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If you’re a long-time smartphone fan, “Essential” is more than just a word to you. In the same way, “Nothing” means something more than the surface value that most people might take it for. These two Android smartphone brands launched with the promise of reeling in more than just the enthusiast segment, but while Nothing has owned the Essential brand for a few years, we didn’t understand why until the Nothing Phone 3a came along.
Enter the Essential Key. It’s a new key located below the power button that activates Nothing’s newfound AI organization system, Essential Space. Essential Space organizes screenshots, voice notes, and text notes taken when you tap or long-press the key. It’s like a physical DayMinder in phone form, and it tries to prove that AI isn’t some silly, useless addition to our phones. It’s essential.
Beyond that, Nothing Phone 3a marks the first time the company is launching more than one phone model at a time. Phone 3q and Phone 3a Pro give users a choice of design and camera specs. The designs are iconic, and the prices are great, but are these phones essential? So long as you don’t live in the U.S., definitely.
Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro: Price and availability
For the first time ever, Nothing is selling two different models in the same product line. The Nothing Phone 3a represents the most affordable version of the new line, starting at £329 / €329 / ₹24,999 for the model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Customers in India can get a version with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage for ₹26,999.
Power users looking to save money should pick up the version with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for £379 / $379 / €379. The Nothing Phone 3a is available in Black or White, and a special Blue color is available in the UK and India.
The Nothing Phone 3a Pro drops the number of colors to just Grey and Black, but Nothing was careful to ensure that the transparent nature of the phone doesn’t get lost in darker designs, as was the case with Phone 2a. Nothing Phone 3a features two India-exclusive models, both with 8GB of RAM. That 128GB storage model is ₹29,999, while the 256GB storage model is ₹31,999. Otherwise, you can also purchase a model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for £449 / $459 / €459 / ₹33,999.
Nothing Phone 3a preorders begin on March 4 at nothing.tech and will launch on March 11. Nothing Phone 3a Pro preorders start on March 11 from nothing.tech, and the phone will see open sales on March 25. Nothing offers three major Android updates and six years of security updates on the Nothing Phone 3a series.
A word on U.S. availability
U.S. customers will need to order the phone from the Nothing Beta Program. Nothing says it’s still only selling through that program, as Nothing Phone 3a models currently don’t support the full range of bands needed to work on AT&T and Verizon’s networks. I used my Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro review units on T-Mobile 5G with no reception issues.
Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro: What’s great about them
The single most defining thing about a Nothing Phone is its design. Nothing (ha!) on the market looks like a Nothing Phone. Even phones with transparent backs — of which there are very few — don’t look like a Nothing Phone because Nothing goes out of its way to create a transparent design rather than just letting you look at the phone’s components.
Nothing’s design-forward nature inherently differentiates it from anything in the mid-range space. Most phones in this price range look more or less identical, and Nothing’s designs should be celebrated for this reason, especially since Nothing took the criticisms of Nothing Phone 2a‘s color choices to heart, ensuring that “components” are now visible and prominent on the back even if you choose a darker color.
Phone 3a packs in a triple camera system for the first time in an A-series phone, elongating the camera bar on the back. That looks a lot better in my eyes, as the 2a’s two-camera hump looked a little odd to me. Phone 3a Pro swaps that out with a very large, circular camera island that’s going to be a bit polarizing. While I love the look, it’s very dramatic and super industrial, which isn’t something everyone will like.
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If these phones have anything, it’s character and lots of it. That’s simply not something that’s very common in the smartphone world these days.
Both phones sport glass backs and IP64 water and dust resistance, giving them a more premium look and durability enhancements over the Phone 2a series. The sides are still plastic but they have a nice texture to them that gives them grip rather than feeling slippery as some shiny plastic can.
The other defining factor of Nothing’s phone design is the Glyph Interface on the back, which blinks and flashes for notifications, calls, timer countdowns, and more. It’s the same 3-LED strip found on Phone 2a, not the larger full-back design from Phone 1 and Phone 2, but fun apps like Glyph Composer let you make your own ringtones and notification sounds complete with matching LED blinks.
