This means the device has evenly thick bezels all around – a small (and expensive) design touch that gives the Nothing Phone (1) a polished and refined appearance and should please perfectionists. phone, the cameras aren’t here to compete with super high-end flagships, but they’re functional enough thanks to a pair of 50MP sensors. These lights all ring and flash in tandem with the Nothing Phone (1)’s unique library of notification sounds, a set of snickety-snackety pings and whistles that are utterly unlike the gentle digital chimes of more boring phones. The phone is powered by a cheaper and older generation Snapdragon processor and starts with a just-about-adequate 8GB of RAM. Whether it’s sitting on a table and flashing aggressively like an alien spaceship coming in to land, or it’s making sounds like a Yamaha keyboard falling down the stairs, the phone will never fail to elicit a “what the actual hell is that?

When accompanied by the synchronised flashing LEDs, the audio-visual spectacle is a bit like being trapped inside The Cube while Philip Schofield chases you around doing sound effects. Out of the box the software experience feels squeaky clean and fuss-free, and we like the option to tweak things such as the sizes of icons in the settings tray and of folders on the home screen. The back of the phone is transparent, revealing not only the phone’s apparent innards, but a configuration of segmented white LEDs that can be illuminated in all sorts of ways and in concert with the notifications appearing on the phone.The phone has a flat screen, but uses a flexible OLED panel to “tuck” the bottom edge of the display underneath itself, creating extra room along the bottom of the phone. Proof that affordable needn’t mean boring, it’s perhaps the most exciting cheap phone we’ve ever tested. I only bought it as it’s a gag gift and never seen anyone else sell something similar … (wish I’d just bought a balloon instead).

This gives the Nothing Phone (1) great picture quality in daylight and indoors, and decent enough results in low light conditions. Of course, both of these tricks can be achieved on any phone simply by leaving it face up on the table, so you can see the screen. It’s a genuinely striking device, festooned in flashing LEDs and finished in a semi-transparent casing – though peel back the ridiculous bravado and hype around the launch and the debut smartphone brushes with cold, boring, inevitable reality. There are so many gift-giving occasions these days that we're all inevitably going to run out of ideas at some point. That’s a decent enough specification for most users today – apps open quickly, the phone doesn’t heat up and multitasking isn’t an issue – but in a few years this will be old technology.The largest is a ring light surrounding the wireless charging coil, which hovers above an exclamation mark by the charging port. The phone is also super-lightweight and feels secure in the palm, with clear attention paid to the placement of antenna bands and the machining of buttons and speaker grilles. The quality of the plastic ball was questionable… it had clearly been lying in wait as it was covered in scratches and dust. With heavy usage throughout the day – gaming, filming, looking at dogs on TikTok – the phone would run out of juice well before we could make it back to the bedside charger.