The attractive, midrange, limited-availability Nothing Phone 2‘s Glyph Interface was new, neat, and, in a way, polarizing: Fans seemed to either love it, or turn it off immediately and never use it. Not content to rehash something it pioneered years ago, Carl Pei’s design-forward Nothing smartphone lineup scrapped the rear-panel-spanning LED array this time around, even as Nothing’s flagship Phone 3 is finally set for a US launch.
If you were worried the novel brand would abandon its back-panel lighting magic, though, let your fears be soothed. Nothing has something else up its sleeve this time, in the form of a rear dot matrix display that could be both more and less useful than the Glyph Interface in different ways. It’s called the Glyph Matrix, and we’ve seen it in operation for all of five seconds (Source: Nothing).
A smartphone with a second screen… on the back
What’s old is new again
This iteration of Glyph is apparently gone for good.
The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it teaser video shows a black-and-white, dot matrix-style display in the upper right corner of the (presumably) Nothing Phone 3’s back panel. It’s far from the first slab phone with a secondary display. Years ago, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra had a similarly located notification panel, and the little-known Doogee S98 essentially slapped a smartwatch in the middle of the camera array.
Both those phones had their own issues, not least of which were the rear display’s bulk, limited utility, and complications to repair. In replacing the Glyph Interface — which Nothing admitted to “killing” last month — the Glyph Matrix aims to provide the usefulness a novel screen can offer, without the drawbacks.
Details are as scarce as the teaser video is short, but the new LED readout is a clear departure from the mostly decorative lights on the back of Nothing’s previous flagships. Many users found them neat for music visualizations, and some people genuinely found the rear-facing notifications, LED timer, and Flip to Glyph ringer silencer useful. But Nothing apparently wanted to shake up the back-panel notification game.
To that end, the Glyph Matrix appears to be a low-resolution, roughly 2cm display in the upper-right corner of the Phone 3’s real panel. A careful breakdown of the video indicates it could be circular, but that could simply be due to the animation Nothing chose to highlight. What’s clear is that it’s nothing like the previous Glyph iteration.
Source: Nothing
Enter the (Glyph) Matrix: imagine the possibilities.
The earliest reactions from fans of Nothing have been mixed. Assuming the body-spanning LEDs of previous Nothing flagships have disappeared completely, then gone, also, is the potential for low-light camera flash or eye-catching music visualization. On the other hand, an actually readable display opens up tons of possibilities for delivering notifications without needing to engage with (and possibly get distracted by) a full-on smartphone display.
Interestingly, the Glyph Matrix was directly foretold by some Nothing community members. During a promotion where the company asked fans to create their own Nothing Phone 3 concepts, quite a few users placed a dot matrix display somewhere on the back. Several users went so far as to place the LEDs in the top-right corner.
We may never know how long Nothing has had the new design in its back pocket, but it’s either a case of a phone manufacturer truly listening to community suggestions, or dedicated fans seriously having their finger on the pulse of novel smartphone design.
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