To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
As a seasoned deals hunter, I’m used to products getting even cheaper during the sales event, adding an extra incentive to move more stock before the sale ends. It’s much rarer, however, to see a smartphone get three consecutive discounts for Prime Day.
Especially when the phone in question is already as keenly priced as the Nothing Phone (3a). This British-based brand has developed a strong reputation over the past few years as a disruptor, with unique features and eye-catching style. What gets highlighted less, however, is just how well Nothing does budget phones.
Take the Phone (3a); previously averaging £323 in price, this phone has a gorgeous AMOLED display, fantastic battery life and even a 2x telephoto camera. It was great, therefore, to see it discounted down to £289 at the start of Prime Day. And then it was great to see it cut even further down to £277. And today, I’m equally delighted (and a little baffled) to see the price drop even further, to a record-low of £259.
That’s an insanely good price for such a well-rounded mid-range phone. Will it get even cheaper than this before Prime Day is through? I can only speculate but I doubt it – this is already dirt-cheap pricing. For sheer value for money, there’s no better Prime Day phone deal than this excellent Nothing Phone (3a) offer.
You’ve already seen the looks, with the transparent rear, Glyph lighting and NASA-white aesthetic (it’s also available in a plainer black) but here’s a quick rundown of what else there is to love about the Nothing Phone (3a), and why I reviewed it with a full five stars and gave it our Best Buy award:
- Durability is decent for such a cheap phone, with Panda Glass (similar to Gorilla Glass) over the display for scratch protection and an IP64 rating certifying it as fully dust-proof and able to withstand splashes of water from any direction. We don’t always see this level of protection on budget handsets, so it’s a great inclusion here.
- Battery life is outstanding for this price, with the Phone (3a) lasting for over 30 hours in our testing. Even when depleted, the 50W charging makes juicing back up a breeze: it took just 20 minutes to hit 50% in my testing, and reached 100% in under an hour.
- The display is a 6.77in AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2,392 x 1,080 and a peak refresh rate of 120Hz. This screen greatly impressed me during testing, hitting over 1,200 nits on adaptive brightness mode and delivering a fantastic Delta E colour variance score of 0.85 – anything under 1 indicates excellent colour accuracy.
- A telephoto camera is near-enough unheard of at this price. The 2x lens is particularly well-suited to portrait shots, with crisp outlines around the subject and a buttery bokeh in the background. The main lens is also very impressive for this price, with bold, colourful images in good daylight and decent detail retention after dark.
- Essential Intelligence is Nothing’s take on AI and I maintain that it’s the most useful version on the market. This beefed-up screenshot function lets you save images, notes and voice recordings in one place, where the AI then analyses and sorts them into groups and to-do lists, based on the content.
Before we move on to the negatives, it’s worth highlighting that the Nothing Phone (3a) also has a Pro variant. When I originally reviewed them, I didn’t think that the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro offered enough to justify its price and advised waiting for it to be on sale.
Well, it’s on sale. Having averaged £438 since launching, the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro can now be picked up for £389. For the extra, you’re getting 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage as standard, a better 3x periscope telephoto camera that captures incredible detail and a sharper selfie camera.
As you can see, it doesn’t add much, and the Nothing Phone (3a) is far cheaper, so most will be better served by sticking with that one. The only thing about the Pro that could be tempting is the periscope telephoto camera. It’s a great shooter and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a similar lens at this price. If you want to check out the deal, hit the button below.
Okay, negatives time, and conveniently, the issues apply to both the Nothing Phone (3a) and the (3a) Pro. First of all, the software support is decent for a cheap phone, with three years of OS updates and six years of security patches, but there’s one rival that offers much better: the Google Pixel 8a. Released last year and pledged seven years of both, the Pixel 8a will remain updated until 2031, and is currently down to just £349.
My only other issue is, admittedly, a minor one. The Essential Intelligence AI also comes with a dedicated button, with the Essential Key sitting underneath the power button on the right edge. I found this placement to be fiddly at best and would have preferred it to be higher up on the left edge – or removed completely.
I feel confident in saying that the amount of phone you’re getting for this price (£259, for those who may have lost track by this point) makes this Nothing Phone (3a) deal one of the biggest bargains of Prime Day. If you want to compare it to the other offers I’ve found, head over to my dedicated Prime Day phone deals live blog, where I’m bringing you all the latest and most exciting discounts all week long.
Amazon Prime Day savings are open to Prime subscribers only. The good news is that you can sign up to a 30-day free trial if you don’t want to commit to the monthly cost.
