Tech company Nothing has already unveiled their Phone 4a series this year, with the very well reviewed Phone (4a) and (4a) Pro. They’re back with a new line introducing the all new (b) series, starting with the Phone (4b).
Positioned as a ‘first smartphone’, the Nothing (4b) borrows heavily from the design of the Phone (4a) series, while tweaking the processor and memory down to fit a more modest budget.
The phone is priced at $629 and includes a lovely 6.7” AMOLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 128GB of storage under the hood and it comes powered by their longest-lasting battery to date.
The Phone (4b) also includes a dual camera array on the rear headlined by a 50MP sensor and paired with an ultra-wide sensor offering wider shots.
It’s a lot of smartphone, in a great design body and it’s coming at a tough time in tech. Memory and storage prices are going over the top, and even Nothing is untouched with co-founder Akis Evangelidis recently announcing they’d cancelled an upcoming budget CMF device due to RAM prices.
So, now it seems the Phone (4b) is here. A more budget-friendly Nothing Phone is always welcome, and after using the Phone (4a) earlier this year I got to try out the Phone (4b) for the past two weeks.
The design of the Nothing Phone (4b) pulls heavily from the design history of the entire line – with the Phone (4a) series contributing heavily.
The Phone (4b) has a transparent camera island borrowed from the Phone (4a) Pro which now extends almost edge-to-edge across the back of the phone. The island also contains the Glyph Bar and recording light from the Phone (4a).
It’s available in three colours: Black, Blue and White – with Nothing sending the Blue over for review. It’s hard to choose without having held the black or white, but the blue is gorgeous in all lighting.
The body is made from a high-strength polycarbonate, with a coated top layer that reduces fingerprints and feels better in the hand. I didn’t actually hold it bare in my hand though, as Nothing include a basic TPU case in the box for protection.
I’m still a fan of Nothing’s transparent design, letting you see the edges of the unibody and some of what’s going on behind the camera bump.
The Phone (4b) isn’t ruggedised, but the unibody design makes it harder to bend, and it comes with an IP64 dust and water resistance rating. Nothing also tested it in extreme temperatures – and it probably just feels like -40 ̊C that it was tested in here in Canberra, but it’s good to know it can last.
The setup is similar to previous Nothing Phone’s with the SIM Tray, speaker and USB-C port on the base and the power and volume rocker on the right with the Essential key on the left.
Pressing or holding the (frustratingly) unmappable Essential Key will capture a screenshot or record a voice note with the files found in Essential Space – Nothing’s space for AI agents and more – which you can jump into by double pressing the Essential Key.
The large 6.77” LTPS AMOLED display on the front supports up to 120Hz refresh rate, with options to drop to 60Hz in settings. It’s a great display offering bright, clear and responsive visuals and it’s decently bright enough to work fairly well even in broad daylight.
The display is paired with a dual speaker system, that offers precise volume adjustments with 160 levels of fine control to find the level you want. The volume is great, however they’re still fairly small speakers so lack any real bass. There is Bluetooth 6.0 on-board so you can connect headphones, or other peripherals.
The Glyph Bar notification system from the Nothing Phone series is one of their more innovative features. It’s evolved as they’ve found it used, with the Nothing Phone (4a) having one of the best to date, and the Nothing Phone (4b) gets it with a few tweaks.
It’s now 40% brighter, powered by a grid of 45 mini-LEDs over five squares – four white, one red. These are in addition to the LED flash used for the camera, so you can just set your glyph bar for notifications and go.
It’s a useful tool, letting you have a visual timer or track deliveries or get custom notifications when people call or certain words pop up in a message, even track sports scores. It even has the red LED to show you’re recording. Neat.
In short, I really like the Glyph Bar, reminding me of the notification LEDs of old-school Android phones.
There’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 with 8GB RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of storage in the Nothing Phone (4b), built for every day performance; it includes an improved cooling system with a vapor chamber that keeps the system operating optimally.
The display supports up to 120Hz refresh rate, and it works quite well with smooth performance all round for the most part.
There are of course some points at which the 8GB of RAM suffers, including multi-tasking and games, especially larger games, can be slow to load. Once loaded though, there’s no performance issues with the apps and games running smoothly across the board.
The optical in-display fingerprint sensor works well enough, though it’s a little slower and you get a slight flash in dark areas as it lights up to unlock.
A 16MP selfie camera is embedded in the display, and a dual-camera array on the rear includes a 50MP main camera with Optical Image Stabilisation, and paired with an 8MP ultrawide sensor offering 119.5° field of view.
It’s an almost identical setup to the Phone (4a) which offered crisp shots in full daylight, as well as some great low-light shots. Outside, the sensor does tend to blast out the colours a little more than I’d like, but indoors it’s a great looking shot.
The camera has digital zoom, offering a 2x, 5x and 10x stop though with no optical zoom it relies heavily on cropping.
Despite its modest aspirations, the Nothing Phone (4b) includes a 5,200 mAh battery, the largest battery Nothing has included in a smartphone to date.
It’s a big battery, and easily lasts a full day of pretty heavy use – and with the larger capacity it lasts even longer than the Phone (4a) which was already decently impressive.
Like most phones these days there’s no charger in the box. It supports 33W wired charging, with no wireless charging like the rest of the Nothing Phone series. You do get a fresh new USB-C cable in the box to connect your phone to a power source.
Nothing says the phone can charge 50% in 30 minutes – or go from zero to full in just over an hour. Putting it to the test using a 100W USB-C PD 3.0 charger, we didn’t see that result, but your mileage may vary. I got closer using my laptop charger (140W) but it’s still not quite at the speeds claimed.
Running the same Nothing OS 4.1 based on Android 16 as found on the Phone (4a) and (4a) Pro. The phone has the May 2026 Security update pre-installed and Nothing has promised three major OS updates, as well as six years of security updates.
There is an Over The Air update available for Nothing OS when you load into the phone, but still sitting on the May 2026 update, so we’re likely looking at quarterly updates.
The OS includes a Nothing theme which you can use, giving all your apps a black and white theme. You can switch back and forth between Nothing’s visual style and default Android with no icon theming fairly easily so it’s worth a shot.
The Nothing Phone (4b) is a very well designed, and good looking ‘first smartphone’ by anybody’s measure. It brings the signature Nothing design language including the transparent aesthetic and useful Glyph bar to a new category.
The only sticking point for me is the price. At 9 for 8GB/128GB – the Nothing Phone (4b) is only cheaper than the RRP for the Nothing Phone (4a) which includes a more powerful Snapdragon Gen 7s processor as well as triple camera array on the rear which includes a 3.5x optical zoom, while the Phone (4b) gets a larger battery.
For my money, I’d be taking a very close look at the Nothing Phone (4a) – unless that bigger battery is what you need.
If you want to check out the Nothing Phone (4b), you can head over to the Nothing website.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
Alongside the all-new Phone (4b), Nothing have also launched their latest pair of earbuds with…
It's that time of year where its out with the old and in with the…
This week we reconnect with Margaret who has been writing songs for Nursing home residents…
It’s that time of year, with Amazon throwing caution to the wind on pricing for…
As official Technology partner for the FIFA world cup, Lenovo has produced a few devices…
Professional audio solution provider Jabra have announced new additions to their Jabra3 Evolve line-up, announcing…