I Adore Everything About The Nothing Phone 3a And 3a Pro, Except The Star Feature

In a world where Samsung and Apple continue to hit “CTRL-V” each year for their phone designs, thank goodness we have companies like Nothing. Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t deny that Nothing is willing to forge a unique path in the world of Android smartphones and even figure out ways to switch up its own formulas to keep things fresh. This has never been more apparent than right now with the simultaneous launches of two phones: the Nothing Phone 3a and Nothing Phone 3a Pro.

Ultimately, these are two very similar phones, with one geared towards a general audience on a budget (3a) and one geared towards folks who value great cameras but don’t have $1,000 to spend (3a Pro). I had the opportunity to use both phones for a few days, and here are my thoughts!

Fresh new designs, but distinctly Nothing

From the front, both the Nothing Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro are the same. They both have a 6.77-inch AMOLED display covered in Panda Glass, which is a Chinese brand of glass that directly competes with Corning’s Gorilla Glass. Going Panda over Corning was likely a cost-cutting move on Nothing’s part.

Underneath that glass, both phones have LTPO panels with adaptive refresh rates ranging from 30Hz to 120Hz. The resolutions are FHD+ (2,392 x 1,080, to be exact), and they can each reach a peak brightness of 3,000 nits, with a typical brightness of 800 nits.

As always, the displays on these phones far exceed their pricing class. I would argue that they rival those you’d find on phones twice as expensive. Nothing never disappoints in this area.

As usual, Nothing delivers a display that rivals ones on phones twice as expensive.

The fronts might be the same on both phones, but when you turn them around, you can immediately see the difference.

The Phone 3a has a triple-lens camera system, with the lenses arranged in a horizontal line, very similar to the Nothing Phone 2a Plus that we saw in 2024 (albeit with one extra lens; more on that later). Interestingly, the module layout looks quite similar to the one on the back of the Pixel 8 series — the lenses are just smaller.

Meanwhile, the Phone 3a Pro has a weird, asymmetrical layout with a seriously thick camera bump. I know the layout of the module has seen ridicule since Nothing revealed it — my colleague Joe Maring had a lot to say about the Phone 3a Pro camera module — but I don’t mind the design as much as the thickness of the bump. It is roughly 50% of the thickness of the phone itself and weighs a lot, which makes the phone feel top-heavy. At least it’s centered, which I can’t say for other companies with similar modules (cough OnePlus cough).

The Nothing Phone 3a Pro has a divisive camera module design, but what really stood out to me was its thickness and weight. It’s massive.

Regardless of which phone you choose, both have the same three Glyph lights in pretty much the same layout as the Nothing Phone 2a series. If you’ve never seen a Nothing phone before, these lights can be linked to notifications and countdown timers, operate as a flashlight, or even be used as a fill light while shooting video. Nothing didn’t mention any new features for the Glyph lights in its press briefings, and I haven’t noticed anything here that I didn’t see on the Phone 2a Plus.

Another standard Nothing phone feature that returns here is the clear back showing off the device’s real working internals. Notably, this is glass this year, whereas it was plastic for all the previous A-series phones. This makes the phone feel slightly more premium than previous A-series phones from the company, but honestly, I didn’t feel enough of a difference to think glass was better than plastic overall. Your opinion might differ once you hold it.

Other notable upgrades include a glass back, an IP64 rating, and a new button called the Essential Key.

Also, note that there’s no wireless charging coil to see here, so you don’t get that on either phone.

On the sides of the devices, you’ll see a new button called the Essential Key, which lives underneath the power button. There’s a lot to cover there, so I gave this its own section later on in this article.

You can’t see it, but both phones also got a nice bump in durability this year, going from IP54 to IP64. It’s not a game-changer, but it’s nice to know the phones are a little safer from dust and debris.

Finally, each phone has different color options. For the Nothing Phone 3a, your choices will be gray, white (shown throughout this article), and, if you live in India, blue. For the Nothing Phone 3a Pro, you have two choices: black or gray (shown throughout this article).

Basically the same internal specs

While Nothing made sure the outsides of these phones looked very different, it made them twins internally.

Powering both phones is the mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3. This is an octa-core processor with a 4nm build, so it’s plenty powerful — just not nearly as powerful as a Snapdragon 8 Elite or even the previous Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This makes sense considering the pricing of these two devices, but those of you out there who want to do serious AAA gaming, high-resolution videography editing, or other performance-intensive tasks should steer clear.

