Much ado about something: Nothing beats Samsung to stable Android 15

Nothing has offered a preview of Nothing OS 3.0 for a while now, but what if you’ve been waiting for the stable version? Thankfully, the wait is over for some users.

Nothing announced that a stable version of the Android 15-based software is now being pushed out to Nothing Phone 2 and Nothing Phone 2a devices. The company clarified that this release was being staggered until the end of the year.

The stable Nothing OS 3.0 software will roll out to the CMF Phone 1, Nothing Phone 1, and Nothing Phone 2a Plus in “early” 2025. So you might be in for a bit of a wait if you have one of these handsets.

Nevertheless, this release comes ahead of Samsung’s One UI 7 rollout. You can definitely argue that One UI 7 is a more ambitious release than Nothing OS 3.0, but it’s still a notable turn of events given Nothing’s size.

Nothing OS 3.0 features

The new software offers several features and tweaks. For one, the previously leaked Nothing Gallery app is now available. Nothing says this app includes features like “advanced” search functionality and more editing features like filters, markup, and suggestions. Unfortunately, there’s no mention of previously confirmed AI features like image categorization, AI upscaling, and super-resolution.

Another notable feature is Shared Widgets functionality, letting you (surprise) share widgets with other friends who have Nothing phones. You can only share square photo widgets right now, but the company says it’s “rapidly” developing support for other widgets.

Nothing is also bringing a countdown widget later this month via the Nothing Widgets app, while a Smart Drawer feature lets you automatically categorize your apps into folders. Other tweaks mentioned by the brand include an improved pop-up view, unspecified visual and performance enhancements, and better quick settings.

In any event, our first hands-on with the Nothing OS 3.0 beta was pretty positive back in October. Colleague Ryan Haines tentatively described it as the software Nothing wanted to make from the start. So we hope the stable release lives up to those impressions.