If these phones have anything, it’s character and lots of it. That’s simply not something that’s very common in the smartphone world these days.
These phones use a combination of DC dimming and 10x the PWM rate of a Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy phone.
Both Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro utilize gorgeous-looking 120Hz AMOLED panels. Brightness peaks at 1300 nits with auto-brightness, so these are very easy to see in the sun. The screen is also completely flat and utilizes an optical fingerprint sensor, so finding a good screen protector should be a breeze.
Both phones use DC dimming above 50% brightness for an eye-friendly experience, switching to 2160Hz PWM dimming below 50% brightness to ensure accurate colors and no eye strain for most people. That’s nearly 10x the PWM rate of the Google Pixel 8a, making this yet another eye-friendly phone from Nothing.
Nothing is a brand that I’ve personally recommended to several people who have had sensitivity to PWM dimming from brands like Google, Samsung, and Apple, and has proven to be a better alternative in this regard.
Having a dedicated hardware key to take notes or voice memos is a game-changer, especially since AI organizes them for you.
On the software front, Nothing has done a good job differentiating the look of its software over the years but hasn’t always offered too many “must-have” features until Essential Space came along. Essential Space launches with the Phone 3a series and is accessible via the new Essential Key on the right side of the phone underneath the power button.
Pressing this button takes a quick screenshot followed by a brief dialog that allows you to take a manual note attached to it. Long-pressing and holding lets you take a voice memo that’s active until you let go of the button. All of these can be found in the new Essential Space app, accessible by double-tapping the Essential Key.
Essenital Space is still in beta but its current form is very cool, albeit less useful than I initially hoped. In a nutshell, Essential Space is a digital replacement for a traditional DayMinder or daily planner book, helping you to easily create reminders and notes with the power of AI. While a lot of apps have tried to do this, Essential Space is built into the phone and works incredibly well.
The idea is to get rid of the need to juggle multiple note-taking apps and it has the potential to work very well, but the feature is still fairly barebones for now.
Having a dedicated key to take notes or voice memos was game-changing for me. There were several times when I thought of something while driving, so I grabbed the phone, held the key down, and took a quick voice memo. Nothing’s AI engine organized my thoughts while I was busy navigating the road and gave me a nice summary of those thoughts the next time I was able to look at my phone.
The idea is to eliminate the need to juggle multiple note-taking apps, and it has the potential to work very well. However, the feature is still fairly barebones for now. Organization is limited to making groups, and there’s no way to search notes, but Nothing is bringing three major updates in the near future: Smart Search, Smart Collections, and Focus Search.
We’ll have to wait and see how these all help Essential Space, but for now, this is a brilliant start to what I think will develop into something truly essential to the Nothing experience.
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These are great cameras and help build confidence in the brand and its capabilities.
Camera quality was also surprisingly good and a notable step in quality above the Nothing Phone 2a. The Nothing Phone 2a’s camera was notable for its price range last year but AI processing advancements over that time have changed the game. Thankfully, Nothing kept up.
All of the photos above show the stark contrast between generations, with many of Phone 2a’s photos looking “cheap” while Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro look phenomenal. Zoom detail, in particular, is substantially better this time around, thanks to the new telephoto lenses.
Nothing Phone 3a Pro brings that one step further with a periscope 3X lens that further enhances zoom detail, particularly as you move beyond 10x zoom. Overall, these are great cameras and help build confidence in the brand and its capabilities.
Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro: What needs work
Coming from Nothing Phone 2a, I’m disappointed in the gaming performance of the Nothing Phone 3a series. Nothing switched to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 for the Phone 3a series, and while it offers substantial improvements in multicore and AI processing performance, gaming performance is way down.
Benchmarks showed a 30-40% drop in FPS, and games I tested corroborated this change. Minecraft, for instance, runs between 40-50 FPS on average on the Nothing Phone 3a series, while it’s 60-70 FPS on the Phone 2a. On the bright side, I never noticed the Phone 3a get even a little bit warm to the touch, even after running a series of benchmarks in a row on it.
