Nothing Phone 4B Review: Big Bang for the Buck in Nothing’s Cheapest New Segment

We have a Nothing Phone 4B for review now. Great. I guess to better understand where it fits in the lineup, what does the B stand for?

That’d be good to know, right? And looks like we have something from Nothing’s head of marketing to tell us more. So, let’s see what he says.

What Does the “B” in Nothing Phone 4B Stand For?

What does the B stand for? Nothing. It’s simply a continuation of our naming system. Numbers represent generations, while letters indicate different product segments. The B series builds on that success of the A series by expanding into a new segment while maintaining the A series remains our most premium line below our flagship products. Hope this is clear.

Okay, so that that was like a lot of marketing words to not tell us what the B stands for, but I think it does stand for something. So, let me see if I can do a little better. So, Nothing has their flagship, which isn’t really a flagship, but it’s their highest-end phone, which is the Phone 3. Then, they have a bit of a cheaper phone, the A series. Now, they have an even cheaper phone than that, the B series. So, B I think safely stands for budget. There. How did I do?

I actually don’t know why Nothing has this allergy to just calling this a cheaper budget phone. It’s like they’re not allowed to use those words or something, but it’s honestly not that hard of a lineup to understand once you just say it. And this phone still has a lot to like for its price, which is exactly 330 euros or 300 pounds. It is not launching in the US, but for the markets it does launch in like India and Europe, that is a pretty competitive price bracket.

A New Theory About the Nothing Phone 4B

Now, the last Nothing video I made, I kind of had a theory about how they they really aren’t able to make a high-end competitive flagship phone. Their costs are just a bit too high at their volume, so they just don’t. And they still don’t, so I feel like that theory has proven out to be correct.

So, anyway, now I have a new theory that this phone was supposed to be a CMF Phone 3 Pro. You might remember Nothing has this even more budget sub-brand called CMF that’s made really good sub-300 phones. But this insane memory price spike that we’re in now pushes the build of materials yet even higher, which would have made the cost and the price tag just a bit too high to make it another CMF phone. So, they decided to convert it to a slightly more expensive, but also slightly more premium Nothing Phone instead.

Nothing Phone 4B Design and Build Quality

So, this 4b, on the outside, looks like a slightly more plain Nothing Phone. Like it’s a big phone, 6.8 in, but just the top half has this transparent window with a little bit more texture and exposed screws and metal-looking pieces, plus the glyph lights exist still over to the side.

The whole thing is plastic, and it definitely feels plastic, but at least that clear window up at the top kind of looks glassy and maybe a little more premium and metallic.

There’s also a blue, black, and white colorway for this phone, all of which have black buttons on the flat sides, which I quite like.

Specification

Display: A Cheap Nothing Phone Done Right

Then around the front, that is a 6.77-in AMOLED display, 120 Hz, LTPS. It is actually above 1080p, but just short of 1440p, and it’s not a flexible OLED, so there’s just that little bit more chin down at the bottom, but overall, really not an issue at all.

This screen is like a microcosm for what it means to be a cheap Nothing Phone. It is a balancing act of including premium fundamentals, but then like finding ways to save money in ways that you either won’t notice or won’t mind. So, like it’s still an OLED display, which is it’s nice. It’s also high refresh rate. It also has high frequency PWM dimming, but also the bezels aren’t perfectly even all the way around, and the anti-glare finish on here, whatever it is, it’s definitely worse than the more premium phones out. And the in-display fingerprint reader, it’s a little low, and it’s optical instead of ultrasonic, so it’s a little slower.

But like I said, the fundamentals are just fine. It’s readable in most places. It looks good, high contrast, well judged.

Cameras: Good Enough for the Price

But then same with the cameras. So, if this was a CMF phone 3 Pro, they probably would have tried to sneak a useless third camera lens somewhere back here because pro. But here it’s one primary and one ultra-wide and that is a solid one-two punch. I might argue the correct choice for two cameras.

So this primary is 50 megapixels, bins to 12, and it has OIS. Now, it’s a physically pretty tiny Samsung sensor, smaller than the telephoto sensors we get in a lot of flagships these days. But thanks to their software, you can see it’s still capable of getting you acceptable photos in excellent lighting. But the second that lighting goes away, you know, don’t expect any fast shutter speeds or amazing low noise shots. Colors will get a little bit dull, but it’s fine.

Then the 8-megapixel ultra-wide, it’s never been sharp in the corners in a single shot, no matter how perfectly framed and lit. But hey, I’ll still take it over no ultra-wide at all. Like nothing to write home about these cameras. Basically, it’s good enough to not be a deal breaker at this price. But if you really want much more camera than this, then you end up with like a Pixel 10a or something older or just not a Nothing phone.

