Nothing Phone (3a) Review: There's Something to This Budget Android Phone

Summary

• Nothing Phone (3a), priced at $379, offers a premium design, specs, and unique features.
• A high-quality camera system, impressive battery life, and a sleek design make the phone worth considering.
• It is ideal for most Android users, excelling at daily tasks and entertainment.

Talking about a budget Android phone usually involves a lot of caveats and apologist statements. The Nothing Phone (3a) bucks that trend. It’s a fully-capable device that looks like it should cost $1,000. Instead, it comes in at $379 and is just fantastic.

Nothing Phone (3a)

8/10

The Phone (3a) Series is characterised by clean, geometric shapes, flat surfaces and straight sides, all giving a sense of sophistication in comparison to its predecessor.

Pros & Cons

• Excellent value
• Solid camera performance
• Long battery life

• Disappointing ?AI? button
• No wireless charging

$379 at Nothing See Our Process

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Price and Availability

The Nothing Phone 3a is available to buy in the U.S. from Nothing's official store. It retails for $379 with only one spec configuration available at launch—12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. There are three color choices, however: white, blue, and black.

Specifications

SoC

Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 Mobile Platform

Display

6.77-inch flexible AMOLED

RAM

12GB

Storage

256GB

Battery

5,000mAh

Ports

USB-C

Expand

The Design, Fit, and Finish Are Instantly Appealing

Even before you find out the Phone 3a has a three-lens camera system or that it’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor, the transparent back is what you’ll notice immediately. It’s a defining characteristic of Nothing’s recent phones.

The 3a is constructed out of plastic, but it doesn’t feel cheap. The matte sides and glossy back feel authentic and premium. The frame is slim at 8.35mm, and its clean, modern lines feel sleek.

The phone may feel a tad large, depending on your previous phone. Coming from a 6.3-inch screen to this 6.7-inch one was noticeable for me. It’s hard to argue that the 3a doesn’t make the most of its size, though.

There Are Lights!

The other technical specs include charging speeds up to 50W, reverse wired charging up to 7.5W, NFC, Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi 6, a water and dust resistance rating of IP67, and a fingerprint sensor hidden under the screen.

While it’s hard to classify lighting as a spec, the ones on the back of the phone—called Glyph— are (literally) a highlight. The three light strips circling the camera can be used for notifications or a few other things.

Nothing has a section in the settings dedicated to its Glyph Interface so the lights can be heavily customized, including being turned off completely if they just aren’t your thing. Personally, I like them. I didn’t find a downside to them, only neat tricks. You can use them as a visual timer, a spotlight for photos (separate from the flash), a visualizer for music, or a volume indicator. I found myself wishing for more lights on the back of the phone, not less.

The Glyph Interface is the fun part of the phone. The confusing part is the Essential Key (side button). At launch, it will capture a screenshot and turn on the microphone to allow you to record an accompanying voice note. It then stores it in a special system area called Essential Space.

Nothing promotes it more as an AI button, writing, “Essential Space automatically organizes and catalogs everything for you, generating personalized suggestions, summaries, or action points.” It shows capturing an Instagram post of a concert with the person speaking about remembering to buy tickets the next day as an example.

First, I tried to find natural times I would want to use that functionality but couldn’t. I don’t think it’s silly to want to capture things on-screen for remembering later, but I couldn’t find them. Then, the times I forced myself to use it, I was left wondering how to use the feature fully. You can’t capture copyright-protected video, so Netflix and MLB games were both blacked out when I used the button on those areas.

Probably the most frustrating thing is that the button, seemingly, can’t be remapped to do something else. All things considered, it’s not a negative that the Essential Key exists, but it does have the potential to get in the way and be annoying.

The Camera(s) Keep Pace

The Phone 3a features a camera system that punches above its price range. For the enthusiasts, there is a Phone (3a) Pro that largely focuses on improving the camera for an extra $80.

But no one wants to sacrifice a good photo if they can help it. In which case, I was wholly satisfied with the results I got daily. Here are two unedited landscape photos from the phone.

Having the telephoto and ultra-wide angle lenses available is nice, but the main camera is the important one. The different levels of optical and digital zoom will come in handy at other times. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference, so here are some galleries with different photos.

Comparisons of the same photo at different focal lengths. In order of 15mm, 24mm, 50mm, and 100mm for both views.

While the Phone 3a isn't competing with the iPhone 16 Pro at all, here are some unedited comparison photos from each of some objects inside and outdoors. The first of each subject is the iPhone photo.

Battery Life Supports the 3a’s Compelling Hardware

The Phone 3a has a 5,000mAh battery capacity, and Nothing advertises 26 hours of YouTube viewing—a very applicable stat! For my usage, I wanted to see how it performed in a couple of real-life scenarios where people tend to strain the battery: binging videos and playing games.

I tend to sweat my phone’s battery life on a cross-country flight as I go through movie after movie. So after charging the 3a to 100%, I opened Netflix, set the brightness to around 90%, put the speaker's volume to around 75%, and then let it run for several hours to see how fast the power depleted.

After two hours of streaming, the phone's battery had dipped to 86%. Even if you’re not stuck on a plane, streaming a couple of hours of shows is a plausible daily use. The 6.77-inch screen is impressively bright and vibrant. With a 120Hz refresh rate, it’s also a smooth experience across all apps.

The speakers are detailed and full, even at a high volume. After two hours of Netflix, I switched over to the MLB app to stream a live spring training baseball game because it was the best screen I had around at the time.

After three hours in total of the phone streaming video using a high screen brightness, and louder than normal volume, the 3a was at 79%. A very strong showing for the device.

For another test, I charged the phone back to 100% and let my son play Brawl Stars for an hour. His iPhone XR will show a noticeable hit in that amount of time, so I was curious about how the Phone 3a would fare.

The phone went from 100% to 87% with an hour of play with the screen brightness turned up high. Overall, I’m impressed with the battery life on the phone and think most people should be able to do some battery-intense tasks throughout the day without worrying about the 3a lasting from morning until night.

If you have a high-wattage power adapter handy, you can add a boost of power very quickly, too.

Should You Buy Nothing Phone (3a)?

The Nothing Phone (3a) would be a good phone at double its price, so its $379 cost just makes it that much more compelling. It leans into its plastic materials in a way that feels authentic and attractive.

The phone doesn’t have every feature possible, wireless charging being a glaring omission. But it does have a fingerprint sensor and can utilize face unlock as some niceties to go along with the foundational specs.

The 3a probably won’t or shouldn’t be tempting enough for any iPhone user to switch to Android. The most enthusiastic gadget nerds will probably go for a Pro-variant Nothing Phone, but the 3a is enticing enough that the vast majority of Android users should consider it first. It might be all you need—while looking great and saving you some money.

Nothing Phone (3a)

8/10

The Phone (3a) Series is characterised by clean, geometric shapes, flat surfaces and straight sides, all giving a sense of sophistication in comparison to its predecessor.

$379 at Nothing

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