, auto-generating summaries, reminders and any to-do lists from the information you saved.

That’s as far as AI seemingly goes on this Nothing phone, though. There doesn’t seem to be any more AI gubbins here, such as for photo editing as we see on lots of other phones up and down the price ladder.

For the Phone 4(b), Nothing is committing to six years of security updates and three years of Android updates, giving some peace of mind for long-term use.

Battery Life

• 5200 mAh battery
• 33W wired charging
• No wireless charging support

The Phone 4(b) features a 5200mAh battery inside, which is ironically the largest battery Nothing has ever fitted to one of its phones, in spite of it being the most affordable Nothing-branded handset. For reference, the Phone 4(a) comes with a 5080mAh cell.

The brand says that works out to enough for 22 hours of video streaming. In my experience, I managed around eight hours of screen-on time of use when it came to an intensive day of multitasking and using my phone as normal at more middling brightness levels.

For reference, that’s scrolling my social media, streaming music through Tidal or Plexamp, taking the odd photo when out and about, and dealing with a small amount of work in a pinch in Google Docs.

For a more scientific test, a cursory run of the PCMark Work V3.0 battery test at 50% brightness worked out to nearly 17 and a half hours of use – a fantastic result.

The Phone 4(b) supports up to 33W wired charging with no wireless charging support, which lags behind a lot of its key rivals. In using my 66W 6A charger to put some go-juice back into the handset, it also proves to be quite slow, taking 57 minutes to get back to 50%, while a full charge took 100 minutes.

Should you buy it?