Nothing Phone’s screen (1) is not as bright as initially advertised, but it may get there in the future

Nothing initially advertised the phone (1) as being capable of reaching a peak maximum brightness of 1,200 nits, only in some HDR video scenarios. We don’t test them, so all we got for our phone review was 663 nits in auto brightness mode, with 466 nits in manual brightness mode.

This didn’t seem out of the ordinary, as all currently advertised peak brightness rates of over 1,200 nits, for all smartphones, are not achievable in general day-to-day use, only in some HDR content. But you’d expect a phone to say it can go up to a specific value to actually get it done, even in the most niche use cases.

And apparently, the Nothing Phone (1) can’t go up to 1,200 nits. At least not now. German publication ComputerBase revealed this in a report stating that it did not confront the fact that it could not reach the peak brightness advertised in its tests “in any scenario”.

This is because while the underlying display hardware is capable of reaching that peak, the software currently prevents it from exceeding 700 nits. A spokesperson for Nothing sent us this statement:

The hardware is capable of reaching peak brightness of up to 1,200 nits, but is currently limited by software to 700 nits. This decision was made to ensure a balanced user experience with regards to heat and battery consumption. We look forward to hearing from our users on this and will carefully check feedback to see if this should be addressed in future software updates.

It seems that Nothing’s hardware, software and marketing team weren’t communicating very well on this topic, as the 1,200 nits figure has been seen in marketing documents all over the place. And technically this is theoretically accurate, if the panel is able to go that far. But if there is a software limit of 700 nits, then this is the most realistic figure to advertise, right?

We are interested to see if there will be a future software update that will allow for higher brightness, or at least some sort of activation switch that will allow people who are ready to take the hit in terms of heat and battery life to switch to a brightness. higher mode whatever happens.