What you need to know
- Nothing claims it mistakenly compared video from the iPhone 16 Pro Max's ultrawide camera to the Nothing Phone 3a's main camera.
- The company shared a statement in a pinned YouTube comment after viewers pointed out the potentially-misleading comparison.
- It said there was "no intent to mislead" in the YouTube comparison.
Nothing is trickling information out about the upcoming Nothing Phone 3a series before its release, and shared the official camera specs for the devices earlier this week. Alongside the specifications, Nothing released a YouTube video comparing the Phone 3a's camera performance to the latest iPhone 16 Pro Max. In the video, the company compared a video clip from the iPhone's lower-quality ultrawide camera to video from the Nothing Phone 3a's main rear camera.
YouTube commenters pointed out that the clip comparison was misleading, as the iPhone 16 Pro Max's ultrawide camera is significantly worse than its main sensor for video. In response, Nothing said this comparison was made as a result of an editing mistake and wasn't intentional. It shared the following statement in a pinned YouTube comment and on the Nothing community Discord:
Hey everyone, we shot across all lenses throughout the day (sometimes cycling one-handed on a bumpy road), and in editing, a clip shot using the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s ultrawide lens was mistakenly used in the video stabilisation comparison instead of one shot using its standard lens. There was no intent to mislead, and we’ll be more careful to ensure even greater scrutiny in future comparisons. Appreciate you all keeping us accountable!
Nothing
It appears the original, unedited YouTube video with the potentially-misleading clip is still live at the time of publishing. While the pinned comment is there, the video includes little sign that there is a mistake if viewers don't manually navigate to the comments. The video's description doesn't include any mention of the error, either.
You can watch the original video below, and Nothing shared the full-resolution images and videos via Google Drive in the video's description. That's how savvy viewers were able to originally spot that the iPhone 16 Pro Max video sample was using an unequal camera sensor (via 9to5Google).
It's likely that, as Nothing claims, the comparison between the iPhone's secondary camera and the Phone 3a's main camera was a mistake. After all, the Nothing Phone 3a is predicted to cost a fraction of the price of iPhone 16 Pro Max, so there would be no reason for Nothing to mislead about its capabilities.
With that being said, this mistake adds a permanent asterisk to what would've been a favorable performance from the Nothing Phone 3a.
Nothing will officially reveal the Phone 3a on March 4.
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