Nothing Phone (3) vs Vivo X300 Ultra | TechTalkTown
Nothing Phone (3) vs Vivo X300 Ultra
Nothing Phone (3)
Nothing
7.7
Polarizing flagship, brilliant software
Vivo X300 Ultra
Vivo
8.7
The video and zoom monster
Nothing Phone (3)
What Reviewers Agree On
Nothing OS is the standout — one of the cleanest, most distinctive Android experiences outside a Pixel, and reviewers' favourite part of the phone.
The most distinctive design on the market — a premium metal-frame, glass-back build with the new Glyph Matrix.
Class-leading software support: 5 years of OS updates and 7 years of security patches.
The 6.67-inch 120Hz AMOLED is excellent — very bright (4,500-nit peak claimed) and great outdoors.
Reliable all-day battery from the 5,150mAh silicon-carbon cell with fast 65W wired plus 15W wireless charging.
Deal Breakers
Pros & Cons
Nothing Phone (3)
Pros
Nothing OS is the standout — one of the cleanest, most distinctive Android experiences outside a Pixel, and reviewers' favourite part of the phone.
The most distinctive design on the market — a premium metal-frame, glass-back build with the new Glyph Matrix.
Class-leading software support: 5 years of OS updates and 7 years of security patches.
The 6.67-inch 120Hz AMOLED is excellent — very bright (4,500-nit peak claimed) and great outdoors.
Reliable all-day battery from the 5,150mAh silicon-carbon cell with fast 65W wired plus 15W wireless charging.
Detailed Comparison
Display
Nothing Phone (3)
A bright, fluid 6.67-inch AMOLED that's excellent in practice, even if the 4,500-nit headline figure is HDR-only and it lacks full LTPO.
The 2800×1260 30–120Hz AMOLED cranks to a claimed 4,500-nit peak (1,600 nits full-screen outdoors), great for outdoor visibility.
Despite being FHD+, the display is excellent both indoors and in bright summer daylight, with a delightful tap-origin light-up animation.
Independent measurement found real-world brightness around 700 nits SDR and ~1,550–1,600 nits HDR despite the 4,500-nit HDR headline.
It switches only between 60 and 120Hz rather than true LTPO, so static content drains more battery — a downside at this price.
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The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is flagship-lite — repeatedly criticised as 'not the 8 Elite' at a $799 flagship price.
The camera is solid but doesn't stack up against the Pixel 9 series.
Divisive design plus real bugs — a dual-SIM recognition issue and the easily-triggered Essential Key recording everything.
Vivo X300 Ultra
What Reviewers Agree On
The camera system — twin ~1-inch 200MP main and 200MP 85mm periscope plus a large ultrawide — is the best-equipped on any 2026 phone and the entire reason the device exists.
Video is class-leading: 4K 120fps 10-bit Log with Dolby Vision recorded on-device (no SSD), 8K30 across the rear cameras, and 4K 60fps on every lens including the selfie.
Battery life is genuinely strong — roughly 16 hours active-use score, ~7h heavy screen-on time, and 13–14 hour days with charge to spare, on the 6,600mAh cell.
The Zeiss 200mm/400mm telephoto extenders deliver real, usable optical reach (8.7x and 17.4x) with surprisingly good handheld stabilisation.
100W wired charging refills the big battery in roughly 46–50 minutes, with 40W wireless on top.
The 6.82-inch 144Hz LTPO AMOLED is among the best displays available, hitting ~1,900 nits in auto and ~3,300 nits peak.
Deal Breakers
The 35mm (~1.5x) default main focal length is polarising — many reviewers find it too tight/zoomed versus the usual 24mm.
It heats up quickly under sustained camera or gaming load and throttles to roughly 60–65% stability in prolonged stress tests.
The full experience needs the expensive Photography Kit — the global bundle approaches €2,600 and the 200mm lens isn't in every box.
Notebookcheck found it 'hardly better than the X300 Pro in camera performance despite top-notch hardware', and Linus preferred Oppo's less over-sharpened processing.
It launched in China first with a rocky early software state (fixed via updates), and global availability/pricing is limited and steep.
Cons
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is flagship-lite — repeatedly criticised as 'not the 8 Elite' at a $799 flagship price.
The camera is solid but doesn't stack up against the Pixel 9 series.
Divisive design plus real bugs — a dual-SIM recognition issue and the easily-triggered Essential Key recording everything.
Vivo X300 Ultra
Pros
The camera system — twin ~1-inch 200MP main and 200MP 85mm periscope plus a large ultrawide — is the best-equipped on any 2026 phone and the entire reason the device exists.
