5 Nothing Cellphone 3 Glyph Matrix Toys that put a smile on my face

With its Phone 3, London, England-based know-how firm Nothing has crafted a relatively distinctive handheld bundle. The flagship smartphone options an attention grabbing exterior design on its rear facet, with components of translucency, a unusual association of rear digital camera lenses, a pink recording indication LED, and, most curiously of all, a bespoke Glyph Matrix show.

Nothing’s new Glyph Matrix display is a small, round dot-matrix display screen made up of 489 particular person micro-LEDs. With a decision of 25 x 25, the panel is monochromatic, and it is managed by way of the devoted pressure-sensitive Glyph Button discovered just some inches under the Glyph Matrix panel itself.

The Glyph Matrix affords a wide range of use instances which might be supplemental to the Cellphone 3 expertise, lots of that are ported over from Nothing’s previous Glyph Interface array of lights discovered on earlier-generation Cellphone fashions. Amongst these options are programmable ringtone and notification lightshows, a makeshift flashlight, a quantity degree indication HUD, a digital camera timer countdown, and numerous status-related updates.

Nevertheless, not like the older Glyph Interface, the Glyph Matrix is way extra extensible by nature of being an precise secondary show. Nothing is leaning closely into this flexibility, encouraging third-party builders to create their very own instruments, applets, and micro-games which it calls ‘Glyph Toys’ for the platform.

With a public-facing Developer Kit SDK obtainable now over on GitHub, quite a few community-developed Toys have already hit the scene. A few of these will be discovered on the Google Play Retailer, whereas others are floating round GitHib and different software program developer platforms.

For essentially the most half, Glyph Toys stays a enjoyable and quirky solution to inject a little bit of character into the Nothing Cellphone 3 expertise, although, admittedly, additionally they stray into gimmick territory. Whereas I would not describe Toys as groundbreaking or revolutionary, they do envelop Android’s ethos of open, geeky tech fun, and for that cause I admire their inclusion.

Listed below are 5 Glyph Toys that personally put a smile on my face each single time I press my Nothing Cellphone 3’s capacitive Glyph Button.

Glyph Beat

Showcase your favourite album paintings, micro-LED fashion

Glyph Beat is a enjoyable Glyph Toy applet for the Matrix show that locations animations on display screen whereas enjoying media on the Cellphone 3. Animation themes embody a spinning vinyl document, shapeshifting cowl artwork, waveforms, pulses, and, my private favourite, an lovable dancing duck that bobs his head to the beat.

Glyph Beat is solely free to obtain and set up from the Google Play Retailer, and it absolutely integrates into the Glyph Toys part of Nothing OS’s Settings utility. As an added bonus, Glyph Beat affords playback performance within the type of Shake to Skip, with configurable choices for shake sensitivity, haptic suggestions, and skip delay.

Glyph water toy

Simulate the ebbs and flows of a pixelated pond

Glyph water toy is a free Glyph Matrix show plug-in obtainable on GitHub. Briefly, it capabilities as a pixelated water stream simulator, permitting you to tilt your Cellphone 3 for responsive management over the water’s physics. Configurable choices embody sliders for the quantity of water displayed, the simulation pace, the dimensions of particular person particles, and the viscosity (resistance to stream) of mentioned particles.

Positive, Glyph water toy does not precisely provide a lot sensible utility, nevertheless it’s a enjoyable tech demo that leverages the Cellphone 3’s Glyph Matrix show and gyroscopic in a novel trend. I discover it to be a enjoyable Toy to mess around with when, say, I am ready in a cued line, and it makes an awesome fidget toy as properly.

Nothing Glyphify (Ball Maze)

A digital labyrinth with gyroscopic tilt controls

Nothing Glyphify affords a number of utilities and extensions for not solely the Cellphone 3, but additionally for previous-generation Nothing Cellphone fashions that characteristic the Glyph Interface array of lights. Out there on the Google Play Retailer for a small one-time payment, Glyphify affords a number of Glyph Toys to mess around with, together with Glyph Dial for looking contacts and initiating telephone calls, in addition to a rendition of the traditional Magic 8 Ball sport.

Personally, I am most keen on the included Ball Maze sport, which duties you with maneuvering a small, pixelated ball by a micro-LED labyrinth of types. Like with Glyph water toy, interplay is managed by way of tilt, and it is a enjoyable micro-game that I take pleasure in as a lot as I did once I performed PC Flash variants of the sport throughout my childhood.

Glyph Toybox (Affirmations)

Inject some monochrome positivity into your day

Glyph Toolbox, which will be bought on the Google Play Retailer for a small single-time payment, offers entry to a group of community-crafted Glyph Toys. These embody a Pomodoro Timer for focusing in on duties, Sound Mode management, and a Battery Amperage standing indicator.

For me, it is the Affirmations Toy that I discover myself gravitating again to. This module shows numerous optimistic statements and feel-good phrases on the Glyph Matrix panel, with a fast shake movement used to cycle between phrases. It is intelligent, it is cheerful, and it provides a splash of humanity to the combination.

Dot Hub for Glyph Matrix (Coin Flip)

Generally a coin toss is all it takes to settle a dispute

Just like Glyphify and Glyph Toybox, Dot Hub for Glyph Matrix is a single app that compiles numerous Glyph Toys underneath a single, unified roof. A few of these plug-ins are extra highly effective variations of pre-installed Toys from Nothing, together with Counter and Compass. Different Toys embody the Glyph Beat-style Music Visualizer, Cube, Respiration (which goals to create a way of calm by enabling Do Not Disturb mode and displaying lungs on display screen), and Tea Time (which slowly brews a cup of tea over time).

Dot Hub’s Coin Flip is the included Toy that I’ve made essentially the most use of to date — a easy coin toss helps with fixing disputes, it helps with indecisiveness or determination paralysis, and it is merely a enjoyable fidget toy that offers my palms one thing to do throughout occasions of idle. The Whole Dot Hub assortment is free to obtain and set up from the Google Play Retailer.

This gadget was offered to Pocket-lint by Nothing.