Nothing Phone (3a) review: An Essential upgrade

So this is the new Nothing Phone (3a) that I've got in for review today. And like every other Nothing phone... ever... this guy has also created a lot of buzz in the tech community.  There’s a new camera, a quirky new button that I have so much to talk about, and a few other upgrades over last year’s Nothing Phone (2a) (review). And if you think about it, all that stuff makes it a pretty balanced phone under NPR 50,000 right now. At least on paper. 

But you know how they say “the devil is in the details”, right? 

So instead of rushing this review... I took my time... and waited for the first software update to drop to get a proper idea about the Phone (3a). And after daily-driving it for all this time, I’ve actually found a bunch of interesting stuff that you must know before you buy one of these. So… stick around till the end for all the details.

Nothing Phone (3a) review: Specifications

• Design and Build: 163.52 x 77.5 x 8.35 mm, 201 gm, IP64 rating
• Display: 6.77-inch AMOLED panel, FHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate
• Chipset: Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 5G (4nm mobile platform)
• Memory: 8/12GB RAM, 128/256GB UFS 2.2 storage (non-expandable)
• Software & UI: Android 15 with Nothing OS 3.1 on top
• Rear Camera: Triple (50MP primary, 8MP ultrawide, 50MP 2x telephoto)
• Front Camera: 32MP sensor (hole-punch)
• Security: Fingerprint sensor (optical in-display)
• Connectivity: Dual-SIM (Nano), WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, USB-C, NFC, 5G
• Sensors: Accelerometer, Ambient light, E-compass, Gyroscope, Proximity
• Battery: 5,000 mAh with 50W fast charging (no power adapter inside the box)
• Price in Nepal: NPR 48,999 (8/128GB) | NPR 52,999 (8/256GB)
• Check the full specifications of Nothing Phone (3a) here

Nothing Phone (3a) review:

Design and build

• 163.52 x 77.5 x 8.35 mm, 201 gm
• Glass front/back, plastic frames
• IP64 dust/splash resistant

Alright. As always, I wanna start my review of the Nothing Phone (3a) with the positives first. And I knew I was gonna love its design just by looking at it. Nothing is one of the few smartphone brands that knows how to make phones that aren’t boring to look at, and the Phone (3a) keeps that energy alive just fine. With a few useful upgrades. So while its frames are still all-plastic, Nothing has upgraded the back panel to glass for a better hands-on feel this time. And it now has a better IP rating too. IP64 vs IP54. Which means although you’ll still need to be extra careful taking it out in the rain or to the swimming pool, the Phone (3a) is completely sealed against dust.  And of course, how can I forget Nothing’s funky Glyph lights? This is such a cool visual element that it’s always the first thing I check out every time I get to use a new Nothing phone. 

• Is there a new sound effect when I want to create a custom ringtone? 
• Does its progress bar work with more third-party apps now? I wanna know!

Other than the pure “coolness” of it all, I also love how genuinely useful its “Essential Notifications” feature is. Which basically keeps me from being distracted by all the unnecessary notifications by only lighting up when I receive a notification from select apps that I have pre-programmed. So cool! But we had all this on older Nothing phones as well. If I remember correctly, my one issue with the Glyph Interface was that its progress bar only worked with a couple of apps like Uber, Zomato, and Google Calendar. And a year later... I’m a little sad to see that Nothing still hasn’t made any progress on that front. 

The Essential Key

Instead, the Phone (3a) has a fancy new button called “Essential Key” that sits ri…ght below the power button. I know you’re probably wondering about accidental presses, but I must say that once the muscle memory kicked in, it really wasn’t much of a problem for me.  And I kinda like to think of it as this mishmash between a note-taking app and a voice recorder... but on steroids. Thanks to artificial intelligence. So I can single-press it to take a screenshot, long-press to attach a voice memo, and double-press to enter the “Essential Space” itself where all my memories and ideas rest.

And no, you can’t remap this button to do something else, by the way.

The AI then comes in and analyzes everything — by extracting texts from an image or transcribing and summarizing my recordings if needed — to generate useful insights or action points.   That’s the plan, at least. But I feel like Essential Space is pretty half-baked right now. And for an AI product, it simply doesn’t feel all that “intelligent” to me... you know? Don’t get me wrong, it works perfectly fine for organizing my screenshots, voice notes, and stuff, although I expected a bit… more.

