Apple iPhone 17 vs Nothing Phone (3)

The iPhone 17 and Nothing Phone (3) have the same $799 price, but are slightly different phones. Apple's phone is the entry point to its ecosystem. It’s compact, lightweight, and focused on integration and longevity. Nothing's phone is a statement piece from a younger brand, pairing high-end Android silicon with a distinctive visual identity and a larger physical footprint. Both target buyers who want a capable all-rounder without stepping up to the $1,000+ tier.

The Nothing Phone (3) is the stronger camera phone by a meaningful margin, with better sharpness across all lenses, a dedicated telephoto, and more accurate color processing. It also has longer battery life in video playback and a display that holds its brightness far more consistently over time. The iPhone 17 counters with significantly faster CPU and GPU performance, louder and fuller speakers, faster wired and wireless charging, and more accurate display color. The two split the remaining categories closely enough that your priorities will determine which is the better buy.

Design

The iPhone 17 measures 6.3 inches diagonally and weighs 177g. The Nothing Phone (3) has a larger 6.7-inch display and is considerably heavier at 218g. That's a 41g difference you'd notice. Both carry IP68 water and dust resistance, meaning submersion to at least one meter for 30 minutes.

Both phones use USB-C 2.0 ports. The iPhone 17 and Nothing Phone (3) both achieve 460 PPI, though they arrive there at different resolutions (1206 x 2622 vs 1080 x 2412). The iPhone's taller aspect ratio results in a narrower, more elongated body compared to the Nothing's wider panel.

Bandicoot Lab doesn't formally test design or durability.

Display

Both panels run at 120Hz and share a 460 PPI pixel density, so sharpness and smoothness are functionally identical. The iPhone 17 uses an LTPO OLED, which allows the refresh rate to scale down dynamically for battery savings. The Nothing Phone (3) uses a standard OLED at 120Hz.

Manual brightness is close. The iPhone 17 reaches 854 nits, while the Nothing Phone (3) hits 790 nits. Minimum brightness favors the iPhone at 0.9 nits versus the Nothing's 2.1 nits, which matters for nighttime reading.

HDR peak brightness is where they diverge a little more. The iPhone 17 peaks at 3,022 nits, while the Nothing Phone (3) reaches 1,602 nits. That's nearly double the peak luminance for small bright highlights in HDR content. Sustained brightness is opposite though. The Nothing Phone (3) holds 97.9% of its peak over 30 minutes of HDR playback, while the iPhone 17 drops to just 38.6%. The iPhone can produce very bright specular highlights momentarily, but it throttles aggressively under sustained load. The Nothing Phone (3) delivers lower peaks but maintains them almost perfectly.

Color accuracy is better on the iPhone 17. In its default mode, colors stay close to their sRGB targets with minimal drift. The Nothing Phone (3) shows more noticeable deviation from reference in both its Standard and Alive modes — colors lean slightly inaccurate, with some tones drifting enough to notice in side-by-side comparisons against calibrated references. The iPhone's sRGB gamut coverage is essentially complete at 99.8%.

Touch latency is dramatically different, with an average of 57ms on the iPhone 17 versus 13.6ms on the Nothing Phone (3). That's a large enough gap that you might feel it during fast-paced gaming or rapid scrolling. The Nothing's response is about four times quicker to register input.

Performance

The iPhone 17 runs Apple's A19 chip with 8GB of RAM. The Nothing Phone (3) uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with 16GB of RAM. Double the RAM on the Nothing, but the A19's architecture is fundamentally different.

CPU performance isn't close. The iPhone 17 scores 3,772 single-core and 9,645 multi-core in GeekBench 6. The Nothing Phone (3) manages 2,209 single-core and 6,992 multi-core. That's a 71% lead in single-threaded work and 38% in multi-threaded tasks. In practice, you'll feel this in app launch speed, UI responsiveness, and any task that depends on burst performance.

GPU performance follows the same pattern. The iPhone 17's best loop in Wild Life Extreme hits 5,164 versus 4,459 for the Nothing. Stability under sustained load is somewhat closer: 70.8% for the iPhone and 64.4% for the Nothing. Both throttle noticeably during extended gaming, but the iPhone maintains a higher floor. In Solar Bay, the iPhone again leads with a best loop of 10,142 versus 8,126, and its stability (68.8%) edges out the Nothing's 61.7%.

Browser performance shows the widest relative gap. The iPhone scores 33.5 in Speedometer versus 20.6 for the Nothing Phone (3). Web-heavy workflows feel snappier on the iPhone.

