The Phone 3 is Nothing’s most ambitious device yet, and it continues the brand’s heritage of differentiated design along with exciting software features. There’s clearly a lot to like about the phone, and I’m excited to get my hands on it. But one thing stood out at the launch event: the pricing.
The Phone 3 starts at $799 in the U.S., going up to $899 for the 16GB/512GB edition. That’s going to be a hard sell considering Nothing doesn’t have any carrier partnerships in the U.S. The brand has a tougher battle in its biggest market, India. The 12GB/256GB model of the Phone 3 costs ₹79,999 ($933) in the country, with the 16GB/512GB edition retailing at ₹89,999 ($1,050).
That’s absurd pricing in a market that’s particularly price-sensitive, and I don’t really know what motivated Nothing to set the price so high. The brand sells an overwhelming majority of its products — whether it’s budget phones, earbuds, or CMF-branded devices — in India, so it has a good understanding of the pricing dynamics. Yet, the Phone 3 costs more in India than the U.S., and that’s baffling.
What makes the pricing hard to rationalize is the fact that the Phone 3 is made locally in India. Nothing proudly says that the Phone 3 is “Designed in London. Made in India,” but the pricing doesn’t reflect that. The entire idea around assembling a device in the country is to lower the cost, and Chinese brands use this strategy to great effect, selling their flagships for considerably less than other markets.
Take the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, for instance. The phone costs ₹109,999 ($1,284) in India for the 16GB/512GB edition, and while that’s a lot of cash, the same phone retails for £1,199 ($1,642) in the U.K. It’s the same story with the OnePlus 13; the phone starts at ₹69,999 ($816) in India, and it costs $899 in the U.S.
Every other brand understands that they need to be aggressive in India to have any chance at making inroads, and that’s why the Phone 3 pricing in India doesn’t make much sense. I don’t even have to point to other brands; Nothing’s Headphone 1 — which launched alongside the Phone 3 — is set to retail for ₹21,999 ($256) in the country, and that’s meaningfully lower than the $299 U.S. pricing.
That’s true of all other products Nothing launched in the last three years; the Phone 2a, Phone 3a Pro, CMF Phone 2 Pro, CMF Buds 2 and Buds 2 Plus, and all of the brand’s other earbuds are priced lower in India than just about any other country, but with the Phone 3, the opposite is true.
Then there’s the question of the hardware; the Phone 3 misses out on Qualcomm’s best silicon, instead featuring the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4. It is a decent enough chipset, but it is seen on devices that cost less than half as much as the Phone 3, like the iQOO Neo 10 and the POCO F7.
Nothing maintains that it isn’t about the hardware that’s used, but how it’s optimized; the brand has shown in the past that it does a good job in this regard, but it just doesn’t remedy the fact that you’re paying more to get a phone that isn’t as powerful as the OnePlus 13 and Vivo X200.
As someone who’s used every single Nothing phone and accessory, I’m letdown by the Phone 3’s pricing in India. The phone clearly has the potential to stand out, and it just needed Nothing to be aggressive with the pricing to allow the upstart manufacturer to gain a foothold in the premium segment. However, that isn’t the case, and Nothing’s short-sighted move is making the Phone 3 a harder sell than it needs to be.
Source link
