Transparent with Glyph interface

Review: Nothing Phone 4a - A phone that makes you happy

Most of what distinguishes the Nothing Phone 4a are gimmicks, but they are gimmicks that make you happy, and this is also a good phone at a good price.

Published 2 April 2026 - 10:53 Modified 2 April 2026 - 10:57

British Nothing can still be said to be a newcomer in the mobile industry, the founder Carl Pei is a dropout from Oneplus. Breaking through with the marketing required to establish a new brand is something Carl Pei has shown talent for. The same attitude used in the marketing of Oneplus is reflected in Nothing, but Nothing phones also have their own profile that makes them stand out. It is mostly about appearance rather than function, but there is nothing negative about that, often it is precisely the appearance that makes you like a gadget.

Nothing Phone 4a is unmistakably Nothing at first glance. My example is white (it is also available in black, blue, and light pink), and it is the same inside. The back is transparent as it usually is on Nothing's phones, so you can see some of the components inside. On last year's Nothing 3a, some of the circuit paths were laid out to form a clear pattern on the back, here the details inside the shell are not as eye-catching, but a coil around the centred camera island could be the NFC antenna for contactless payments.

Glyph has become a bar

Next to the camera island, we find another of Nothing's favourite gimmicks, the so-called Glyph interface. It consists of a series of programmable LEDs, so in addition to, for example, flashing in different patterns when different people call, they can act as a timer and notification light, and the idea is that the user community can develop their own functions for the interface.

Two things stand in the way of usability with this. One is that Nothing constantly changes it so that it looks different from phone to phone. Here it consists of a bar with LEDs, where one is red and blinks when you are filming with the mobile camera. The bar can function, among other things, as a timer, notification light, and silent ringtone, but any new features developed for previous variants cannot be transferred here.

The other is that the Glyph bar is on the back of the phone, and in practice, you rarely want to interact with it. I can see some benefit in using the interface for silent notifications, you can turn it on so that the phone goes into silent mode when you turn it face down, but mostly the bar is something fun that makes you like the mobile a bit more.

Good performance for the money

Nothing Phone 4a costs 4290 kronor with 8/128 gb memory and 4990 kronor with 12/256 GB. It is therefore a phone in the lower part of the mid-price range, and as such, it feels like you get quite a lot of phone for the money. Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 provides the processor performance. It is a rather modest upgrade in speed compared to generation 3 in last year's model, but faster memory circuits have also been added and the system has been tuned, and I rarely think about it not having top model performance when I use the mobile.

The screen has been upgraded and now has a 1.5K resolution. It is of OLED type with a 120 Hz refresh rate and it has a so-called Always On display so it can show the clock on a dark screen, which means you use the Glyph bar even less. Most importantly, the screen has received a significant increase in maximum brightness and now works well even in direct sunlight.

Really good telephoto camera

Nothing Phone has three cameras on the back. A main camera with a sensor as large as the iPhone 17 and Samsung Galaxy S26, a low-resolution wide-angle camera, and a periscope telephoto camera with 3.5 times optical zoom.

The main camera holds up well against the Samsung Galaxy S25 (I haven't received the S26 for testing yet as of this writing), with similar sharpness, but sometimes slightly duller colour reproduction. In more challenging lighting conditions, such as darkness or situations with high contrast, you notice what the additional computing power in the top models adds. High-contrast images easily become over- and underexposed, and night images are not as sharp.

The wide-angle camera is quite poor, but the telephoto camera is good. It kicks in only at 3.5 times zoom and when I take pictures with two times zoom, I don't notice any use of the main sensor's higher resolution to make the images sharper. However, I do notice it with zoom, and even images with seven times zoom are sharp and reasonably detailed. After that, the image quality declines, and the result is roughly the same as if I enlarge images over 100 percent when I photograph with a higher zoom level.

Stylised interface

Nothing's playfulness is reflected in the user interface. During installation, you can choose between a stylised interface that mimics an old pixelated screen and a more traditional one. The stylised interface is cool but impractical, as the names of the app icons are not displayed and the icons become monochrome, making it unnecessarily difficult to determine which icon leads to which app. Nothing, however, has a series of useful widgets in the same style, and through the web-based Playground function, beta testers create new ones using generative AI.

When it comes to AI, it appears in various places in the mobile, most notably in what is called Essential Space, which also has its own button. Pressing the button takes a screenshot, and holding it down allows you to dictate a voice note. Previously, the Essential button was next to the power button, which led to endless accidental screenshots, but it has now been moved to the other side of the phone.

In Essential Space, AI is supposed to interpret your screenshots and transcribe your voice notes, and be able to analyse them in a larger context so that you can get help acting on the content of the images and your notes. However, I never manage to create a scenario where the AI does anything more than just describe the content of my screenshots and convert my speech to text.

The battery life of the phone is okay without being remarkable, and they haven't yet adopted the silicon-carbon battery technology that provides increased capacity.

Even if Nothing doesn't manage to add any unique benefits with its own features, the design, widgets, and all the details are what give the phone charm and appeal. When it also has good cameras and performance for the price, there's not much to complain about. Nothing Phone 4a is a phone that's easy to like.

Questions and answers

How many system updates are promised for the phone? Three years of system updates and six years of security updates.

Any other Nothing detail you want to highlight? The clock app icon not only shows the correct time, it even has a working second hand!

Do you see any benefit with the Glyph bar? Having a light indicate when you're filming is somewhat practical, and being able to set silent alarms and see when it's ringing when the phone is muted is somewhat practical.

An alternative

Nothing 4a Pro, which arrives a few weeks later, costs a few thousand more, is faster and has better cameras, is thinner and has a metal frame.

Camera example

Most of the time the pictures are good, but in high contrast conditions, details become over- and underexposed.

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