Nothing Phone 3 VS Samsung Galaxy S25

Both phones share the same IP68 waterproofing rating, meaning neither has an advantage in water and dust resistance — both can handle submersion in everyday scenarios equally well. Neither features a rugged build or a foldable form factor, so that common ground is quickly established.

Where the two diverge significantly is in their physical footprint. The Nothing Phone 3 is a noticeably larger and heavier device, measuring 160.6 × 75.6 × 9 mm and weighing 218 g, giving it a volume of roughly 109 cm³. The Samsung Galaxy S25, by contrast, is considerably more compact at 146.9 × 70.5 × 7.2 mm and weighs just 162 g — nearly 56 g lighter and occupying roughly 32% less volume. In practice, that weight gap is immediately perceptible: the S25 will feel noticeably easier to hold one-handed for extended periods, slip more naturally into a pocket, and cause less fatigue during long sessions.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 holds a clear design edge here, primarily driven by its substantially lighter weight and slimmer, more pocketable profile. The Nothing Phone 3's larger frame may appeal to users who prefer a bigger canvas, but purely on ergonomics and portability, the S25 is the more refined physical package.

On the surface, these two displays share a lot of DNA — both are OLED/AMOLED panels running at 120Hz, with HDR10+ support and Always-On Display functionality. But dig into the numbers and meaningful differences emerge. The Nothing Phone 3 sports a larger 6.67″ screen with a sharper 460 ppi pixel density at 1260 × 2800 resolution, compared to the S25's 6.2″ panel at 416 ppi and 1080 × 2340. In practice, the Nothing Phone 3 offers more screen real estate and visibly crisper text and fine detail — a genuine advantage for media consumption and reading.

The most dramatic gap, however, runs in the opposite direction: the Samsung Galaxy S25 achieves a typical brightness of 2600 nits against the Nothing Phone 3's 800 nits. That is not a marginal difference — it means the S25 will remain easily legible under direct sunlight where the Nothing Phone 3 may struggle. For outdoor users, this is a decisive practical advantage. The S25 also uses Gorilla Glass Victus 2, a newer and more drop-resistant glass generation than the Gorilla Glass 7i on the Nothing Phone 3, offering better long-term scratch and crack protection. The Nothing Phone 3's 1000Hz touch sampling rate versus the S25's 240Hz is a spec that matters primarily in competitive gaming, and has negligible impact for typical users.

This group ends in a split: the Nothing Phone 3 wins on screen size and pixel density, making it the better choice for immersive viewing and detail work. But the Samsung Galaxy S25 takes the overall display edge thanks to its overwhelmingly superior brightness and tougher glass, which have a far broader real-world impact across daily use scenarios.

The chipset gap here is the central story. The Samsung Galaxy S25 runs on the Snapdragon 8 Elite — Qualcomm's top-tier flagship silicon — while the Nothing Phone 3 uses the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, a capable but deliberately stepped-down derivative of the same family. The benchmark results reflect this clearly: the S25 scores approximately 3,050,000 on AnTuTu versus 2,084,000 for the Nothing Phone 3, a gap of nearly 50%. Geekbench 6 tells the same story, with the S25 posting 10,050 multi-core and 3,175 single-core against the Nothing Phone 3's 6,833 and 2,041 respectively. In everyday use both phones will feel fluid, but under sustained load — heavy gaming, video rendering, or complex multitasking — the S25 has substantially more headroom.

Two specs partially complicate that picture. The Nothing Phone 3 ships with 16 GB of RAM versus the S25's 12 GB, which can translate into more apps retained in memory simultaneously and smoother switching between heavy applications. That said, the S25's RAM runs at a faster 5300 MHz versus 4800 MHz, and its memory bandwidth of 85.1 GB/s outpaces the Nothing Phone 3's 76.8 GB/s. The S25 also benefits from a more advanced 3 nm process node versus 4 nm, which directly translates to its lower TDP of 8.2W compared to 12.5W — meaning the S25 delivers more performance while generating less heat and consuming less power, a combination that matters greatly for sustained workloads and battery endurance under load.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 is the clear winner in this category. Its raw performance advantage across every benchmark is substantial, and its superior power efficiency means it sustains that performance more reliably. The Nothing Phone 3's RAM advantage is real but not enough to offset the fundamental difference in silicon tier.

The rear camera systems take two philosophically different approaches. The Nothing Phone 3 deploys a uniform 50 MP + 50 MP + 50 MP triple-camera array, ensuring consistent resolution across all three lenses — main, ultrawide, and telephoto. The Samsung Galaxy S25, by contrast, pairs its 50 MP main sensor with a 12 MP ultrawide and a 10 MP telephoto. In raw resolving power, Nothing's approach means cropping and detail retention stay consistent regardless of which lens you switch to, while Samsung's lower-resolution secondary sensors are a more conventional trade-off. On aperture, the Nothing Phone 3's main lens at f/1.68 is notably wider than the S25's f/1.8, which translates to a measurable advantage in low-light capture — a wider aperture lets in more light before computational processing even enters the picture. Both offer 3x optical zoom and OIS, so zoom reach and stabilization are evenly matched.

Video tells a different story. The Samsung Galaxy S25 tops out at 8K (4320p) at 30 fps, a meaningful ceiling above the Nothing Phone 3's 4K (2160p) at 60 fps. For users who prioritize maximum resolution footage — archiving, professional cropping — the S25 has a clear ceiling advantage. However, 4K at 60 fps produces smoother motion and is often more practical for everyday sharing and editing, so this trade-off depends on use case. The selfie gap is harder to dismiss: the Nothing Phone 3 packs a 50 MP front camera against the S25's 12 MP, a substantial difference for users who rely on the front camera for portraits, video calls, or content creation.

