Nothing Phone (3a) preview: next glowing midranger?

Nothing Phone (3a) Intro

Table of Contents:

Nothing Phone (3a) Specs

Something special?

So, there’s a small price bump. That should be covering that new telephoto camera that the midranger gets, plus possibly the Snapdragon tax. But otherwise, the Phone (3a) looks very much like the Phone (2a) on paper.

It’s Glyph to see you (Image credit – PhoneArena)

The a-series of Nothing Phones still have the Glyph on the back, but it’s a less complex pattern. There are basically three LED strips, in the shape of a circle — unlike the flagship Nothing Phone (2), which has a much more complex pattern.

But the Glyph on the Phone (3a) still gets the point across and one of the strips is still a dedicated “porgress bar” that can be used as a Pomodoro timer or to track the progress of 3rd party apps — like your Uber’s time for arrival.

The back is transparent yet again, of course, but this time it’s a glass panel instead of last year’s plastic. Still, the Phone (3a)’s frame is plastic, so the phone will still feel soft and warm. Granted, it’s a nice feeling frame — it’s grainy and definitely grippy. The buttons on it are all clicking with pleasant feedback, too.

These buttons are your typical volume controllers and sleep button, but there’s also the new Essential Key. It’s there to make it super-fast for you to take notes and reminders for later. If you press it, it takes a screenshot and sends it to the Essential Space. You should be able to search up that screenshot later by using word prompts — same as how Google’s Screenshots app works on a Pixel. If you press and hold the Essential Key, it still takes that screenshot, but you can also record a quick voice note to attach with it. Again, the AI will transcribe that audio and store it all in the Essential Space. More such features should arrive later, but for now, this is what it does.

Essential Key is below the Power button (Image credit – PhoneArena)

The Nothing Phone (3a) comes in three color options — Black, White, and Blue (latter not available not in the US). It’s possible that some limited time colors might appear later, as that already happened with Nothing Phone (2a). The company definitely likes to tease the community and launch special editions to celebrate milestones.

In the box, you get Nothing, ha! Really though, it contains the phone, a data cable, and a cool transparent SIM ejector tool but not much else.

The display is pretty good! (Image credit – PhoneArena)

The display is a pretty-looking OLED panel with a 120 Hz refresh rate. Nothing definitely didn’t cut corners here — from the calibration to the detail and contrast, it’s a pretty display. Peak brithness is rated at 3,000 nits, we measured about 1,200 nits at 20% APL, which is a more realistic measurement for consuming “normal” content. The screen is pretty well visible even under sunlight. Its minimum brightness is 2.2 nits, though, which makes it not the best bedside device.

Its color accuracy is pretty good — greens and blues are slightly skewed as they are with every pentile OLED panel even at the highest tier. In general, the Nothing Phone (3a) screen looks good. You can choose a Standard mode if you want super-subdued colors, and an Alive mode, which boosts saturation tastefully.

Under that OLED panel, there’s an optical fingerprint scanner, which works as quickly and accurately as we’d expect in any modern phone.

Nothing Phone (3a) Camera

A triple cam upgrade?

Kind of a big deal here, Nothing added a 3rd camera on the back of the Phone (3a). While the predecessor had a 50 MP main and 50 MP ultra-wide camera, the new model now has a 50 MP main and 8 MP ultra-wide camera, then a 50 MP 2x telephoto camera for zoom and portrait mode.

If you have plenty of light, the Phone (3a) can take some pretty OK photos. Its dynamic range is a bit narrow and it can crush shadows. But that aside, its colors are pretty lively and details are treated well — not oversharpened. The ultra-wide camera does drop in quality and its colors are a bit more neon-leaning. For zoom – it’s not fantastic with it. We found the 2x lens to be pretty cool for taking portraits with, but not magnifying too much into the distance. Also, when zooming in, the exposure and color calibration vary wildly in each step, as the software works hard to try and clean up the image.

In lower light scenarios, we have the typical issue of midrange phones — colors will get washed out and details much softer, as the phone works hard to clean up noise in the photo.

Video quality

The narrow dynamic range is more apparent in video, where the phone will either choose to burn out highlights or crush shadows. In the sample above, you can see a slight improvement over last year’s model. The Phone (3a) will light up the shadows more and the lighting on Victor’s face is not flat like it came out on the Phone (2a). An upgrade is also evident when the phones zoom in. We couldn’t swap to ultra-wide while recording, though, because the 8 MP sensor does not allow for 4K video capture. If you want ultra-wide shots, you’d need to go for 1080p video.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is a pretty respectable midrange chip from Qualcomm. It’s built on a 4 nm process and aims to bring gaming features and AI to more affordable smartphones. It’s certainly no Elite, but should be able to deliver the performance needed for a daily driver. Of course, it’s more than just the chip — thermal management and software optimization matter!

However, on paper, the MediaTek Dimensity 9200 that powered the Nothing Phone (2a) is actually… faster? Well, that can’t be right, let’s check out the benchmarks:

Well, that’s a bit awkward. The Phone (3a) can barely be called a performance upgrade. It is worth noting that the SoC of a smartphone does much more than just contain a CPU. It processes photos, it has its own energy efficiency, it even adjusts the sound profile before it hits the speakers. Seeing as the Phone (3a) has a slightly better camera and better audio (we talk about it below), then OK, the Snapdragon switch kind of makes sense. However, we are pretty sure many will be disappointed at the lack of a true performance jump.

Using the Nothing Phone (3a) in real life — it’s pretty responsive, snappy, smooth. You will notice a delay when you take a photo and immediately go to view it, and you will have to play 3D games like Call of Duty: Mobile on the low settings. And 4K video edits will take a while, with some frustration. But if you just want a steady, stable daily driver, and not a super machine, it will do fine.

Nothing Phone (3a) Software

Further updates should expand the Essential Space to do more things, and Phone (3a) users will be the first to get access to them. It is yet unclear if it will be ported back to the Phone (2a) or Phone (2), but the wording of the announcement makes us think that Nothing will at least consider and test it.

The Nothing Phone (3a) comes with a promise of 3 Android updates post release and 6 years of security patches, which is pretty good for a sub-$400 phone.

Nothing Phone (3a) Battery

Same old numbers?

Another year, another 5,000 mAh battery — that’s plenty of juice to power a midrange chip in our experience. Previous Nothing Phones have been dependable with battery life. In our battery life test, the Phone (3a) have us a respectable 17 hours of browsing, plus change:

And here, we may be observing another benefit of the Snapdragon chip — the Phone (3a) definitely does better in battery life compared to the Phone (2a), despite the fact that both have 5,000 mAh batteries.

Fast charger! (Image credit – PhoneArena)