Summary
- The Phone 3a Pro is the more premium model in Nothing’s all-new Phone 3a Series lineup.
- The 3a Pro is a mid-range Android handset, but it punches well above its weight.
- A unique design language and an excellent software experience elevate the handset, but its new Essential Key feels a bit underbaked.
A relative newcomer to the smartphone market, Nothing has made a name for itself in the mobile industry over the past couple of years. The London, England-based company has vaulted into the public’s imagination with its line of unique-looking handsets, each of which offers interesting hardware features and a clean software experience.
Coinciding with this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show, Nothing has taken the opportunity to launch its latest line of mid-range smartphones: the Phone 3a and the Phone 3a Pro. With the latter device, has the company managed to maintain the momentum of its previous offerings, or is the Phone 3a Pro just another mid-ranger in a crowded Android playing field? I slotted my SIM card into the phone to find out.
Editor’s Choice
Nothing Phone 3a Pro
The Nothing Phone 3a Pro is a mid-range handset with a 6.77-inch display, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset, and a uniquely designed rear triple camera design.
- Unique design language
- Excellent software skin
- No superfluous AI gimmicks
- Water and dust rating could be improved
- Optical fingerprint sensor is a bit poky
- Essential Key feels a bit underbaked
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Price, availability, and specs
Starting off with specifications, the Nothing Phone 3a Pro packs a solid assortment of hardware into its unique chassis. With a 6.77-inch 1080 x 2392 resolution AMOLED panel in tow, the phone’s footprint is quite large all around. Exact dimensions come in at 6.44 x 3.05 x 0.33-inches (163.5 x 77.5 x 8.4 mm), and the device weighs in at 7.44 oz (211 g).
Under the hood, the Phone 3a Pro is powered by the mid-range Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor, which is supplemented with 12GB of RAM. A 5,000 mAh battery pack is also crammed in, which is capable of topping up at a speedy 50W rate.
Nothing has packed the 3a Pro with a triple rear camera array: a 50-megapixel f/1.9 wide-angle shooter, a 50-megapixel f/2.6 periscope 3X zoom lens, and an 8-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide sensor with a 120 degree field of view. Video recording tops out at 4K resolution at 30 frames per second (fps), or 1080p at up to 120fps. Additionally, a single 50-megapixel f/2.2 front-facing shooter is on deck, which is capable of recording at up to 4K resolution at 30fps.
The Phone 3a Pro is water and dust resistant at an IP64 certification level, which makes it dust-tight and protected against splashes of fresh water from any angle. Unfortunately, a lack of IP67 or IP68 certification means that the phone can’t officially take a dunk.
Elsewhere, the device is outfitted with an optical under-display fingerprint scanner, a bottom-mounted USB-C port, stereo speakers, and Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 compatibility.
The Nothing Phone 3a Pro is available in both grey and black colorways, with an MSRP of $460. For the asking price, the phone ships with 12GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal storage. The Phone 3a Pro goes up for pre-order on March 11 in the US, with shipments expected to begin rolling out on March 25.
What I liked about the Nothing Phone 3a Pro
I’m a fan of the Phone 3a Pro’s camera hump design
I can’t talk about the Phone 3a Pro without starting off with its unique design language. Nothing has made a name for itself by bucking the standard candy bar-style phone trend, at least in terms of aesthetics. The 3a Pro maintains the company’s translucent rear panel design, mixed with a triple ‘glyph’ light setup of LED lights.
More noteworthy this year, is Nothing’s decision to make a statement piece out of the camera protrusion. It’s large, it’s in charge, and it’s controversial, to say the least. Personally, I have no qualms about the design — I feel that it fits in perfectly with the rest of the phone’s look, and I appreciate that it isn’t an all-black monolith like so many other camera phones are these days.
Navigation is stutter-free, animations are slick, and there’s next to no bloatware bogging down the experience.
The Phone 3a Pro’s display is a high-point for me. Its 1080 x 2392 resolution is nice and crisp, its 3,000 nits of peak brightness is impressive, and its variable refresh rate of between 30 and 120Hz makes for a silky-smooth experience. I’m a fan of the symmetrical bezels flanking the display, which are a reasonable 0.09-inch (2.3mm) in width.
My favorite aspect of the entire Phone 3a Pro package, however, has to be the software experience. The phone runs the custom Nothing OS 3.1 software skin atop of Android 15, and I simply can’t get enough of it. Navigation is stutter-free, animations are slick, and there’s next to no bloatware bogging down the experience.
Nothing has sprinkled in some small tweaks throughout, but none of it feels overbearing.
The OS’s fun dot matrix aesthetic is pleasant to look at, and a sense of design coherence is present throughout the system. Nothing has sprinkled in some small tweaks throughout, but none of it feels overbearing. The aforementioned Glyph Interface lighting system can be customized with relative ease, and there’s a Special Features section with access to some more advanced options like RAM Booster and Game Mode.