The processor in these phones is at the upper mid-range, but it’s still a mid-ranger through and through.

In my brief time with the phone, I didn’t notice any issues at all with performance. Granted, I didn’t try to push any limits, but day-to-day tasks were fast and smooth.

Outside of the processor, other specs are also the same across both phones. In the United States, that includes 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal non-expandable storage. There may be more/other options for you, depending on where you live. No matter where you live, there’s a 5,000mAh battery that charges at 50W with the proper charging brick, which is not included in the box.

Aside from the cameras, all internal specs are the same across both phones.

They also both come with Android 15 skinned over with Nothing OS 3.1. You can look forward to three Android upgrades and four years of security patches, giving you support until around 2029, which isn’t bad. Nothing OS continues to be one of my very favorite Android skins due to the company’s attention to detail in making the whole operating system “Nothing-ified.” Some of the exclusive features here are quite useful, too, such as Flip to Glyph (put your phone face down to silence it and have the Glyph lights become a notification system), unique Nothing-ified widgets, and fully revamped Quick Tiles designs.

The bottom line, though, is that the Nothing Phone 3a Pro is pretty much the same as the Phone 3a. It’s just the cameras that are different.

Cameras are the true separator

The camera module designs on these two phones look different, and the cameras themselves are different, too. This is the ultimate separator between the Pro and vanilla variants.

Starting with the Nothing Phone 3a, the primary lens is practically the same 50MP sensor we saw on the Phone 2a series. So, if you already have a Nothing Phone 2a, you probably won’t see much of an upgrade there.

With one exception, every lens is different on each phone.

Interestingly, the ultrawide lens gets downgraded, going to an 8MP sensor. For the sake of comparison, the Nothing Phone 2a Plus has a much higher quality 50MP ultrawide lens. This will undoubtedly make ultrawide shots not as good, unfortunately.

Nothing likely made this move to cut costs and make room for the third lens: a 50MP telephoto. Nothing phones have never had telephoto lenses before, so the fact that this phone has one is a pretty big deal. Likewise, you can go ahead and hunt for a phone from Samsung, Google, Apple, OnePlus, or pretty much any company that offers a telephoto lens for under $400. There aren’t many, which puts Nothing in a really powerful position.

These phones are the first from Nothing to have telephoto lenses, with the Pro model having a periscope telephoto lens!

On the front, the selfie camera is 32MP. That makes it slightly better than the selfie camera on the Phone 2a, but not as good as what you’ll find on the Phone 2a Plus, which is confusing.

Meanwhile, the Nothing Phone 3a Pro has a much different camera setup. The only lens it shares with the regular Phone 3a is the downgraded ultrawide, which is sad to see.

For the primary lens, it also has a 50MP sensor, but the hardware is more advanced, so you’ll probably get better results with this lens than you will from the regular Phone 3a.

The star of the show, though, is the periscope telephoto lens: a 50MP sensor with 3x optical zoom. Once again, seeing this on a phone at this price is practically unheard of in the smartphone industry. Granted, this is far from the best periscope telephoto lens we’ve seen, but it is pretty good hardware for a phone this cheap.

While these new telephoto lenses are great, the downgraded ultrawide lenses are disappointing.

Finally, the selfie camera on the Phone 3a Pro is the same 50MP one that was on the Phone 2a Plus, which is good to see.

I’ve dumped some untouched camera samples from both phones into this Drive folder. However, stay tuned for our full review, during which we’ll put the cameras through our usual string of tests.

Essential Key: Not so essential yet

Let’s talk about this new button. As I mentioned, it’s called the Essential Key, and it’s used to add things to a new app called Essential Space. As you can see from the photos, the button is right underneath the power button, which is not ideal. Nothing tried to make the buttons feel different by designing the Essential Key to have a slightly rounded top to contrast the flat power button. However, that still didn’t stop me from accidentally pushing the Essential Key thinking it was the power button. I’m disappointed Nothing didn’t think this through better.

The Essential Key triggers a new app called Essential Space. Guess what? It’s all about AI!

Regardless, Nothing envisions this as a way to save screenshots and audio recordings and have AI use that information to create reminders, to-do lists, and other systems to keep you organized.