Video is class-leading: 4K 120fps 10-bit Log with Dolby Vision recorded on-device (no SSD), 8K30 across the rear cameras, and 4K 60fps on every lens including the selfie.
Battery life is genuinely strong — roughly 16 hours active-use score, ~7h heavy screen-on time, and 13–14 hour days with charge to spare, on the 6,600mAh cell.
The Zeiss 200mm/400mm telephoto extenders deliver real, usable optical reach (8.7x and 17.4x) with surprisingly good handheld stabilisation.
100W wired charging refills the big battery in roughly 46–50 minutes, with 40W wireless on top.
The 6.82-inch 144Hz LTPO AMOLED is among the best displays available, hitting ~1,900 nits in auto and ~3,300 nits peak.
Cons
The 35mm (~1.5x) default main focal length is polarising — many reviewers find it too tight/zoomed versus the usual 24mm.
It heats up quickly under sustained camera or gaming load and throttles to roughly 60–65% stability in prolonged stress tests.
The full experience needs the expensive Photography Kit — the global bundle approaches €2,600 and the 200mm lens isn't in every box.
Notebookcheck found it 'hardly better than the X300 Pro in camera performance despite top-notch hardware', and Linus preferred Oppo's less over-sharpened processing.
It launched in China first with a rocky early software state (fixed via updates), and global availability/pricing is limited and steep.
The screen is crisp and vibrant and holds up really well both indoors and in direct sunlight.
Vivo X300 Ultra
A 6.82-inch 144Hz LTPO AMOLED, now flat rather than quad-curved. Lab measurements put real brightness near 1,900 nits in auto and ~3,300 nits on a small window — among the best panels on any phone — and reviewers single out content consumption and clarity as standouts.
We measured a maximum of over 1,900 nits in auto-brightness mode and over 3,300 nits when lighting up a smaller portion of the screen.
Consuming content, scrolling the web, pixel-peeping and zooming in on text — it doesn't get any clearer, or with the 144Hz any smoother, than the display on the X300 Ultra.
It delivers an excellent max brightness of around 1,935 nits with a 75% white pattern and a peak of 3,328 nits with a 10% pattern.
Vivo has gone with a flat display this time, a clear shift from the quad-curved style of the X200 Ultra.
It's a 6.82-inch AMOLED with a claimed 4,500-nit HDR peak that can reach that figure in a one-person window watching HDR content; PWM sits around 3.5% at max brightness, better for flicker-sensitive users.
An absolutely stunning display with terrific, bass-heavy stereo speakers to match.
Cameras
Nothing Phone (3)
A well-equipped quad 50MP system with a 3x periscope and strong video specs, but image quality is solid-not-spectacular and still trails the Pixel 9.
It runs a quad 50MP setup — f/1.68 main, f/2.2 114° ultrawide, f/2.68 3x periscope and a 50MP selfie.
The main camera captures solid binned 12.5MP photos in good lighting; 4K bitrate is a bit low but overall video quality looks excellent.
It's a shame the camera doesn't stack up against the Pixel 9 series — solid but not class-leading.
It's not the best camera on the market, but it's consistent, quick to launch and takes great everyday pictures — and produces amazing results edited in Lightroom.
Unlike its cheaper siblings, all four cameras shoot 4K60 (and 4K60 HDR), plus 4K60 selfie video and 240fps slow-mo — a genuine video step up.
Low-light processing in early hands-on seemed pretty close to Google's Pixel, and the camera app is faster than past Nothing devices.
Vivo X300 Ultra
The reason the X300 Ultra exists: a near-1-inch 200MP 35mm main (Sony Lytia 901), a 200MP 85mm periscope, and the best ultrawide sensor on the market, tuned with Zeiss. Reviewers near-universally rate it the best-equipped camera phone of 2026 — with two important caveats: the 35mm default is divisive, and on raw image quality it's only marginally ahead of the cheaper X300 Pro.
At the center is a 200MP main that's nearly a 1-inch sensor (Sony Lytia 901), backed by a 200MP 85mm-equivalent periscope telephoto — the phone is focused on camera quality and, even more so, video.
Featuring three extra-large image sensors, the X300 Ultra's uncompromising camera hardware earned a solid rating — but it's hardly better than the cheaper X300 Pro in actual camera performance despite the top-notch hardware.
I'm not sure I've seen better results from even 1-inch sensors — it's so close to 1-inch and the 35mm focal length makes for more cinematic-looking shots; the 85mm periscope is the sweet spot for portraits.
It still holds the record for the best portrait-mode photos on a smartphone, especially at 85mm and 135mm; the 14mm ultrawide is sharp edge to edge.
Performance
Nothing Phone (3)
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is fast and butter-smooth in daily use and gaming, but it's flagship-lite — the most-repeated criticism at a $799 flagship price — and it runs warm under sustained load.
