Nothing Phone 3a Review: Stylish and dependable

UK-based Nothing, started by former OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, continues to take on bigger brands with its modest but compelling lineup of smartphones. They stand out due to their distinctive design, reliable performance, and clutter-free Android experience.

While its latest flagship, Nothing Phone 3, which starts at Rs 79,999, has faced some flak for its high price tag and a slight deviation from its core design, its latest mid-segment offering Nothing Phone 3A has emerged as one of the most sought-after smartphones in India.

Here is the review of Nothing Phone 3A, which starts at just Rs 24,999. 

Design 

Nothing Phone 3A retains the cool and unique back design that makes Nothing phones stand out from rivals. The unique design pattern on the back looks like a stylized redesign of a phone’s circuit board. The glass finish and the LED lights on the back enhance the phone’s look and feel further. The phone comes in three colors – black, white, and blue. The blue variant enhances the look and feel of the back panel further. 

Since the Nothing Phone 3A has a bigger 6.77-inch screen compared to its predecessor's 6.67 inches, it carries a slight heft and weighs around 201grams. Though it's not heavier than any other smartphone with similar dimensions, the glass back finish does make it a bit slippery. It can be fixed with a transparent silicone case. 

Nothing Phone 3A comes with a new shortcut button that captures a screenshot with voice and text notes of anything users want to save.  It’s a handy new tool but cannot be customized for tasks beyond taking screenshots, which seems like a waste. It is also placed very close to the power button/screen lock button, leading to unexpected presses. However, this happens only for the first few weeks, and once you get used to the fact that there is a separate button next to the screen lock button, the fingers' muscle memory gradually adjusts to it, resulting in fewer accidental presses over time.

Display & Software 

The 6.77-inch display is slightly bigger than its predecessor and offers up to 120Hz refresh rate, which is a big boost for fans of games such as BGMI and Call of Duty: Mobile. It offers up to 3,000nits of brightness, which makes videos and games look bright, even in outdoor conditions. Nothing has switched to Panda glass with the Nothing Phone 3A for protection against scratches and drops. The display comes pre-loaded with a screen guard to protect against scratches. 

One annoying thing is the phone automatically dims the display a bit too much even when the room has a decent amount of lighting. This can mar the gaming experience a bit, one can always increase the brightness manually while playing games. 

Running on top of Android 15, Nothing UI is one of the cleanest Android UIs, but it has still managed to add enough features such as cool icons, AI-generated wallpapers, and colour themes allowing users to customize it as they like. The UI is free from bloatware and useless apps that come pre-loaded on almost all Chinese brands. One of the highlights of Nothing smartphones is the glyph lights on the back that you can customize for calls and messages. 

Performance 

Though Nothing has used the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip on the new phones, it is not a huge upgrade over the MediaTek 7200 Pro used in the predecessor. Paired with 8GB RAM and up to 256GB storage, the new chip is only marginally better and so there is no major performance upgrade for users coming from Nothing Phone 2A or 2A Plus. In fact, while playing graphic-intensive games such as eFootball, the smartphone showed quite a lot of lags and frame drops.  

Its handling of day to day tasks such as WhatsApp video calls, designing and editing in apps such as Canva or scrolling through Instagram was a lot smoother and stutter-free. Overall, it is a smooth performer with most tasks and can run most heavy games at medium graphic settings with ease. 

The smartphone packs a 5,000mAh battery that comfortably lasts a full work day on moderate to heavy use and also supports 45watt fast-charging.

Camera 

Unlike its predecessor, the Nothing Phone 3A has three cameras– a 50MP telephoto, a 50MP with OIS and an 8MP ultra-wide. 

In indoor well-lit conditions, the camera can muster decent looking shots with accurate colours. It doesn't try to over-saturate colours, which makes images look more realistic. However, lack of detail in indoor shots is a bit disappointing, especially while taking shots from a distance. The telephoto camera offers 2x optical zoom and performs well with colour accuracy but struggles with detail reproduction.

In low-light, the camera exhibits issues that are common with budget and mid-range smartphones. 

The camera also struggles with auto-focus during low-light, resulting in blurry images. Even with manual focus, only a small part of the image looks clearer. 

The outdoor shots are considerably better, especially in well-lit areas. Closeup shots of flowers, food and people look impressive with ample amounts of detail and rich colours. That said, the camera struggles to illuminate objects in shadow. 

Nothing Phone 3A can capture 4k videos at 30fps. The video quality is better than its predecessor, but nothing worth raging about. Even 4K videos appear a bit grainy and washed out, which is quite common in smartphones in this price range. 

Verdict

Nothing Phone 3A is one of the most dependable smartphones under Rs 25,000. It has a decent set of cameras, a large and bright display, a unique design, and most importantly, a clutter-free stock Android UI. Its performance is on par with many of the smartphones available in this price point, as they all use same class of chips. 

It can handle day-to-day tasks including video playback, social media, web browsing and AI chatbots without breaking sweat.

However, users who are into heavy gaming, there are other alternatives that offer faster chips and better gaming performance such as the Realme P3 Ultra (Rs 24,999) and Poco F6 (Rs 25,999).

Image credit: Reviewer