Let me give you an example. You’re browsing the web and come across listings for your favorite band’s upcoming tour. You hold down the Essential Key to screenshot the image, and then you record a voice note talking about how you want to see one of these shows. Once you do that, Essential Space will use AI — powered by both OpenAI and Google Gemini — to make you a reminder that you need to buy tickets to that show.

This sounds great, but it doesn’t work well yet. I performed the example I just gave, and it took a long time for Essential Space to process what I wanted to do. Even when it finished, there was no notification that it had done anything. I needed to open the Essential Space app again to see the reminder it made, which isn’t very convenient.

Likewise, I don’t need a new reminder app. Sure, attaching a voice note to a screenshot is cool, as that allows you to keep your screenshots organized and preserve their context. However, that doesn’t require AI and certainly wouldn’t require a button dedicated solely to that.

Essential Space is a good idea, but it’s only half-baked at the moment.

For this to really work the way Nothing wants it to, Essential Space would need to be integrated into my calendar, email, reminders app, etc., which it just isn’t yet. This feature has a long way to go, in other words. Granted, Nothing is very open about Essential Space being a beta feature, so it has room to grow.

Either way, Nothing is all-in on this concept, as evidenced by there being a dedicated hardware button for the feature. However, it would be nice if, in the meantime, you could do other things with the button, such as use it to launch a specific app or toggle a setting. Unfortunately, that’s not possible. It just does this one thing.

Oh, and bad news for anyone out there currently using a Nothing phone: Essential Space is not coming to older phones because they don’t have the Essential Key. You’ll need to upgrade if you want this. Considering this is all software and you could easily replicate the Essential Key with a double-tap on one of the other hardware keys or something similar, this is profoundly disappointing.

Honestly, I feel like the Essential Key and Essential Space are off to a rough start. It’s early days yet, so Nothing could make something cool out of it, but for now, I am unenthusiastic.

Nothing Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro hands-on review: Bold, but shaky

I feel like Nothing has a mixed bag here. The telephoto cameras on each phone, along with their corresponding prices, are sheer wins. Although the downgraded ultrawide lens is a bummer, there’s no denying that it will be hard to beat these two phones if you’re looking for the most versatile camera experience for the least amount of cash.

Likewise, the phones’ overall designs are as solid as ever, and the large batteries, fast wired charging, and high RAM and storage make them immediately appealing.

There’s so much to love about these phones, but also more than a few things that confuse me.

That all being said, the Essential Key feels like a half-baked idea right now…ironically, not at all essential. The very hefty camera module on the Nothing Phone 3a Pro is also difficult to love, whether because of the look, the weight, the thickness, or all three.

One other downside is specific to us folks who live in the United States. For us, these phones will only be sold in the Nothing beta program. That means you can buy them in the US, but they won’t be fully compatible with US carriers. Notably, for AT&T and Verizon, you’ll need to call your carrier to add your IMEI to an allowlist, otherwise you won’t have Sub-6 5G access. There also won’t be the same level of band support as you’d get from a competitor device designed to work in the US, like one from Samsung, Google, or Apple.

Still, the prices here are difficult to ignore. The Nothing Phone 3a ($379.99 at Amazon) is similarly priced to the Samsung Galaxy A35 ($359.99 at Amazon) but has a better processor, a bigger and brighter display, and a significantly better camera system. Honestly, there’s not much that can even compete for under $400. Thanks to the iPhone 16e ($599 at eBay), Apple doesn’t even sell a new iPhone that comes close to this price, and it’s been years since Google offered a phone in its own A-series for under $400.

Even the more expensive Nothing Phone 3a Pro ($459.99 at Amazon) is difficult to beat. The most comparable US Samsung phone would be the Galaxy S24 FE ($552.54 at Amazon), which has a weaker camera system and a much higher MSRP (even though you can find it for much less than that nowadays). Once again, with Google and Apple, you’d need to spend more money just to get into the entry-tier level of what they offer.

Even with Nothing flubbing a bit here and there, these two phones are still extremely compelling. Time will tell how well they sell. Of course, I can’t help but wonder what this means for the eventual Nothing Phone 3, undoubtedly launching sometime this year. Obviously, it needs to have a better camera system than the Phone 3a Pro and a more powerful processor. If Nothing can keep it under $600, it might be a strong contender for the best value phone of 2025.