It runs a 4nm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 — on paper underwhelming for a flagship, but in practice everything is absolutely butter.
8s Gen 4 is not the 8 Elite — at $799 the manufacturer arguably should have offered the flagship chip.
Geekbench scores well — better than 86–96% of devices on the market depending on the test — and it beats Google's Tensor G5 in multi-core and every 3DMark graphics benchmark.
Gaming is strong — BGMI holds a stable 120fps and Genshin runs at 60fps on max settings — but Genshin pushes the surface past 45°C.
It doesn't do a particularly good job of cooling the chip under sustained load.
With 16GB RAM (on the $899 model) it keeps everything open and launches apps faster than an iPhone 16 in lab tests.
Vivo X300 Ultra
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 plus Vivo's custom imaging silicon delivers flagship benchmark numbers and strong gaming, but the camera-heavy hardware runs hot — sustained stress tests show roughly 60–65% stability and the camera app warms it up fast.
At the heart is Qualcomm's current flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, supplemented by Vivo's custom VS1 and V3-Plus imaging chips.
It boots in 16 seconds (vs 21s for the S26 Ultra and 19s for the iPhone 17 Pro Max) and posts an AnTuTu score over 3,800,000, stronger than Samsung.
In a prolonged stress test it throttled CPU performance to about 60% of peak — in line with other high-powered flagships — and 3DMark stability landed around 63–66%.
It gets a bit hot after 30–40 minutes of gaming, but with no throttling even past an hour and never uncomfortable to hold; boost mode at max graphics gives around 4 hours of Wuthering Waves on a full charge.
Native 120fps gaming with smooth/very-high graphics in many titles, with temperature barely crossing 35°C and power draw around 4W in battle-royale modes.
Battery & Charging
Nothing Phone (3)
A reliable all-day 5,150mAh silicon-carbon cell (5,500mAh in India) with fast 65W wired plus 15W wireless and reverse charging — strong in tests, though one heavy user found it disappointing.
The 5,150mAh silicon-carbon cell easily lasts all day — a typical day dips only into the upper-60s/low-70s%, one of the most reliable batteries in recent phones.
Battery beat any Pixel tested and even the Galaxy S25 Ultra — heavy 5G days still ended as high as 45%.
In an extreme drain test it ran 9h34m of screen-on time before dying — impressive even though it was first to die against 6,000mAh+ rivals, with a cool 53°C peak.
65W wired charging takes it 1–50% in about 19–20 minutes; there's also 15W wireless and reverse wireless charging (India gets a larger 5,500mAh cell).
Despite the largest battery in any Nothing phone, one long-term reviewer calls it the worst battery life he's experienced on a Nothing Phone.
The new silicon-carbon battery doesn't pack as big a capacity boost as expected from the technology.
Vivo X300 Ultra
Vivo grew the silicon-carbon cell 10% to 6,600mAh while keeping the body the same size. Real-world endurance is strong — ~16h active-use score, ~7h heavy screen-on, 13–14 hour days with charge to spare — and 100W wired refills it in under an hour, with 40W wireless.
Vivo increased the battery by 10% to 6,600mAh despite the phone being practically the same size on paper.
In our battery test it earned an active-use score of almost 16 hours; 100W charging took it 0–66% in 30 minutes and a full charge in 46 minutes, plus 40W wireless. A charger is in the box except in Europe.
On the China version I'm finishing entire 13–14 hour days with 25–30% left; the global version keeps the 6,600mAh cell so battery life should comfortably last 12–13 hours of heavy use.
Getting nearly 7 hours of screen-on time with very heavy usage from the 6,600mAh silicon-carbon unit, with 100W wired and 40W wireless charging support.
After a 4-hour heavy-usage simulation the phone still had ~45% battery left, which is solid by today's standards, and 100W wired charging takes about 45 minutes to full.
Comparing it directly with the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, even though the Vivo looks great at a glance you could edit the Oppo image and get better detail because the Vivo isn't all over-sharpened and crusty.
Schools the Galaxy S26 Ultra in zoom quality without an excessive camera count — shaping up to be one of the best camera phones not just for 2026 but 2027 and 2028.
The 35mm main is divisive — many feel 24mm is better for phone photography and that 35mm is too tight; cropping to 23–28mm shows a noticeable detail drop.
Under sustained camera/imaging load the front reached ~46.8°C and the back ~45.2°C, and around 47°C the refresh rate drops slightly though not all the way to 60Hz.
In a head-to-head charge race against the Oppo Find X9 Ultra (80W), the Vivo on 100W finished first at 50 minutes 20 seconds to the Oppo's 52:39.