Nothing Phone (3a) Vs IPhone Camera Comparison Undermined By Sly Ultrawide Video Trick [Gallery]

In a video this week, Nothing shows off how its upcoming Phone (3a) series brings big camera improvements, but there’s a shady little video trick that you might have missed when the video quality is compared to iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Nothing’s camera teaser video for the Phone (3a) series is a fun watch, offering a fairly comprehensive look at what’s new for the cameras, and showing how they compare to Apple’s latest iPhone. It stacks up quite well overall, but have a surprisingly big win in the video department.

Apple’s iPhones have traditionally always been significantly better in the video department compared to Android devices, which is why it was a bit strange that the Phone (3a)’s clip looks much better than the iPhone’s. The comparison takes place just after the 5-minute mark in the video.

It seems that’s not due to the quality of the camera, though, but rather a sly little trick to take the iPhone down a notch.

As some comments on Nothing’s video (as well as our own comments section) pointed out, it appears that the iPhone was shooting its video clip – of a scene under a bridge while riding a bike – with its ultrawide lens, while the Nothing Phone (3a) series device was shooting with a standard lens. This isn’t easy to see in the very quick clips shared in the video, but Nothing shared the full samples and, in the uncropped video, it’s clear to see that the iPhone is using its ultrawide lens to record. The ultrawide lens on iPhone is typically considered one of the worst for video quality, which led to the shaky, noisy clip in the camera comparison.

Nothing hasn’t acknowledged this.

In the video, Nothing notes that it lowered the iPhone to 4K30 to match the Phone (3a), saying that was done to “make it fair.” The quality of the clips isn’t discussed, with Nothing only discussing the stabilization. But it’s rather obvious to anyone watching that Nothing’s video is sharper and has significantly less noise.

We pulled four portions of the video to show side-by-side below. In the first, look at the sign between the two columns and specifically how far apart the columns are. While the two videos don’t perfectly sync as they were taken as separate times, the columns look much farther apart in the iPhone video, strongly suggesting the use of an ultrawide lens. The same can be seen in the second image.

Later in the clip, the biker emerges from the tunnel, where we can further see that an ultrawide lens is being used on one device but not the other. The sign at the exit to the bridge appears much farther away from the column, and the city also looks much more spread out. In the final image, look at the distance of the pink bus in both shots, with the iPhone’s looking drastically further away.

As mentioned, Nothing hasn’t acknowledged this discrepancy.

It’s entirely possible this wasn’t intentional, but that seems unlikely given the context of the test. It’s a bit disappointing to see as, realistically, no one expects Nothing’s mid-range device to be directly comparable to an $1,100+ smartphone, yet it still holds up fairly well throughout the comparison, only to see this trick at the end undermine the “fair” comparison.

The Nothing Phone (3a) series is still shaping up to be a solid release, with teasers confirming the addition of a telephoto lens, an upgrade to Snapdragon processors, and more. The full release takes place in March.