The Nothing Phone 3 certainly catches the eye with its white colored body and transparent back cover which gives it a futuristic look. Unfortunately, it’s also mostly just for show. Although tech companies are increasingly offering simple repair guides and parts to make it easier to replace a worn out battery or broken screen at home, not all brands agree. Unfortunately, iFixit repair experts say Nothing doesn’t offer these features either.
During its teardown, iFixit gave a remarkably low repairability score of 3 out of 10 for the Nothing 3, the generation before the Nothing Phone 4a, launching in early 2026. Although iFixit doesn’t have a separate teardown of the Nothing 3a, the PBKreviews video reveals that the process and challenges are very similar across all three phones.
A major complication comes from the transparent aesthetic: to preserve the appearance, nothing hid security points, such as screws, under decorative stickers. To reach them, you have to remove the stickers, which are also easily damaged. Plus, once you’re ready to put everything back together, the stickers are difficult to reapply. As a result, even the simplest repairs can cause further wear and tear on the phone.
But there’s a lot more going on under the hood. The component design is complex, critics say, with no official documentation available online as Samsung, Apple and other companies currently do. So everyone working on the device has to learn on the fly, including professional technicians. The easiest part to access, the battery, has a tab for quick removal, but it is fragile. Additionally, there is no official way to obtain new parts for the devices.
What about older Nothing phone models?
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Nothing’s repairability issues are not new. The original Nothing Phone 1 also has a low score. In fact, this is where iFixit and the community first realized that transparency does not equal repairability.
Nothing’s phone contains other items that iFixit says create even more repair problems. The “Glyph Interface” rear lighting element that allows Nothing devices to provide a multitude of notifications at a glance is particularly difficult and frustrating to disassemble. Comparing the rest of the teardown to other devices, like Samsung’s Galaxy models or the latest iPhones, the iFixit team said that maintaining these phones takes more steps overall, due to Nothing’s complex setup.
Ultimately, most Nothing phones aren’t easy to repair if something goes wrong. But that’s just one aspect of the phone to consider when looking at the company’s affordable lineup. The Nothing Phone 3a offers incredible value, according to BGR’s Christian de Looper, while the Nothing Phone 3 rivals the best of the best – at least when it launches in 2025.
