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- Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: What you need to know
- Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Price and competition
- Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Design and key features
- Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Displays
- Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Performance and battery life
- Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Cameras
- Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Verdict
The Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro are trying something different this year. The London-based brand’s previous mid-range phones launched at different points last year, with the Phone (2a) arriving early on and the Phone (2a) Plus following several months later, but this time, the Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro are launching concurrently.
I’m going to cut to the chase and say that I don’t think the Phone (3a) Pro offers nearly enough to be worth its higher price. The standard Nothing Phone (3a), however, is a wall-to-wall improvement. Performance and battery life are better than last year, the camera suite adds a telephoto lens – extremely rare at this price – and even the inevitable inclusion of AI feels more thoughtful and less tacked-on than most other brands.
Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: What you need to know
The Essential Key and its associated AI are the most obvious new features but they’re far from the only changes. The Phone (3a)’s display is slightly larger than the Phone (2a)’s (6.77in vs 6.7in) and has a marginally lower resolution of 2,392 x 1,080, although the refresh rate is still 120Hz.
Keeping the lights on is the new Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset, backed by either 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage or 12/256GB. The battery is once again a 5,000mAh cell but charging is a little faster, bumping up from 45W to 50W.
And while the 32-megapixel selfie camera and 50-megapixel main camera are the same as last year, it’s all change with the other rear lenses. The ultrawide camera has been massively downgraded, from 50-megapixel to 8-megapixel, and we now have a 50-megapixel 2x telephoto as the main secondary camera.
The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro is broadly the same but with a couple of key changes. There’s only a 12/256GB model available and the camera array is a little stronger, with a 3x periscope telephoto camera that has OIS support and a larger 50-megapixel selfie camera.
Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Price and competition
Both variants of the Nothing Phone (3a) are a little more expensive than their counterparts from last year. The model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage costs £329 – £10 more than the Phone (2a) – while the 12/256GB version costs £30 more than its predecessor, at £379. The (3a) Pro, meanwhile, is £449, which will set you back £50 more than last year’s Phone (2a) Plus.
Until the Pixel 9a arrives, the Google Pixel 8a remains unchallenged as our favourite phone in this price range. It starts a fair bit more expensive than the Phone (3a) – usually £499 for the 128GB model, £559 for the 256GB – but can often be picked up on sale for as low as £349. The Samsung Galaxy A56 also costs around the same amount, with the sole 256GB model costing £499.
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Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Design and key features
The overall design of the Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro are near-enough identical. Both are IP64-rated for dust and water resistance and have Panda Glass over the display for scratch protection. They measure 78 x 8.4 x 164mm but the Phone (3a) Pro weighs a little more at 211g, compared to the Phone (3a)’s 201g.
Both phones once again carry forward Nothing’s iconic style – with exposed components beneath the rear plate and three Glyph lighting strips around the cameras – but where the Nothing Phone (3a) uses a pill-shaped bubble housing like the Phone (2a), the Phone (3a) Pro’s rear is dominated by a large circular module that sticks out a good few millimeters.
The scattered lens layout and horizontal rectangle housing the periscope telephoto lens create an interesting aesthetic but, between the extra depth and the thick rim that encloses it, the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro’s camera module just looks clunky.
The only other difference in design is the colour choice: the Phone (3a) Pro comes in either Black or Grey, while the Phone (3a) gets a striking Blue variant, alongside the Black and White models.
Both phones have a new button: the shiny Essential Key, which sits just below the power button on the right edge. I’m not a fan of this placement – as a lefty, it’s fiddly at best – but the function is one of the more interesting AI inclusions I’ve seen thus far.
Tapping the Essential Key once captures whatever is on your screen, giving you the option to either type or record a note to go with it, before tapping again to save it. You can also long press to automatically start recording a voice note and the audio is then sent to the Essential Space app, where you can arrange clips into folders for quick access. The only problem here is that there’s no search bar, so you do have to scroll through manually.
The best part is that AI will analyse the content of the capture and your notes, automatically drawing out key information and organising it into a to-do list. Capture a movie listing, for instance, and it will clock the date and start time and set up a reminder, sending you a notification ahead of time.
You can even set a widget that displays upcoming reminders, with the text changing from white to red when you’re risking overrunning an appointment – as someone with ADHD-influenced time management, I find this far more valuable than the usual grab bag of smartphone AI features.