A naturally unintelligent artificial intelligence

For example, there was this one time when I recorded a memo asking it to remind me to buy some flowers for my mom. Sounds simple enough, right? But instead of following up with a “what time?” or “when?”, the Phone (3a) randomly decided to set the reminder at 10 in the morning the next day. If I asked Google's Gemini to do the same, it’s actually intelligent enough to ask some follow-up questions before getting the job done. Then there’s also the big “privacy-shaped question mark” since a…ll this AI processing is happening on the cloud. Not locally ‘cause the Phone (3a)’s neural processor is just not that powerful enough. I guess I can definitely see Nothing’s full vision for the Essential Space being a lot more intuitive and a lot more on-device in the future but... it isn’t quite there yet.

Display

• 6.77-inch FHD+ AMOLED panel
• Panda Glass protection, 120Hz refresh rate
• 1,300 nits (HBM) / 3,000 nits brightness (HDR)

Anyway, the Phone (3a)’s display feels quite familiar to me. I’m looking at a big 6.77-inch AMOLED display with slightly thick (but uniform) bezels like always, a smooth 120Hz refresh rate, excellent colors, high-frequency PWM dimming, and pretty much everything else I’d expect from a midrange phone these days. I did notice that it looked a bit warm by default, but I easily fixed it by adjusting the color temperature slider. I also love typing on this thing because of the fast touch response and sharp haptics. Whereas I found its stereo speakers to be louder and with a bit more oomph compared to the Phone (2a) as well. Plus, the Phone (3a) can get much brighter too. Both in terms of full-screen brightness for clear visibility on sunny outdoors or when you’re watching HDR content.  Which reminds me. This guy has no trouble playing your local HDR videos (or ones on YouTube), but since Nothing refuses to pre-install Netflix on its phones, I don’t get HDR playback on Netflix. The other thing you need to know is that Nothing has also swapped out Gorilla Glass 5 for an inferior Panda glass this time. And the fingerprint sensor still sits at the bottom of the display, making it difficult to reach for someone like me with small hands. 

Performance and software

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 (4nm)
• 8/12GB RAM, 128/256GB storage (non-expandable)
• Android 15 with Nothing OS 3.1 on top
• 3 years of OS and 6 years of security updates

Let’s talk performance now. So Nothing has gone with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip this time, and I’m not entirely sure if that was the right call because it’s barely an upgrade over the Phone (2a)’s Dimensity 7200 Pro. No matter what benchmark you look at.  I was at least expecting Nothing to jump to UFS 3.1 storage instead of the slower UFS 2.2 speeds but that didn’t come true either. That being said, the Phone (3a) did manage better average fps and better 5% low fps when I played PUBG and Genshin Impact on these two. And since the new guy has an incredible 40% larger vapor chamber, I noticed how it stayed cooler than the (2a) by 2 – 3°C as well. Of course, the Phone (3a) isn’t meant to be a gaming machine.  And you should probably look into something like the POCO X7 Pro (review) or the newly launched iQOO Neo 10R if you’re a serious gamer. But the thing is, you won’t be getting the clean, smooth, and fun software experience of Nothing OS 3.1 on those gaming beasts. You guys already know that this is one of my favorite Android skins, and with version 3.1, Nothing’s main focus was basically two things: 

• more customization options,
• and better system stability overall.

Nothing OS 3.1 is incredible

So I can now customize the lockscreen with new clock styles and new widgets, I can change how the quick settings page looks, Nothing’s own “Gallery” app is a thing now, I can also group my apps into different categories like on iOS, and then there's a bunch of other under-the-hood stuff. Like optimizing the camera app for slightly faster image processing, which is definitely something I’ve noticed in real-life usage. I know it doesn’t have those fancy image editing or text-generating AI features that you find on every other phone these days, although the bottom line is that you’re gonna end up loving what Nothing has done with its latest software. The Phone (3a) also has 3 more Android upgrades and 6 years of security updates to its name, so that’s just as exciting. That’s certainly not “Samsung” level of updates but I can live with 3+6 years of updates on a midrange phone.

Battery and charging

• 5,000 mAh battery (50W wired charging)
• No power adapter inside the box

As for battery life, there isn’t much of an upgrade on the Phone (3a) since it has the same 5,000 mAh lithium-ion (not silicon-carbon) battery as the Phone (2a). Which gives me 7 – 8 hours of screen time on my regular usage... like the Phone (2a).  The charging speed has slightly gone up to 50W from 45W, but you still don’t get a charger inside the box, and the journey from 1 – 100% still takes a little over an hour. 

