Nothing Phone (4b) camera overview: exploring Ladakh with the new Nothing phone
With the Nothing Phone (4b) officially launching this week, there’s been a lot of buzz about the device’s capabilities. As the most accessible Nothing device in the brand’s lineup, the phone comes with some compromises to maintain its price amid the global memory shortage.
This includes the omission of the telephoto lens, making the Phone (4b) the only Nothing smartphone this year to not come with one. I’ve had the pleasure of roaming around Ladakh with the Nothing Phone (4b) (first impressions) and capturing the beauty of the landscape.
In my limited time with the device, I’ve uncovered quite a bit about how its cameras perform in different lighting conditions and how the absence of a telephoto lens affects overall camera performance. Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Nothing Phone (4b) camera specifications
| Lens | Specifications |
| Main camera | 50MP OIS + EIS sensor with Autofocus, f/1.8 |
| Ultra-wide camera | 8MP 119.5-degree FoV sensor, f/2.2 |
| Front camera | 16MP sensor, f/2.4 |
Daylight shots: neutral colours, good exposure
During my time in Ladakh, the weather was swinging between extremely sunny and cloudy, which makes for a tricky experience when you want to shoot the landscape. In harsh sunlight, overexposed images are always a possibility, but the Phone (4b) ‘s primary 50MP shooter handled these conditions quite well.
It does a decent job of managing exposure and makes the image appear well-lit, preserving the details and offering a good level of sharpness. The phone’s colour science is mostly neutral, with a slight bias for warmer tones, enhancing green and yellow hues. Whenever I took an image, I was quite pleased with how the shots consistently looked like the actual scene I was trying to capture.
Post-processing tends to slightly enhance greenery and brightness, making the shots look punchier, but in my opinion, it’s not a bad thing. If you take a lot of stills in good lighting and prefer realistic colour tones, you’ll like the Nothing Phone (4b)’s cameras.
Human subjects look appealing
When it comes to human subjects, the Nothing Phone (4b) consistently performs well in terms of colours when you shoot in good lighting. It renders the skin tones quite realistically and doesn’t beautify the images excessively. The exposure level and dynamic range are well-adjusted, and the photos appear lively and appealing in most situations.
While the images do look sharp at the first glance, once you zoom in closer, there’s not much to be seen. There is no noise, but the sharpness and facial details quickly lose ground even in selfies which sit much closer to the subject. It’s nothing too distracting but I would prefer if the images were a tad bit more detailed.
Zoom performance: somewhat inconsistent
There’s one aspect where I felt the phone’s performance could have been a little better, and that is when you use the zoom slider. Even at 2x zoom, the Nothing Phone (4b) shows a slight change in tone compared to shots from its primary camera.
Regular shot
2x zoom
In the example above, the sky was cloudy, and the ambient light level was towards the lower end. You’ll note that the regular shot at 1x captures the scene quite well in these circumstances. But when I switched to 2x zoom and took a shot, the image came out a little brighter, with lower contrast and colours that looked a bit softer.
Ladakh through the lens of Nothing Phone (4b)
With the technical analysis out of the way, here’s a look at what I managed to capture during my short stint in Ladakh. Browse through the gallery below and see how the Nothing Phone (4b) handles this beautiful landscape.
Final thoughts
I had a limited time with the Nothing Phone (4b) in Ladakh, so this is only a first impression of what the camera system can do. Even so, what I managed to capture was mostly satisfying, with the phone doing a good job in daylight and producing images that look sharp, balanced, and true to life.
The absence of a telephoto lens is evident, especially with human subjects and zoom shots, but for most casual users, the setup should still be more than capable. The selfie camera also does a decent job in good light, and overall, the camera system performs at a satisfactory level, leaving room for improvement in future updates.
If your current phone is a few years old and you mainly care about a stylish device that shoots reliable daylight images and natural-looking photos, the Phone (4b) looks promising. Stay tuned for our comprehensive review, where we will compare its camera performance against similarly priced rivals and see how it compares in its price bracket.
Disclosure: The writer attended the Nothing Phone (4b) event in Ladakh on Nothing India’s invitation.