Camera

The Nothing Phone (3) is the stronger camera system overall. It produces higher sharpness from every lens, carries a dedicated telephoto that the iPhone 17 lacks entirely, and handles color with noticeably more restraint and accuracy. The iPhone 17 has better dynamic range from its main and ultrawide lenses, pulling more detail from shadows and highlights in high-contrast scenes. For general shooting, the Nothing produces cleaner, more detailed, and more color-accurate results.

At deep zoom levels, the gap is large. At 10x, the Nothing Phone (3) maintains high detail while the iPhone 17's output is visibly softer. Beyond 10x, the Nothing continues to resolve usable detail out to 30x and even 50x thanks to its telephoto, while the iPhone maxes out at 10x with significantly less resolved detail at every step. If you zoom past 3x or 4x with any regularity, the Nothing is in a different class.

Main

The Nothing Phone (3) resolves more detail from its main camera across all lighting conditions. In bright light, it's roughly 34% sharper than the iPhone 17. In mid-light, the gap widens further. Both maintain good sharpness in low light, though the Nothing still leads.

Color character differs considerably. The iPhone 17's main camera produces a vivid, saturated look. It boosts saturation heavily in bright and mid-light conditions, pushing colors well above neutral. Skin tones shift noticeably warm and oversaturated in good light, and as lighting gets warmer and dimmer, a strong yellow-warm bias emerges. This is primarily a white balance correction issue. The processing overcorrects toward warmth under tungsten-like light. Hue accuracy in bright light is moderate, but it degrades substantially in mid and low light.

The Nothing Phone (3) takes a more neutral approach. Saturation stays close to reality across all conditions. Skin tones are more accurate in bright and mid-light, with only modest drift in dark conditions. Hue accuracy is better in every lighting condition, and there's no significant warm or cool bias creeping in as light changes. It's a less punchy look but a more truthful one.

Dynamic range is better on the iPhone 17. It retains more shadow detail and handles bright highlights with less clipping in high-contrast scenes. The Nothing pulls less range from its main sensor, compressing tones less aggressively but also recovering less from extremes.

Ultrawide

The Nothing Phone (3)'s ultrawide is sharper than the iPhone 17's across lighting conditions. In bright light, it resolves roughly 27% more detail. Both ultrawides lose some ground compared to their respective main cameras, as expected, but the Nothing's drop-off is smaller.

Color from the iPhone 17's ultrawide mirrors its main lens: oversaturated in good light, increasingly warm-biased as conditions dim. The hue errors that appear in mid and low light follow the same white balance pattern seen on the main camera. The Nothing's ultrawide is slightly less accurate than its own main lens but still meaningfully closer to neutral than the iPhone's. Skin tones from the Nothing stay controlled across conditions.

Dynamic range is close between the two ultrawides. The iPhone edges ahead slightly with better highlight retention, but both handle high-contrast ultrawide scenes competently.

Telephoto

The Nothing Phone (3) has a dedicated telephoto lens. The iPhone 17 does not.

The Nothing's telephoto resolves high detail at its native focal length and maintains strong sharpness through extended zoom ranges. Color accuracy from the telephoto is excellent. It's the most accurate lens in the Nothing's system, with neutral saturation and minimal hue drift across all three lighting conditions. Even in low light, skin tones stay close to reference with only a slight warm lean. Dynamic range from the telephoto is strong, pulling good detail from both shadows and highlights.

The iPhone 17 relies on digital crop from its main sensor for anything beyond 1x. By 3x, detail has already dropped substantially, and by 6x or 8x the results are soft enough that they're only useful for casual sharing. The Nothing's dedicated optics give it a decisive advantage for anything beyond portrait-range zoom.

Front

The Nothing Phone (3)'s front camera is sharper than the iPhone 17's in all conditions. In bright light, it resolves substantially more detail. Both front cameras maintain reasonable sharpness as light drops, though the Nothing holds up better in dim environments.

Color from the iPhone 17's front camera is heavily oversaturated in bright light, with noticeable skin tone exaggeration. In mid and low light, warm bias creeps in along with increasing hue errors. The Nothing's front camera produces closer-to-neutral saturation and better skin tone accuracy overall. It leans very slightly cool in bright light but stays more consistent as conditions change.

Dynamic range from the front camera strongly favors the Nothing Phone (3). It handles high-contrast selfie scenarios (backlit subjects, mixed indoor/outdoor light) with considerably more retained detail in both highlights and shadows. The iPhone's front camera clips highlights earlier and retains less shadow information.