Cameras

• Triple camera setup at the back
• (50MP main, 8MP ultrawide, 50MP telephoto zoom)
• 32MP selfie camera (hole-punch cutout)

It’s time to talk about the cameras now, and I just wanna say that I was quite excited to test the Phone (3a)’s cameras. Mostly because this is the first Nothing phone with a dedicated 2x telephoto lens.  So I compared its cameras with the Phone (2a) and... yep. Its zoom shots are clearly better than the digital crop on the Phone (2a). Be it in terms of details or dynamic range. The Phone (3a) does tend to mess up the white balance sometimes... but yeah.

Great for portraits

A dedicated zoom lens means better portraits as well. And this guy takes much better portraits than the (2a) as expected. Once again, it’s got better details and the edge detection is more accurate too. I especially like how well it renders the skin tones ‘cause the Phone (2a)’s portraits noticeably favor a contrasty look and a pinkish tint for some reason. What’s even more impressive is that I can even shoot 70mm and 100mm portraits from the Phone (3a) with minimal loss of details. I’m also digging the selfies from the Phone (3a). Just like the portraits, it manages a more natural skin tone, the background exposure is well taken care of, plus it’s got a wider field of view too. 

A bit of inconsistency

But when I got to the main camera, I found a lot of inconsistencies with the Phone (3a). It uses the same 50MP sensor as the one on the Phone (2a) as far as I can tell, although they have wildly different tuning.  So they both preserve a nice amount of details and the (3a) does have better dynamic range sometimes — but even so — I actually prefer what the Phone (2a) captured like... 60 – 70% of the time. Mostly because of how nice its colors and contrast are. The (3a) also likes to blow out the highlights from time to time whereas it simply fails to process the color red. Turning anything on the frame with a bright red color → orangish. Surprisingly enough, the Phone (3a)’s downgraded ultrawide camera doesn’t suffer from this issue... at all. Which also means that this thing doesn’t have the best consistency between all of its cameras. Now I say “downgraded” because you’re getting a smaller, lower-res 8MP sensor with a narrower field of view compared to the (2a)’s 50MP ultrawide shooter.  But I gotta be honest, the Phone (3a)’s ultrawide shots during the day aren’t too bad. And it actually has better dynamic range most of the time. When it gets dark, you can clearly see how it tries to brighten up the image almost every single time. Sometimes that works in its favor, sometimes it doesn’t... but I was getting better-looking lowlight shots from the Phone (3a)’s main camera overall. Although the larger sensor on the Phone (2a) means its ultrawide photos during the dark are significantly better.

What about videos?

And in terms of videos, I can shoot at up to 4K 30 fps from the main camera on both of them. Unlike the Phone (2a), which can even shoot ultrawide videos at 4K 30 fps, while the (3a) maxes out at 1080p 30 fps.  Anyway, the core quality of 4K recordings between these two is quite similar, stabilization-wise. You’re definitely gonna notice some jitters now and then, while I found the Phone (3a)’s footage to have a warmer color tone and the same issue with highlight management as on its photos. It’s the same with the (3a)’s 1080p 60 fps selfie videos, which are also weirdly contrasty somehow.  Even though Nothing has already pushed one camera-centric update, there’s a lot more work to be done. And before I forget, I can also create and share a custom camera preset on the Phone (3a). All the cool kids on the block like Apple and Samsung have a similar feature so no way Nothing was gonna miss out on that!

Nothing Phone (3a) review: Conclusion

Okay. So to wrap up this review, I’d say the Nothing Phone (3a) is one hell of a midrange phone. Besides the head-turning design, it also has a fantastic OLED display, all-day battery life, and a smooth software experience. A combo that’s truly hard to find in this segment. And like last year’s Nothing Phone (2a), this is among the few midrange devices that carefully avoid any of those “dealbreaker” types of issues. Of course, this one’s not for the gamers. You can go with something like the Infinix GT 20 Pro (review) if you want the best gaming experience under NPR 50,000 rupees.  And like I mentioned before, the Phone (3a)’s cameras also need a bit of tender loving care. Particularly in terms of color consistency, highlight management, and consistency across the lenses. But looking back at Nothing’s history of software updates, I’m sure these things will be sorted out with a couple of future updates. Making it such a balanced midrange phone.

• Watch our video review of Nothing Phone (3a)

Nothing Phone (3a) review: Pros and Cons