Performance and Software Experience

And then there’s the performance. Okay, so the chip in here is a Snapdragon 6 Gen 4, which is like a mid-range to lower-end chip that benchmarks way down around like the OnePlus 7 Pro, which is a flagship from 7 years ago. Really great phone, but 7 years ago. And it’s also kind of close to the Tensor G2, which honestly probably says more about the Tensor than anything. But the GPU is more powerful than those older chips and there’s a bit of a larger, more modern vapor chamber on it for better sustained performance. So it can actually handle some gaming.

If this was a CMF phone, this probably would have been a MediaTek chip cuz that’s what they put in those phones. But the final result is honestly, it’s a software feel that feels like it over performs the chip. It’s mostly pretty smooth. It’s great and that’s because of how good Nothing software is.

When I first started testing this phone, it had an update to Nothing OS 4.1 waiting for it right out the box. I installed that and it’s been really smooth sailing ever since. there’s a new custom CPU scheduler. Their software has always been really well optimized and this, combined with the hardware, which is a higher refresh rate OLED display, which has a 1,000 Hz touch sample rate, by the way, it just it puts it at the top of its price class as far as responsiveness, app opening speeds generally feel pretty quick.

Sometimes you can feel that it is not a high-end chip. Like I’m not going to lie, it does stutter sometimes, but it is nice. Overall good for this chip.

And what I’m most happy to be able to say is it really doesn’t appear to be missing any features that are on the more expensive Nothing phones. So, if you are already a fan of Nothing’s, you know, near stock, but slightly customized software with all their widgets and dots and customization and icon packs, all of that Nothing stuff, that is all still here. Plus the new developments to their AI toolkit and their essential space. Every few months they add a little bit more to it and it it’s all getting to the Nothing phone all the way down to the B series.

Should You Buy the Nothing Phone 4B?

So, here’s how I look at it. If you’re looking at this phone trying to decide if it’s for you or if you should splurge for like maybe one of the higher-end Nothing phones or something else, I think it’s pretty simple. This phone has a list of perks that are like really nice for this price and then some shortcomings that they had to use to get to this price. If the perks interest you, then that’s good. But even better, if none of the shortcomings are deal breakers for you, then this fits. You might as well put it at the top of your list.

And I think they did a pretty good job.

Nothing Phone 4B Pros

Like the higher refresh rate OLED display at this price is a perk for sure. so is the IP64 rating, which means it can take some splashes and be fine. We also live in a world where I have to say having true stereo speakers is also a perk. This bottom speaker is down here and then the top speaker is actually this like little dot up here, not the earpiece. So, you can block one or the other and still hear things, which is not something you can say about every $900 iPhone.

And then the battery. So, 5200 mA hours and actually 6000 mA hours in the Indian market version. That is one of the standout highlights of this phone over the past few days I’ve been using it. Easily a full day and a half phone and you can make it a full 2 days if they’re light. It’s not the fastest charging thing in the world. It’s 33 W, but I’d say having the biggest battery ever in a Nothing Phone is a perk.

And then yes, the Glyph lights are still here. I didn’t forget about them. I just don’t use them as much as maybe some others. But, these are actually brighter than the ones on the back of the 4a. And yeah, they’re still notification LEDs. They are still a blinking red recording light when you’re taking videos. It’s nice. It’s the Nothing character.

Nothing Phone 4B Cons

So then, the shortcomings. no wireless charging. That’s probably not a shocker in this price, but no NFC in the Indian market version. That was a little more surprising. Um I also think the vibration motor in this phone is not hot garbage, but pretty close. Like it’s very mushy. This is how it how it sounds. It’s it’s not high quality. You can tell when it’s off by default for typing that they probably knew that was bad, too.

The plastic build I’ve also I noticed it scuffs and wears pretty easily. I’ve been using the blue one mostly. It’s probably easier to hide on the white phone, but I just I feel like I can tell that it’s not great pretty early into using it. So, I don’t think it’s going to age super well. Also, maybe if you’re a case person, this doesn’t matter at all.

And then, just generally lower-end performance specs makes me think it’s not going to age amazingly well in like 5 to 6 years. It’s slower UFS 2.2 storage. And things I already mentioned like the optical fingerprint reader and the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4, they’ll probably not have the longest shelf life.

Final Verdict on the Nothing Phone 4B

So, all in all, my take is this is actually a pretty good set of features for this price and it’s just a good taste of the nothing experience. Like they give you all of the software, the glyph lights. I found that the nothing software is one of my favorite skins, if you want to call it that, in the Android world. So, the fact that you get all of that for this price, it’s just them expanding it to one new price bracket.

So, hey, nothing, embrace it. It’s okay to have a lineup of phones that’s, you know, cheap, cheaper, cheapest. Just cuz you don’t like the B stands for budget, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. It’s it’s big bang for the buck. It’s it’s a bold and bare brilliant bargain. It’s it’s the it’s the nothing phone 4B.

CREDIT GOSE TO :

Editor in chief : Ghulam mujtaba

Resource: Marques Brownlee