Nothing Phone 4(b): Same Soul, Different Skin, Trickier Price

I spent my first 24 hours with the Nothing Phone 4(b) in Leh, and the honest summary is that this is the most un-Nothing Nothing phone I have used so far. Not in the way it behaves, because the moment you unlock it and start moving through Nothing OS you are back in familiar territory. It is smooth, it is clean, the animations feel right, and the whole software layer carries the same personality that has made this brand a favourite among people who are tired of bloated skins. That part has not changed. What has changed is everything you notice before you even switch it on.

Start with the back. The transparent design that became Nothing's calling card is gone. We already saw the company move away from it on the Phone 4a Pro, so this is not a total surprise, but there is an important difference. The 4a Pro still felt industrial and slightly unconventional even without the see-through panel. The 4(b) does not. It looks a lot more like a CMF phone that has borrowed the Glyph Bar from the Phone 4a, with a rectangular glass bar around the camera, exposed screws, and a metallic plate running along the top and right edges. The back is plastic this time rather than glass, and the button placement and the contrast between the buttons and the shell are the same as before. It is not an ugly phone. It photographs fine and it feels okay in the hand. The problem is simply that it does not carry Nothing's DNA, and for a brand whose entire pull is identity, that is a conversation the fans and loyalists are going to have whether Nothing likes it or not.

The front tells a similar story. There is a 6.77 inch Super AMOLED panel here that genuinely looks good, bright and sharp with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. But the bezels around it are unusually thick for a phone launching in 2026, and once you have seen it you cannot unsee it. IP64 rating is on board, which is standard for this segment and nothing to complain about, but also nothing to write home about.

This will raise eyebrows, and it’s going to be a norm

Now to the elephant in the room, which is the price. The Phone 4(b) starts at Rs 34,999 for the 8GB and 128GB variant. For a phone running the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4, that number is going to raise eyebrows. It is a perfectly capable entry level chip and it will handle everyday use without drama, but it is not the class of silicon buyers have come to expect at this price, and Nothing knows that. The memory tells the same tale, with LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.2 storage rather than the faster standards you would hope to see closer to Rs 35,000. These are the corners that got cut, and they are not hidden.

To their credit, Nothing has been upfront about why. The company has pointed to the sharp rise in RAM and component costs, which has made it far harder to build the kind of value products it was shipping right up to 2025. And this is not a Nothing-only problem. Vivo, Oppo, Realme and even Apple have already started pushing their prices up by significant margins, and going by everything happening in the supply chain, this pressure is not easing before 2027. So the 4(b) is less an outlier and more an early example of where the entire market is heading. That context matters, because it reframes the phone from overpriced to simply honest about a bad moment for pricing.

Battery is one of the clearer wins. The India unit gets a 6000mAh cell, which is generous, paired with 33W charging. That combination should comfortably deliver all day and then some stamina that this segment of buyers actually cares about, even if the charging speed is merely adequate rather than quick.

On cameras, you get a 50MP main sensor and an 8MP ultrawide. I shot with both across Leh, and the results are decent as long as you stay away from digital zoom, where things fall apart quickly. I have seen better cameras at this price, but there is promise here, and with a bit of work on the low light processing this setup could get to a genuinely good place. As a first impression, treat it as competent with room to grow rather than a standout.

Where the 4(b) makes the most sense is in who it is for. The (b) series is aimed at students, first-time office goers, and younger buyers who want to enter the Nothing world without stretching their budget. That audience overlaps quite a bit with CMF's target buyer, but here is the thing. After the visibility Nothing has picked up through the IPL and the RCB collaboration, the brand name itself has become a powerful pull in India, and using it to bring newer, more affordable products to market is a smart move that plays directly to that momentum.

So where does that leave the Nothing Phone 4(b) as a first impression. It is a phone where the software still feels like Nothing, the design seems like it’s slowly drifting away from DNA, and the value equation is being decided by forces well beyond Nothing's control. The company has clearly tried to assemble a package that comes close to the experience it is known for, but the compromises are visible if you know where to look.

Given the way the market is moving, expect more brands to make exactly these kinds of trade offs. My honest take for now is that at Rs 34,999 this is a hard sell, but if you can grab it around Rs 30,000 during a sale or an offer, it becomes a phone worth recommending. I will have a lot more to say once it has spent a full stretch away from launch conditions.