Video stabilization from the front camera is nearly identical between the two. Both produce reasonably steady handheld footage.

Battery

The Nothing Phone (3) has a 5,000mAh battery; the iPhone 17 carries 3,692mAh. That's a 35% capacity advantage for the Nothing.

In video playback, the Nothing Phone (3) lasts 27 hours and 29 minutes. The iPhone 17 manages 22 hours and 10 minutes. Both are fine results.

Web browsing drain over five hours shows the Nothing losing 30% versus the iPhone at 22%. The iPhone is more efficient here despite its smaller battery, meaning its per-mAh web efficiency is substantially better. Gaming drain is nearly identical: 27% for the iPhone and 28% for the Nothing during the hour-long stress test. Standby drain overnight (eight hours) favors the Nothing at 1% versus 2% for the iPhone. Both are excellent; you won't wake up to a dead phone with either.

Charging

The Nothing Phone (3) supports 65W wired charging; the iPhone 17 tops out at 40W. Wireless charging is the reverse: the iPhone supports 25W via MagSafe-compatible magnetic alignment, while the Nothing manages 15W wireless.

Wired charging at 10 minutes gives the iPhone 28% versus the Nothing's 22%. At 30 minutes: iPhone reaches 73%, Nothing reaches 63%. Despite the Nothing's higher wattage rating, the iPhone charges faster in the first half hour. The iPhone's charging curve is more aggressive early on.

Wireless charging is a significant gap. The iPhone hits 25% in 10 minutes and 49% in 30 minutes via its MagSafe-style magnetic charger. The Nothing Phone (3) manages just 4% in 10 minutes and 10% in 30 minutes wirelessly. If you rely on wireless charging overnight this won't matter, but for quick wireless top-ups the iPhone is far more practical.

Speaker

The iPhone 17 is louder at 75 dBA versus 73.1 dBA for the Nothing Phone (3). The iPhone also produces fuller, richer sound with stronger bass response and better high-frequency clarity. It's a more complete speaker that fills a room more convincingly.

The Nothing Phone (3) wins decisively on cleanliness. Its average distortion is 3.5% THD compared to the iPhone's 9.7%. At high volumes, the Nothing stays composed while the iPhone introduces audible harshness. The Nothing sounds thinner and less impactful, but what it does produce is cleaner and less fatiguing.

If you listen to music or podcasts from your phone's speakers regularly, the choice depends on whether you value fullness and volume (iPhone) or distortion-free output at the cost of bass and presence (Nothing).

Microphone

The iPhone 17 has better microphone quality with more even frequency response. Its output is above average for a smartphone. The Nothing Phone (3) shows more uneven frequency capture with a wider standard deviation, placing it below average. For voice calls and voice memos the iPhone will sound more natural and consistent.

Other

Biometrics differ in both method and speed. The iPhone 17 uses hardware face unlock at an average of 508ms. The Nothing Phone (3) uses an optical fingerprint sensor averaging 208ms. It has no hardware-based face unlock. In daily use, the Nothing's fingerprint reader feels nearly instant, while the iPhone's face unlock has a perceptible delay.

Data transfer speeds are similar. Both use USB-C 2.0, so wired transfer speeds are limited by the standard. Large file reads are nearly identical (38.8 MB/s vs 38.2 MB/s). The Nothing reads small files faster (23.5 MB/s vs 10.3 MB/s), while the iPhone writes small files faster (15.5 MB/s vs 2.3 MB/s).

Conclusion

The iPhone 17 is the better choice if you prioritize raw performance, speaker quality, charging speed (especially wireless), display color accuracy, and integration with Apple's ecosystem. Its A19 chip is significantly faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in both CPU and GPU tasks, its speakers are louder and fuller, and its MagSafe wireless charging is in a different league. The display also gets much brighter in brief HDR peaks, though it can't sustain those peaks.

The Nothing Phone (3) is the better camera phone. It's sharper across every lens, more color-accurate in its processing, and carries a telephoto that the iPhone simply doesn't have. Battery life in video playback is longer, display brightness holds steady under sustained load, and touch responsiveness is substantially quicker. It's also the phone with genuinely fast biometrics.

At $799, neither phone is clearly superior. The iPhone 17 excels at computation and audio; the Nothing Phone (3) excels at imaging and endurance. Your choice comes down to whether you reach for the camera or the processor more often.