I also didn’t notice any performance issues during daily use, so unless you’re a gamer, you may never notice this difference. In fact, the CPU and AI processing upgrade brought by this processor is probably best for most users.
Gaming performance is surprisingly weak compared to 2024’s Nothing Phone 2a, and the large camera island on the Phone 3a Pro makes it a tough fit in some gaming controllers.
On the design side, there’s no doubt that some people aren’t going to like the giant camera island on the Nothing Phone 3a Pro. This thing is seriously huge, and while it’s at least uniform and centered, its size gets in the way pretty often.
It fits very awkwardly in my favorite gaming controller, the GameSir G8 Galileo, and has had me wondering more than once if I was going to bust the spring mechanism on the controller because of the awkward fit.
I’m also not a huge fan of the Essential Key’s design. The shiny, convex shape protrudes from the body in a place that makes it too easy to press. More than once, I found myself clicking it or accidentally holding it when taking it out of my pocket.
This is OK for a single button press as you have to tap an additional save button — meaning you won’t find accidental screenshots in the Essential Space. Voice recordings are all saved automatically, however, and it’s not hard to figure out why this might become problematic quickly.
Lastly, the lack of proper U.S. availability is, once again, a huge disappointment. Nothing hasn’t made a phone that works 100% with U.S. networks yet, which is the reason the phone can still only be purchased through the beta program. It worked fine on T-Mobile’s 5G network here in North Carolina, but the company told me that AT&T and Verizon compatibility won’t offer a good experience.
Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro: Competition
The Nothing Phone 3a’s biggest competition is the Poco X7 Pro. At around the same price, it offers better performance, a full IP68 water and dust resistance rating, faster charging, a larger battery, and an additional 512GB storage option. Poco’s software isn’t nearly as polished as Nothing’s, though, and Nothing also offers two additional years of security updates beyond Poco’s policy. The main reason to choose Nothing here would be the company’s style, upgrade guarantee — something Nothing has been truly excellent about — and the clean software.
The Nothing Phone 3a Pro’s best competition is the Honor 200 Pro, which offers a 30% improvement in CPU performance and more than double the GPU performance. Honor is also lauded for its cameras, as seen in our Honor 200 Pro camera review. If these two features are the most important for you, it’s a no-brainer to pick Honor. Honor’s software is also more feature-rich than Nothing, but it’s often critiqued as looking too much like iOS. Choose Nothing if clean software, 6 years of updates, and overall style are most important to you.
Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro: Should you buy?
Nothing is back with a brilliant pair of budget-minded phones, but it’s not as big a win for the company this year as it was last year. Competitors like Poco and Honor have improved admirably in this space, and Nothing’s choice of the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 means gaming performance, in particular, is much worse than last year’s phone.
But there’s something to be said about Nothing’s style and impressive software. The company is second only to Google in its software update cadence, offering tons of new features for its phones every few months. I really like what Nothing OS has become in a few short years and love seeing it morph into something that looks and feels truly unique.
If I had to pick one reason to choose a Nothing Phone 3a or 3a Pro, it would be for its unique style. Plenty of phones look and feel similar these days, but Nothing differentiates itself in really fun ways. There’s a level of inventiveness, creativity, and personality on Nothing’s phones that only Google Pixel phones seem to offer, and even then, Google’s “personality” really only comes through in the software. Nothing has the style factor down pat, and it’s for that reason that Nothing Phones feel so darn cool to use.
Not for nothing
The Nothing Phone 3a is a unique AI phone with a funky design, great cameras, and a low price tag. It’s a good phone, but while you can get it in the U.S., compatibility with carriers is also a little funky.
The essential phone
The Nothing Phone 3a Pro is one of the best phones you can buy for under $500, thanks to its new AI chip, 50MP triple camera setup, and great battery life. However, good luck getting one in the States.