Complete comparison: iPhone 13 vs Nothing Phone (1)

In an Epic battle, which one wins?

Jakub Jirak
Mac O’Clock
4 min readJul 15, 2022

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Image courtesy of the author

After months of teasing and the gradual release of specs, Nothing has finally officially announced its first phone with the (1) designation. So we already know the latest information and the official price tag. But can this arguably the most anticipated phone of the year hold its own against the iPhone 13?

Nothing Phone (1) earned the label of most anticipated because its manufacturer promised a revolution in the field of mobile phones. It’s up to you how you view the lighting effects, but it’s true that the device simply looks like an iPhone, only with a slimmer feature set, a few more interesting things thrown in, and is noticeably cheaper. But it could be a sales hit, even if not globally. In fact, it won’t be available in the US market for iPhones proper.

Design

The physical dimensions are, of course, based on the size of the display itself. The iPhone 13 has a 6.1" Super Retina XDR OLED display with a maximum brightness of 1200 nits and a resolution of 1170 x 2532 pixels (so the density is 460 ppi).

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Nothing Phone (1) has a 6.55" OLED display that also can handle 1200 nits, its resolution is 1080 x 2400 pixels (density is 402 ppi), and the refreshes rate is 120 Hz. iPhone 13 has dimensions of 146.7 x 71.5 x 7.7 mm with a weight of 174 g, Nothing’s phone is 159.2 x 75.8 x 8.3 mm and weighs 193.5 g.

Cameras

Of course, the iPhone 13’s display has a cutout for a 12MPx front-facing camera assembly with f/2.2. Nothing has only fitted a cutout in its phone, which houses a 16MPx camera with f/2.5. So there is an in-display optical fingerprint reader for biometric user authentication, whereas the iPhone of course relies on Face ID.

iPhone 13 camera specifications:

Wide-angle: 12 MPx, f/1.6, 26 mm, 1.7 µm, dual pixel PDAF, OIS with sensor-shift
Ultra-wide: 12 MPx, f/2.4, 120˚

Nothing Phone camera specifications (1):

Wide-angle: 50 MP, f/1.9, 24 mm, 1.0 µm, PDAF, OIS
Ultra-wide: 50 MP, f/2.2, 114˚

Performance

The A15 Bionic is the current leader, plus Nothing hasn’t even used the cutting edge of the Android phone field in its phone. So this is more of a mid-range phone. So, the chip present is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+, which is manufactured with 6nm technology and consists of eight cores (1 x 2.5 GHz Cortex-A78, 3 x 2.4 GHz Cortex-A78 and 4 x 1.8 GHz Cortex-A55).

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The GPU is the Adreno 642L. The operating system used is Android 12 with the Nothing OS superstructure, where the manufacturer promises three years of software updates and 4 years of security patches. Apple is thus still unmatched in this.

Battery and other

The iPhone 13 has a 3240mAh battery with fast charging capability (unofficial reports say 23W). There’s USB Power Delivery 2.0, 15W MagSafe charging, and 7.5W Qi charging. Nothing Phone has a 4500mAh battery with 33W fast charging, where it charges to 100% battery capacity in 70 minutes (as stated by the manufacturer). Wireless charging is 15W, 5W reverse charging, Power Delivery 3.0, and Quick Charge 4.0 are also present. Wi-Fi is 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6 in both cases, Nothing has Bluetooth 5.2, and iPhone only 5.0. Of course, the novelty is equipped with a USB-C connector, its durability specification is according to IP53, the iPhone, on the other hand, has IP68 durability.

Price

The price tag will certainly determine success and failure. If we look at the iPhone 13, it starts at £779 for the 128GB version. You’ll pay £879 for 256GB, and £1,079 for 512GB. In each case, 4 GB of RAM is present. By contrast, the Nothing Phone (1) is clearly cheaper. The 128GB version, complete with 8GB of RAM, will set you back £399, 256 + 8GB at £449, and 256 + 12GB at £499. Taxes and fees need to be added to the prices. Pre-sales are already underway, with sales starting on 21 July.

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Jakub Jirak
Mac O’Clock

Content creator | Cat dad | Writing about Technology, Apple, and Innovations. | Proud editor of Mac O'Clock. | Support me at https://ko-fi.com/jakubjirak