This category is genuinely split by use case. The Samsung Galaxy S25 edges ahead for video-focused users thanks to 8K recording. But the Nothing Phone 3 holds a real advantage for photography — a wider main aperture, consistent high-resolution across all three rear lenses, and a front camera that is in a different class entirely. Taken as a whole, Nothing Phone 3 has the broader photographic edge, while the S25 leads specifically on video ceiling.

Running the same Android 15 foundation, these two phones are remarkably aligned on software features. Privacy controls, dark mode, dynamic theming, split-screen, Picture-in-Picture, customizable notifications, offline voice recognition, and on-device machine learning are all present on both. For the vast majority of day-to-day software interactions, users switching between these phones would find the feature landscape nearly identical at the OS level.

Zooming in on the few points of divergence: the Nothing Phone 3 supports Wi-Fi password sharing, a genuinely convenient feature that lets you share your network credentials with guests without reading out a long passphrase — something the S25 lacks. The Samsung Galaxy S25, on the other hand, supports PC mode, allowing the phone to function as a desktop computing environment when connected to a monitor and peripherals. This is a meaningful productivity differentiator for power users who want to consolidate their workflow around a single device, though it is a niche use case for most consumers.

At the OS specification level, this is essentially a tie. The two exclusive features — Wi-Fi password sharing on the Nothing Phone 3 and PC mode on the S25 — each serve different user profiles and neither represents a sweeping advantage. The software foundation is so closely matched that the decision between these phones will more logically rest on hardware differences covered in other categories.

Battery capacity is where the Nothing Phone 3 establishes one of its clearest advantages in this comparison. Its 5150 mAh cell is substantially larger than the 4000 mAh unit in the Samsung Galaxy S25 — a 28% difference that, all else being equal, translates directly into more hours of use between charges. Paired with the S25's more power-efficient Snapdragon 8 Elite chip noted in the performance category, the real-world gap may be narrower than raw capacity suggests, but the Nothing Phone 3 still enters with a meaningful head start in the endurance race.

Charging speed compounds that advantage further. The Nothing Phone 3 supports 65W wired fast charging, more than double the S25's 25W. In practical terms, the Nothing Phone 3 not only has more battery to fill but refills it dramatically faster — a combination that significantly reduces charging anxiety for heavy users. Wireless charging is evenly matched at 15W on both devices, and reverse wireless charging is present on both at effectively equivalent speeds (5W vs 4.5W), making those features a wash. Neither phone ships with a charger in the box.

The Nothing Phone 3 wins this category decisively. A larger battery and substantially faster wired charging together make it the more capable device for users who prioritize all-day endurance and quick top-ups — two of the most practically impactful battery metrics for daily life.

Both phones forgo the 3.5mm headphone jack and offer stereo speakers, so wired analog audio and speaker setup are an even playing field. Where wireless audio quality is concerned, both support aptX, aptX Adaptive, and LDAC — covering the major high-resolution Bluetooth audio codecs that audiophiles and enthusiast headphone users care about most. For the majority of users with wireless headphones, this shared codec support means no practical difference in audio quality over Bluetooth.

Two specifics tip the scales toward the Nothing Phone 3. First, it adds aptX HD support, which the Samsung Galaxy S25 lacks. While aptX Adaptive largely supersedes aptX HD in capability, the additional codec broadens compatibility with a wider range of existing headphones that support aptX HD but not Adaptive — a meaningful consideration for users with established audio gear. Second, the Nothing Phone 3 features 3 microphones versus the S25's 2. An extra microphone generally enables better spatial noise cancellation, more accurate voice pickup in windy or noisy environments, and improved call quality — advantages that matter for calls, voice recording, and video capture alike.

The Nothing Phone 3 takes a narrow but clear edge in this category. The aptX HD addition and the extra microphone are both real-world differentiators, particularly for users who care about call quality or own aptX HD-compatible headphones. The gap is not dramatic, but on every point of difference, Nothing Phone 3 comes out ahead.

Cellular and Wi-Fi performance is where the Samsung Galaxy S25 pulls ahead most visibly. Its peak download speed of 10,000 Mbits/s dwarfs the Nothing Phone 3's 4,200 Mbits/s — a gap that reflects a more advanced modem and will matter in areas with dense 5G infrastructure, enabling faster large file downloads and more stable streaming under network load. The S25 also adds Wi-Fi 6E support on top of the shared Wi-Fi 7 compatibility, giving it access to the less congested 6 GHz band in environments where that spectrum is available. Upload speeds are identical at 3,500 Mbits/s on both devices.

The Nothing Phone 3 counters with Bluetooth 6, a newer standard than the S25's Bluetooth 5.4. Bluetooth 6 introduces improvements in connection reliability, latency, and positioning accuracy — advantages that will become more meaningful as peripheral ecosystems catch up to the newer standard. The S25 offers a second eSIM slot (2 eSIM vs Nothing's 1 eSIM), which is a practical benefit for frequent travelers who juggle multiple carrier profiles simultaneously. The S25 also includes a barometer absent on the Nothing Phone 3, useful for weather apps, elevation tracking, and GPS accuracy — a minor but genuine sensor advantage.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 holds the edge in this category, primarily on the strength of its substantially faster download speeds and broader Wi-Fi band support. The Nothing Phone 3's newer Bluetooth version is a forward-looking advantage, but the S25's connectivity lead across cellular and Wi-Fi is more impactful for most users today.

The miscellaneous specification group for these two devices is a complete draw — every data point is identical. Both feature a video light, and neither carries a sapphire glass display, a curved display, or an e-paper display. There is simply no differentiator to analyze here.

This is a tie by every available measure in this category. Any decision between the Nothing Phone 3 and the Samsung Galaxy S25 should rest entirely on the more substantive differences covered across the other specification groups.