Today is Nothing’s day to introduce new products, both of which happen to be their next smartphones. The Nothing Phone (3a) and Nothing Phone (3a) Pro are official and very compelling for the price, even if their US availability is still weirdly limited. As we talk through these new phones, I think you’ll find the release limitation here a bit annoying, as these are two phones easily worth considering, especially for the price.
Nothing’s Phone (3a) is priced at $379 and the Phone (3a) Pro is priced at $459 here in the US. Both phones are similarly spec’d, only differing in some minor design elements, as well as the telephoto and selfie cameras. They offer unique and fun software ideas, a really neat design that feels better in the hand than the price should allow, and overall performance to get you through everyday usage without noticing hiccups. Nothing is also introducing a dedicated button to the “Essential Space,” which is sort of like a dumping ground for your daily life that is organized by AI. More on that in a minute.
You can see the phones here (Phone 3a Pro above, Phone 3a below) in their unique colorways and designs. Nothing is continuing to push clear backsides that show off elements of the phone, with their lighting system around each camera once again a part of the experience. The Phone 3a Pro has a fairly large puck-shaped camera housing that is likely there to hold the telephoto periscope lens, while the regular Phone 3a has a much more muted bump.
I don’t think anyone could look at these phones and not think, “Yeah, man, that shit is cool to look at.” Nothing sent us each phone for review purposes, letting us test the “Grey” 3a Pro and the “White” 3a. That blue color for the 3a also looks quite fabulous in these pictures.
Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro Specs: In terms of specs, Nothing has chosen to power each phone with the newish Qualcomm Snapdragon 7S Gen 3. This is an upper-tier mid-range chipset that should be able to handle almost anything you can throw at it. During testing, I can confirm that in most use cases, this chip was more than enough. The only times I noticed sluggishness or stuttering was during a first boot of Pokemon Go, a notoriously poorly optimized game. Once I let it run a bit, it typically smoothed out. Everything else was great.
We also get 12GB RAM and 256GB storage in each, large 5000mAh batteries with 50W wired charging (no wireless charging), large 6.77″ AMOLED displays with 120Hz refresh rates, in-display fingerprint readers (that are quite quick), WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4, and triple rear cameras. The big differences, as I mentioned earlier, are through the 50MP periscope telephoto lens as well as a 50MP selfie camera in the Pro model. They also have different main 50MP sensors. Overall, the takeaway there is that the 3a Pro is a higher-end camera system, which is why you are paying more.
Each phone runs NothingOS 3.1 and Android 15 out of the box. Nothing is doing Android the way it is supposed to be done, by not screwing up the basics (like the way notifications are handled) and yet finding ways to improve upon Google’s base builds. Nothing has a tremendous set of widgets to help you customize your home screen (and lock screen), an icon theming app that does all of your apps, super quick animations, lovely sounds, quick search in the app drawer, and even some “Special” features like AirPods support.
As far as updates go, Nothing says these phones will see updates for “6 years starting from when the device first became available on nothing.tech.” The level of updates includes “three years of Android updates and six years of security updates in addition to corrective and functionality updates.”
I mentioned the Essential Space earlier, so let’s dive back into that. Nothing has created this area as an AI-powered hub of sorts. You add to it by clicking this new dedicated button on the right side of the phone that sits just under the power button. You can click it whenever you want to take a screenshot of whatever you are looking at, which you can then add notes to either by voice or typing. You can also hold-in this new button to record audio at any moment, with reminders or notes about life. You can even open the camera, point it at something, and then hold that button in to keep track of stuff through your lens. This all gets added to the Essential Space, which tries to organize everything you’ve saved. You can create projects to keep track of, wait for the Space to turn your audio notes into actionable things like reminders, etc.
It’s early enough in this Essential Space idea that we have no clue if it’s awesome or meh, but I certainly like the idea of just pressing a button to get a phone to help me better maintain my life’s daily grind. I’m really looking forward to trying it out further.
And now onto the unfortunate part. Nothing is launching these phones in the US under their “US Beta Program.” All that means in reality is that you are buying a phone in the US that may or may not work that well with US carriers. We asked Nothing for some clarity, and they told us that both phones should work well with AT&T and T-Mobile, but that Verizon support could be a bit finicky. They also mentioned that you would need to contact their support to get whitelisted for 5G access on AT&T and Verizon. What a pain.
Below, we have all of the supported bands:
AT&T:
LTE Bands: 2/4/12/17/5/48/66
5G Bands: 2/5/66/77
T-Mobile:
LTE Bands: 2/4/5/12/41/48/66
5G Bands: 41/77
Verizon:
LTE Bands: 2/4/5/48/66
5G Bands: 2/5/66/77
CDMA is not supported.
So let’s say you have read everything and decide to buy one of these devices because the price is great, as is the design and set of features, when can you do that? The Nothing Phone 3a is up for purchase today (March 4) with shipping happening around March 11. The Nothing Phone 3a Pro goes up for order on March 11 and should start arriving around March 25.
Availability – Phone (3a) Pro: Available to order from March 11, with deliveries starting March 25.
We may have quick reviews in the coming days/weeks as we continue to test. It really is too bad about this limited US launch, though – these phones sure seem pretty great out of the box and for this price.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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By Nermeen Nabil Khear 
