First impression

Affordable Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro launched - We have already started testing

Nothing has released the mid-range mobile Nothing Phone 3a in two variants, where the Pro model has an unusually ambitious camera.

Published 6 March 2025 - 14:39

The first phones in British Nothing's third generation are mid-range phones. The top model, Nothing Phone 3, will come later. Nothing Phone 3a comes in two models where the regular Phone 3a is also sold with 8/128 GB or 12/256 GB memory. The price is thus between 4290 SEK and 5790 SEK depending on which variant you buy.

No matter which model you choose, you get a 6.77-inch large and bright OLED screen. The screen can shine with up to 1300 nits in direct sunlight and 3000 nits when displaying HDR film. It also has a refresh rate of 120 hertz that responds quickly and smoothly in most apps even when set to dynamic updating.

The chipset in the phones is Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, a chipset that delivers performance that feels reasonable for the price tag. You notice that it is not a top model as the phones sometimes need a moment to load new apps or web pages, but for most uses, the phones never feel sluggish.

It is the appearance that more than anything else distinguishes Nothing's phones from the competition. Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro have a grip-friendly plastic frame and a transparent glass back where you can see some of the electronics inside. The predecessor Nothing Phone 2a had a plastic back and an S-shaped pattern that was more decorative, but on Nothing Phone 3a, it is actual wiring we see through the glass, laid in an aesthetically pleasing pattern. Under the glass is also the Glyph interface, three curved LEDs placed around the camera island. Glyph has been around since the first Nothing Phone and is intended to function as a form of notification light, besides being aesthetically pleasing. You can have different flashing patterns for different apps and incoming calls, and if you, for example, set a timer, one of the LEDs partially lights up and the countdown is visible as a shrinking bar. Of course, you don't see this if you are looking at the phone's screen, so the idea is to place the phone face down. If you want, silent mode can then be activated so that the glyph interface is the only way notifications are noticed.

Appearance Matters

The focus on appearance is reflected in the user interface of Nothing OS 3.1 with its minimalist and monochrome design. It wouldn't be a new mobile phone in 2025 if it didn't have some form of innovation in artificial intelligence. Below the on/off button is a new button linked to the AI function Essential Space. Pressing the button once takes a screenshot, to which you can add a text or audio note. Long-pressing it starts a dictation function. What you save in this way goes into the Essential Space app, which will analyse text, audio, and images with AI to summarise what it was all about. For example, if you screenshot a movie ad and say book tickets, the app will understand that you want to book tickets for that movie and create a reminder for it.

How this works in practice we will return to in our full test, but so far we can note that the button's placement next to the on/off button is not entirely successful. Despite Nothing's efforts to give the button a different appearance and shape that feels distinct, there are a lot of accidental screenshots when you just want to turn the phone's screen on or off.

The only difference between the regular Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro, apart from different colour options and that only the Pro model supports esim, is the cameras. Both models have three cameras on the back; main camera, wide-angle camera, and telephoto camera, but only the 8-megapixel wide-angle camera is the same between the two models. The main camera on both models is 50 megapixels, but the Nothing Phone 3a Pro has a larger camera sensor with better light intake. The telephoto camera is also 50 megapixels on both, but the regular model has two times optical zoom, while the 3a Pro has periscope zoom with three times optical zoom. Both models utilise the telephoto camera's high resolution to provide four and six times zoom, respectively, while maintaining sharpness, and at higher zoom levels, AI is used to further sharpen the images.

This makes the camera setup in the Nothing Phone 3a Pro one of the most ambitious we've seen in a mid-range mobile, and it will be interesting to compare the image results in detail in our full test.

It also means that the camera island, which is quite a discreet feature on the Nothing Phone 3a, becomes a substantial piece on the Nothing Phone 3a Pro. You might therefore prefer to choose the regular variant over the Pro variant to get a more manageable mobile, and not just for the price.

The battery is 5000 mAh in both versions and they can be charged with up to 50 watts charging speed, which should give 50 percent in 19 minutes. However, a charger is not included and must be purchased separately. According to Nothing, the phones should have noticeably better battery life than their predecessor thanks to the new chipset, and we also get excellent results in our test of the phones' screen time.

Nothing Phone 3a can be pre-ordered from 5 March and will be available in stores on 11 March. The recommended price is 4290 SEK with 8/128 GB and 4790 SEK with 12/256 GB. As a pre-order offer, a 45-watt charger is included in the price.

Nothing Phone 3a Pro can be pre-ordered on 11 March and will be available in stores on 25 March with 12/256 GB storage at the recommended price of 5790 SEK. Nothing Ear A is included as a pre-order offer.