a Cool Phone for People Who Want to Save Money

It’s been a while since we’ve had our hands on a Nothing device. The last time was the Nothing Phone (2a). It was just as cool-looking, but left me feeling tepid over its middling camera. Based on the specification sheets alone, the Nothing Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro are an improvement. This year, they both run Qualcomm chips and feature telephoto lenses, a nice touch at this sub-$500 price point.

The Nothing Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro are the same size; the only difference is their camera hardware. They both feature the signature see-through casing. The components are all covered by expertly placed slabs of various grays throughout, which helps contrast when the lights—or the glyphs—pop in. There’s also a black variant if you prefer. Those lights come when you receive a flurry of notifications, whether alarms or pings from oft-used applications. You can customize them to your liking, down to the light pattern.

A closer look at the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro

The display is identical on the Nothing Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro. It’s a 6.7-inch AMOLED with a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz. The color reproduction is as vivid as Samsung’s Super AMOLED, an impressive feat for a device in this price category, though the whites are much brighter on the Samsung Galaxy S25, which costs about twice as much. The larger screen size means the Nothing Phone (3a)/(3a) Pro is wide. If you want a smaller phone, you might hold out for the shorter, thinner Google Pixel 9a, but it’s a little more cash than the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro.

The backs of the Nothing Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro are distinctly different, since they house two different camera systems. An oblong rear-facing camera system distinguishes the Nothing Phone (3a). It houses a 50-MP primary camera, an 8-MP ultrawide camera, and a 50-MP telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom. The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro is set apart by its circular backside, which houses a 50MP primary camera, an 8-MP ultrawide camera, and a 50MP periscopic camera with 3x optical zoom.

A closer look at the Nothing Phone (3a) 

The devices run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, a mid-range chip architected to handle on-device AI processing natively, like the chips in a Pixel or Samsung device. Synthetic benchmarking suites like Geekbench 6 are hardly the end-all, be-all of how a smartphone functions, but the Nothing Phone (3a)/(3a) Pro numbers rank above most devices with this same specification set, with help from the 12GB of RAM stuffed inside. There’s an additional option for up to 20GB of RAM with a RAM Booster, which allocates more virtual system resources if you’re gaming or something akin. The extra RAM won’t make apps load faster on this chip, but it will make for a smoother experience as you move from one resource-heavy app to another, like Pokémon Go to Spotify. It also allows for playing popular games like Asphalt Legends without feeling woefully left behind.

The battery life on the Nothing Phone (3a) is substantial for your everyday smartphone life. The 5,000 mAh pack lasts long enough into the day to get you to the charger by the night’s end. We still have to put the Nothing Phone (3a) and Nothing Phone (3a) Pro through our grueling streaming battery test to see how they compare to other devices. However, throughout my week of testing, both phones maintained enough battery after a day of streaming Spotify and periodic social media check-ins.

The Nothing Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro’s stereo speakers are bass-forward, making blasting music at a high volume almost as immersive as doing it from a full-stack Bluetooth speaker—it’s good enough for jamming out while getting your makeup done. If you appreciate modern security, both devices offer Face Unlock and an in-screen Fingerprint Unlock as biometric security options. The Nothing Phone (3a)/(3a) Pro is still only IP64 rated, so keep this suave little light-up device away from elements like water and dust.

Above I mentioned that the Nothing Phone (3a)/(3a) Pro chirps when it sends a notification. That’s on by default, as those are the alert sounds that come with the Nothing OS software, which runs on top of Android 15. They can be piercing and annoying when they go off one after the other, and I’m saying this as a person who surrounds herself with beeping virtual pets. You don’t have to use the alert sounds if you don’t like them, but it’s another example of how Nothing infused its style into all facets of the device.

That style extends to even the incorporation of AI. One of the main features of Essential Space, where all the AI tidbits are, is the Essential Key, which is a physical button on the right side of the device underneath the power button. After you set it up, you can use this button to snap a screenshot or long-press it to record a voice note that AI will then transcribe in the Nothing Essential notes application. I love this feature. It’s pretty similar to what the Google Pixel lineup can do already. The fact that it’s integrated into its own button and available where I know to fetch it makes it all the more intriguing. The only dubiousness comes from the news that Essential Space could be a paid feature in the future and that there’s no easy way to remap it as a shortcut to do something else.

But let’s get down to what really matters for a lot of you. The camera. The quality of the Nothing Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro’s cameras has improved. Images are sharper and more in line with the performance of other mid-range smartphones, like the Google Pixel 8a and even the iPhone 16. The algorithms aren’t too heavy-handed, either, and you can see there’s less post-production on images than, say, the grainy after effects you’d see on a photo snapped with the Pixel’s AI-infused magic. The Phone (3a) Pro offered a dramatic depth-of-field for close-up shots of small items. Both phones are much better at night-time photography than the Phone (2a), though the algorithms sometimes over-brighten to boost the f/1.9 aperture. For comparison, most high-end phones shoot with a minimum of f/1.6 aperture.

The zoom is impressive on the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro, though it’s not a replacement for the glass you’d get paying double the cash for a Pro-level flagship. It’s at least a relief to see sharpness at this price point without it being too obvious that there was software help to zoom in. There aren’t too many artifacts like jagged edges until you exceed 6x.

 

The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro at 1x, 3x, and 6x. 

The Nothing Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro are a good deal if you’re not looking for the most powerful smartphone in the world. The Phone (3a) starts at $380, and the Phone (3a) Pro starts at $460. Both devices come with 256GB of storage. You’re after something different if you’re even reading this and these are the phones for you. Not because of the capabilities of its insides, but because you’re bored with the status quo. Nothing is one of the few companies still holding out for some semblance of the Android platform past, when it was about nerding out over the device in hand.

The Nothing Phone (3a) and Nothing Phone (3a) Pro might also be a welcome respite from how Google and Samsung have joined forces to pursue Gemini AI. There is no Gemini forced onto these phones, though Nothing appears to be toying with some idea of integrated artificial intelligence. At the very least, this latest generation of see-through smartphones isn’t asking you to make giant sacrifices in pursuit of something else.