Nothing has also built an experimental app drawer experience that categories downloaded software titles by genre, as opposed to by alphabetic order. The design closely resembles Apple’s App Library, as well as the upcoming Start Menu update for Windows 11. If you aren’t a fan of the design choice, it’s easy to switch back to the standard Android implementation — personally, I’m enjoying the new style.
In terms of its software update policy for the Phone 3a Pro, Nothing promises 3 years of Android feature updates, in addition to six years of security patches. This doesn’t quite match the seven years of updates promised by the likes of Samsung, Google, and Honor on their respective flagship offerings, but as far as mid-rangers go, the 3a Pro is in a good spot.
Lastly, I’m happy with the Phone 3a Pro’s stamina. The 5,000mAH battery pack is on the larger side, and I found overnight battery drain to be negligible. I’m regularly able to get through an entire day without needing to top up, and the 50W wired charging rate is nice and brisk. Unfortunately, the phone lacks Qi or Qi2 wireless charging, which is a pain point for someone like me who has invested in changing pads throughout my home.
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What I didn’t like about the Nothing Phone 3a Pro
The fingerprint sensor isn’t the best, and the lack of wireless charging is disappointing
I commend Nothing for not falling into the trap of over-hyping and under-delivering on generative and agentic AI features with its latest handset line. I’ve yet to find compelling use cases for most of the AI tools cropping up on competing smartphones, and so their absence hasn’t kept me up at night while using the 3a Pro as my daily driver.
However, Nothing does include one novel AI tool in specific, and it’s rather hit-or-miss at the moment. Dubbed the Essential Space, the feature functions as an enclave for storing screenshots, as well as for embedding and transcribing voice memos. The feature works as advertised — via a dedicated Essential Key located beneath the sleep/wake button — but there isn’t a lot of utility here to speak of.
I can envision the Essential Space evolving into something genuinely useful over time, and I like the idea of always having quick access to voice memos. For the time being, however, the feature simply hasn’t proven useful in my daily workflow. I also find myself accidentally pressing the key without meaning to, despite its slightly concave design.
In terms of raw performance, the Phone 3a Pro’s Snapdragon 7c Gen 3 chipset is decidedly mid-range, as expected. A Geekbench 6 benchmark test netted results of 1,173 for single-core and 3,307 for multi-core. For daily use, the lack of extra processing grunt has had no impact on my experience with the phone. Of course, had I been attempting to play intensive mobile games, I’d probably be singing a different tune.
A Geekbench 6 benchmark test netted results of 1,173 for single-core and 3,307 for multi-core.
Camera performance is the other aspect of the Phone 3a Pro that is mid-range through-and-through. The camera system is capable of outputting some excellent shots, but things start to get a bit fuzzy in low-light conditions. The 3X periscope lens is a nice addition, and it’s far more useful than the 2X focal length shooter found on the standard Phone 3a, for example.
I wish the ultra-wide shooter had better specs — its 8-megapixel resolution is on the low side, even by mid-range phone standards. The 120-degree field of view is perfectly fine in my experience, but it can be tricky to take a crisp shot when environmental conditions aren’t ideal.
One other minor point of contention: in my testing, the Phone 3a Pro’s under-display fingerprint sensor is a bit on the fiddly side. When compared with the ultrasonic sensors found on some other smartphones, the 3a Pro’s reader is slower to initiate and a bit less accurate overall. I also wish the sensor itself was higher up on the screen, as opposed to near the very bottom of the panel.
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Should you buy the Nothing Phone 3a Pro?
As far as mid-range smartphones go, the Phone 3a Pro leads the pack
For an asking price of $460, the Phone 3a Pro brings a lot to the table. The device’s unique design is eye-catching, and its software experience is slick and no-nonsense. The device looks and feels premium, punching well above its weight physically speaking.
Of course, some concessions had to be made — including the lack of wireless charging, the mid-range Snapdragon chipset, and the middling fingerprint sensor — but by and large, the Phone 3a Pro looks and feels very much like a flagship Android phone in disguise.
For an asking price of $460, the Phone 3a Pro brings a lot to the table.
If you’re looking for a mid-range smartphone at a reasonable price, then Nothing’s Phone 3a Pro is an excellent choice. The handset offers much of the flagship Android experience, but at a highly palatable price. Personally, now more than ever, I look forward to seeing what Nothing has been cooking up in the high-end phone department.
This device was provided to Pocket-lint by Nothing.
Editor’s Choice
Nothing Phone 3a Pro
The Nothing Phone 3a Pro is a mid-range handset with a 6.77-inch display, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset, and a uniquely designed rear triple camera design.
