(Image credit: Future)

Nothing announced it's first "true flagship" on 1 July, with the launch of the Nothing Phone (3). However, that phone launches with Android 15 – not Android 16, which Google started to roll out on 10 June.

Thankfully, that could change relatively quickly – Nothing's CEO and co-founder, Carl Pei, has revealed that Android 16 and Nothing OS 4.0 will be coming "later this autumn". The Nothing Phone (3) will officially have five years of OS updates and years of security updates.

While the specifics of the timeline weren't confirmed, as we're already making our way through summer, there's not long to go. Autumn officially starts towards the end of September, but the reviewer's guide for the Nothing Phone (3) suggests that the software will be available in Q3.

(Image credit: Future / Chris Hall)

Q3 covers July, August and September, so the best guesstimate we can make is that the software update should land somewhere approaching the end of September for those with the Nothing Phone (3).

It's likely that the Nothing Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro will follow, before rolling back to the Nothing Phone (2), the Phone (2a) and the Phone (2a) Plus. However, there's no confirmed dates on when these phones will update and Nothing hasn't really been around long enough for any sort of pattern to appear.

The Nothing Phone (3) launched with Nothing OS 3.5, introducing a couple of new software features. That included enhancements to Essential Space, a new Essential Search function and some redesigned UI elements.

Android 16 on the other hand is currently light in customer-facing features, not really bringing much to the experience on Pixel phones that already have it. Most of the excitement around Android 16 is for the Material 3 Expressive design that's expected to roll-out alongside the launch of the Pixel 10 towards the end of August.

Exactly how much of Material 3 Expressive will be integrated into Nothing OS remains to be seen. Nothing already customises much of the experience, so it's unlikely to take on all the aspects that Google's new design language introduces.

Whatever the result, we should only be waiting a couple of months before we start to see Android 16 appearing on Nothing Phones.