The mid-range smartphone market is filled with offerings from Samsung, Motorola, OnePlus, and even Google. Nothing, Carl Pei's new technology startup, just launched its first-ever smartphone, the Nothing Phone (1). The Nothing Phone 1 has been priced at £399 and is ready to disrupt the mid-range market. In this article, we put down the Nothing Phone 1 vs Samsung Galaxy A53 to see which £399 smartphone is best for you.

Design

Source: Pocketnow

Starting off with the design, it's quite evident that the Nothing Phone (1) doesn't look like any other mid-range Android smartphone. The smartphone sports a transparent back that shows off its industrial elements, like screws that hold the panel in place and the wireless charging coil. There's also a set of LED light strips present on the back of the phone. Nothing calls this "Glyph Interface". You can read more about the functionality and what the Glyph Interface offers right here.

Apart from the futuristic-looking back, Nothing Phone (1) is surrounded by an aluminum metal frame. The Phone 1 also features Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the front and back. The Nothing logo, engraved in the dot matrix font, can be found in the bottom left corner. Overall, it's safe to say that the design of the Nothing Phone 1 is quite unique and eye-catching.

Source: Samsung

On the other hand, the design of the Galaxy A53 isn't very different from the other Galaxy A-series smartphones. This is because the design has been, in fact, left unchanged from the last year. The rectangular camera module still sits on the top left corner with the continuous polycarbonate back sitting over it. Just like the Nothing Phone 1, the Samsung Galaxy A53 also uses an aluminum metal frame.

• Samsung Galaxy A53 advantages
  • Simple looking, available in more colors
  • IP67 vs IP53

• Nothing Phone 1 advantages
  • Gorilla Glass 5 back vs Plastic Back
  • Glyph Interface

Display

Samsung is known for offering excellent-looking displays even on budget smartphones, and the Galaxy A53 is no exception. The Samsung Galaxy A53 5G comes with a big 6.5-inch Super AMOLED display with FHD+ resolution (1080 x 2340 pixels) and support for up to a 120Hz refresh rate. As you would expect from a Samsung smartphone, the display on the Galaxy A53 will offer vibrant and punchy colors.

On the other hand, we have Nothing's first smartphone. The Nothing Phone (1) comes with a 6.55-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels at 402 PPI. The display supports a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. One advantage that the Nothing Phone 1 has over the Galaxy A53 is that it has a peak brightness of 1200 nits vs 800 nits on the Galaxy A53. On paper, this means that the outdoor visibility of the Nothing Phone 1 should be better than the Galaxy A53.

The Nothing Phone (1) also offers uniform (and slim) bezels in comparison to the Samsung Galaxy A53. This is due to the flexible OLED display technology Nothing has used in the Phone 1, wherein it bends the bottom part of the display so as to give a uniform look. Other than the peak brightness and the display bezels, both the smartphones offer fantastic displays, and you won't be disappointed with either of them.

• Samsung Galaxy A53 advantages
  • Punchy colors

• Nothing Phone 1 advantages
  • Higher peak brightness (1200 nits vs 800 nits)
  • Slim and uniform bezels on all the four sides

Performance

Source: Samsung

This is one of the areas where smartphone makers make some compromises to keep the price low, and both the Nothing Phone 1 and Samsung Galaxy A53 are no different. The Nothing Phone (1) is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 778G+ processor. This is an octa-core chipset with one Cortex-A78 core clocked at 2.5GHz, three Cortex-A78 cores clocked at 2.4GHz, and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. In addition, the chipset features Adreno 642L GPU and an X53 5G modem.

On the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy A53 is powered by the company's own Exynos 1280 processor. This is a 5nm node process-based octa-core chipset with two Cortex-A78 CPU cores clocked at 2.4GHz and six Cortex-A55 CPU cores clocked at 2GHz. While both the processors won't offer performance anywhere close to the $1000 Android smartphones, they will "just enough" manage to ensure that the device can handle day-to-day activities and multitasking.

• Samsung Galaxy A53 advantages
  • 5nm node architecture vs 6nm node architecture
  • Expandable storage via microSD card slot

• Nothing Phone 1 advantages
  • 2 extra high-performance A78 cores
  • Higher capacity RAM in base variant

Camera Hardware

Moving onto the camera setup, the Galaxy A53 features a quad-camera setup that includes a 64MP primary camera sensor (f/1.8), one 12MP ultra-wide camera (f/2.2), a 5MP depth sensor (f/2.4), and a 5MP macro lens (f/2.4). The software on the Galaxy A53 is much improved as it features an all-new Night mode and a lot of features, such as an object eraser, Photo Remaster, and more, that the flagship Samsung devices come with.

On the other hand, the Nothing Phone 1 comes with a dual 50MP camera setup. This camera system contains a 50MP Sony IMX 766 primary camera and a 50MP Samsung ISOCELL JN1 ultra-wide angle lens with 114-degree FoV. Software features include Portrait mode, Night mode, Panorama Night mode, Google Filter, Bokeh, Beauty mode, Night Video, and Expert mode.

More cameras (and higher resolution) don't necessarily mean that Samsung Galaxy A53 camera is better than Nothing Phone (1). While the Samsung Galaxy A53 is a solid performer, we're still waiting to see the camera performance of the Nothing Phone 1. Make sure you're subscribed to Pocketnow's YouTube channel for the full review of the Nothing Phone (1).

• Samsung Galaxy A53 advantages
  • 64 MP primary camera vs 50 MP primary camera
  • Two extra camera sensors
  • Saturated (punchy) colors

• Nothing Phone 1 advantages
  • 50 MP ultra-wide camera vs 12 MP ultra-wide camera
  • Simple camera setup

Battery

Source: Nothing

Focussing on the batteries both the smartphones offer, the Samsung Galaxy A53 comes with a 5000 mAh cell. This battery should easily last a whole day for most users. In comparison, the Nothing Phone 1 has a smaller 4500 mAh cell. While Nothing claims that the battery of the Phone 1 can last up to 18 hours, it also depends on the phone's usage and how the company has optimized the software.

When it comes to charging, the Nothing Phone 1 leaves behind the Samsung Galaxy A53. While the Galaxy A53 supports only 25W fast charging, the Nothing Phone 1 supports up to 33W fast charging. And not only (slightly) faster wired charging, the Nothing Phone 1 also supports 15W Qi wireless charging and 5W reverse wireless charging. Using the reverse wireless charging feature, you can charge your Qi-compatible products, such as the company's own Ear (1), by placing them on the back of the phone.

• Samsung Galaxy A53 advantages
  • Bigger 5000 mAh cell

• Nothing Phone 1 advantages
  • Faster wired charging
  • Support for wireless and reverse wireless charging

• 

  Nothing Phone (1)

  Phone 1 is Nothing's first-ever smartphone. It comes with a 6.55-inch 120Hz OLED display with slim bezels, Qualcomm's custom-tuned Snapdragon 778G+ processor, LEDs on the back, Dual 50MP camera sensors, and more.

• 

  Samsung Galaxy A53

  Samsung Galaxy A53 packs in a 6.5-inch Super AMOLED Display, the Exynos 1280, and a 5000 mAh battery alongside a decent set of camera sensors. For $450, it offers a combination that is a perfect balance of price and specifications.

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Technical Specifications