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Review: Nothing Phone 4a Pro - Charming mid-range mobile with more luxury and performance

Nothing's slightly more luxurious mid-range mobile Phone 4a Pro stands out with its unusual design and good performance for the money.

Published 2 April 2026 - 10:52

British Nothing is a lively newcomer in the mobile market, trying to make its phones stand out with different designs and unique features. Their latest phones are the two mid-range models Nothing Phone 4a and Nothing Phone 4a Pro, and we are now testing the latter. The price is 5790 kronor with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, or 6490 kronor with 12/256 GB.

One of Nothing's trademarks, both for mobiles and headsets, has been the transparent back that allows you to see the electronics inside. Now, with the Phone 4a Pro, they are deviating from that concept and have instead chosen a metal back. We still get a bit of the interior with the transparent camera island.

Metal backs were completely dominant about ten years ago, and one reason they were replaced by glass was that the casing blocked the signal from the many antennas the mobile needs. Nothing has instead chosen to build around it. In total, the mobile has seven antennas embedded in the casing, and I haven't noticed that I would get worse signal strength than with other mobiles. By today's standards, the metal back becomes an original design choice. However, the camera island is made of scratch-resistant plastic, and if you want to protect the mobile a bit more, a transparent silicone case is included.

A lot of screen

Even though this is Nothing's thinnest mobile, it is by no means a small and handy phone. Rather, it is a mobile for those who like to have a large screen area, 6.83 inches, with thin black frames around it. The screen is really good, with fast refresh and above all really high brightness, 1600 nits in sunlight mode and as much as 5000 nits at most in individual pixels in HDR mode.

The performance is provided by the Snapdragon 7 gen 4 processor package, a platform that delivers performance in the upper part of the mid-range, or like a couple of years old top model. It is rarely or never that I think the phone would be speed limited in any way.

Last year's pair of mid-range models from Nothing differed mainly in the camera setup, but here most things are different from the cheaper Nothing Phone 4a, from material choices to processors. Instead, the camera setup is what is most similar between the two models. Both mobiles have a main camera of 50 megapixels with a 1/1.5-inch sensor, a telephoto camera of 50 megapixels with a smaller sensor, and a low-resolution wide-angle camera. However, the camera sensor for the main camera on the Nothing Phone 4a Pro is of a newer and better type. The higher processing power in the phone is also used to give the phone a little more zoom capacity, up to 140 times zoom.

Looking at the image results, the main camera takes pictures with fine sharpness but slightly grey colour reproduction. Especially in environments with muted colours, like in the forest, it makes the images flat where details blend into each other. The camera does a good job with pictures in semi-darkness, but when the night mode gets to work seriously, I get images that are quite blurry.

The wide-angle camera takes pictures that are inferior in image quality, but the telephoto camera impresses for the price. It has 3.5 times optical zoom, but the sensor's high resolution is used to take sharp pictures even with 7 times zoom. Then digital zoom is used. Up to 10 times zoom, I think the images feel sharp, after which there is not much to gain by zooming in. Taking pictures with 70 or 140 times zoom is not something I recommend. The images are digitally sharpened so they look less noisy, but that doesn't mean the images are actually sharper than if you had taken them with 7 times zoom, cropped a small stamp out of the image, and enlarged it afterwards.

A second screen

Next to the camera is another of Nothing's specialties, the Glyph interface. It is a series of LEDs used as a simpler second screen. Exactly how has varied from model to model, but here it is a round intentionally low-resolution screen with a retro feel.

The back of the mobile isn't the part you use the most, but the idea with the Glyph interface is that you place the mobile face down to put it in silent mode, and the Glyph interface handles the communication. It shows different patterns on the small screen when I receive notifications or when it rings. The idea is that I should be able to create individual patterns for contacts, or let generative AI do it, but the user interface for this is not at all intuitive. I never quite understand if I can get different notification signals for each app. When I send SMS, I get different patterns at different times, and Whatsapp sometimes gives the same pattern, sometimes no response at all on the small screen.

In addition to notifications, you can use the screen to start a timer. This must of course be done from the front of the mobile. The Glyph screen is not touch-sensitive but it can be used as a flashlight and it can show the time. It should also be able to do countdowns to upcoming events in the calendar, for example for the Uber app or calendar events. If you set a reminder on a calendar event, you get a countdown bar after the reminder notification has arrived.

One cannot say that the Glyph interface solves any problem that you couldn't solve with the phone's regular screen, but if you like the feeling of turning the mobile over to silence it and having a small retro screen that communicates with you, it can add something if you put in the work required to get the hang of the function.

The system otherwise is Android 16 in an unburdened version. When you start the phone, you can choose whether you want Nothing's theme on the system or a more traditional theme. Nothing's own theme strives for a retro feel with monochrome icons. Since they also don't have the app names underneath, it becomes a real nightmare to see which app is which just from a black and white version of the icon. But as mentioned, it's easy to opt out. Nothing also contributes with a number of widgets in the same style, and they also have an AI function in beta testing where you can create your own widgets with generative AI.

Otherwise, Nothing's clearest AI function is Essential Space, which has its own button on the side. A single press saves a screenshot in Essential Space, a double press opens Essential Space, and a long press makes a voice note that is saved there. The content of the screenshots is also interpreted by AI, which describes what they depict. I think this function never becomes greater than its parts, and I rarely use it.

As a mid-range mobile, the Nothing Phone 4a Pro holds its own well, and if you are also charmed by Nothing's design elements, it can definitely be a phone to love.

Questions and answers

How many updates does Nothing promise for the mobile? Three years of system updates and six years of security updates.

Are accessories included? Charging cable and a transparent protective silicone case, but no charger.

How is the battery life? Not bad, but it doesn't stand out either.

An alternative

Nothing Phone 4a is a cheaper alternative with Nothing's transparent back. It has slightly lower performance in processors and main camera but it's not noticeable.

Camera example

The sharpness is really fine in the main camera on Nothing Phone 4a Pro.

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