The only downside to the software is that you can get longer support from rivals. Both phones launch with NothingOS 3.1, which is based on Android 15, and are confirmed to get three years of OS updates and six years of security patches. This is a little behind the curve, as both the Pixel 8a and Pixel 9a get seven years of updates, and Samsung’s recent Galaxy A56 is due six years.
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Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Displays
The 6.77in AMOLED display is the same on both phones, which is great because it’s a very strong panel. Black and contrast levels are as close to perfect as it gets and brightness is a decent improvement over last year’s models. With auto brightness disabled, I recorded a peak of 722cd/m2, while switching it back on and shining a torch on the light sensor pushed it up to an outstanding 1,232cd/m2.
The Alive colour profile dials up the saturation, making it best for streaming and gaming, while the Natural setting is better for authenticity. Testing the latter profile, I recorded an sRGB gamut coverage of 97.6% with a volume of 99.8%, while the average Delta E colour variance score came back at 0.85 on the Phone (3a) and 0.97 on the Pro. We’re looking for results of 1 or under here, so both phones are right on the money.
Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Performance and battery life
The hardware inside the Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro is identical, with both using the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset, comprising one high-performance core clocked up to 2.5GHz, three performance cores at 2.4GHz and four 1.8GHz efficiency cores.
Therefore, it’s no surprise to see the pair performing the same in the Geekbench 6 CPU tests. The single-core results are no different to the Nothing Phone (2a) but the multi-core results make up for it, showing a fantastic 36% improvement over the previous generation.
We don’t see the same kind of improvement in the GPU tests, however, with the Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro actually scoring a slightly lower than the Phone (2a). That’s a little disappointing but the difference isn’t enough to be noticeable in action. Both handle simple games well enough, but if you want smooth 3D gameplay, the Pixel 8a is a better bet.
One thing I can’t wrap my head around is the difference in battery life. The Phone (3a) lasted for a fantastic 30hrs 30mins in our looping video test, surpassing the Phone (2a) by around three hours.
Despite using all the same relevant hardware, however, the Phone (3a) Pro tapped out after 27hrs – more than three hours less than its non-Pro counterpart. Even after repeating the test, I was left with the same difference, but whichever you choose, battery life is excellent and you should be able to eke out a couple of days from them if you’re careful, without having to plug in.
When you do, you’ll find charging speed pretty good, too. The 50W charging is nippier than most other options in this price range, taking the battery from empty to 50% in around 20mins and on to full in under an hour. By contrast, the Samsung Galaxy A56 (45W) took 1hr 15mins and the Pixel 8a (18W) took nearly two hours.
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Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Cameras
The 50-megapixel main camera is broadly the same as that found on the Phone (2a). It’s not the best camera around at this price but it’s still decent enough. Highlights are blown out more than I’d like but the colours are nicely natural and detail is decent throughout.
Switching to the telephoto cameras, we finally see the worth of the Phone (3a) Pro. Its 50-megapixel (f/2.6) 3x periscope telephoto camera is a real beaut’, with its larger 1/1.95in sensor capturing a greater level of detail than the Phone (3a)’s 1/2.74in sensor.
The Phone (3a)’s 50-megapixel (f/2.0) 2x shooter is still an excellent inclusion, especially for a phone this cheap, but you can see in the image below how much more detail the Pro was able to capture.
Both phones do a decent enough job at night photography but once again, the Pro produces slightly superior images, with more natural colours and greater definition – particularly evident in the building below.
The 8-megapixel (f/2.2) ultrawide camera on both phones is mediocre. Colours are more washed out than on the main sensor and the level of detail leaves a lot to be desired, especially towards the edges.
Video once again tops out at 4K/30fps but Nothing has added OIS support to this generation, so footage feels that little bit more stable. This is far from guaranteed at this price – the Samsung Galaxy A56’s camera, for instance, doesn’t support OIS for video recording, despite costing over £100 more than the Phone (3a).
Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro review: Verdict
The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro really needed more to better differentiate it from its sibling – a faster processor, LTPO display, 4K/60fps video and wireless charging all come to mind as options. The periscope telephoto camera is excellent but it isn’t enough to justify the extra cost. If you really want it, I’d wait until the Phone (3a) Pro is discounted below £400.
The Phone (3a), however, is an absolute delight. It packs a solid telephoto camera of its own, which is near-enough unheard of for phones this cheap, and makes improvements in just about every way that matters, with a brighter display, faster performance and better battery life. I’d love to see Nothing matching the software support of Samsung and Google in the future but even still, the Phone (3a) is easily the brand’s best handset to date.
