ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The Nothing Phone 3a makes smart tradeoffs for a budget device, excelling in design, battery life, and display quality.
- Essential Space offers a refreshingly subtle AI experience, showcasing Nothing’s restraint and clear vision.
- While some see Nothing’s design as a novelty, hands-on experience proves its signature style runs deeper than aesthetics.
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The Nothing Phone 3a, priced at $379, stakes its claim in the competitive mid-tier smartphone market with a striking design, killer display, and a noticeably subdued approach to AI integration. After spending considerable time with the device, including a globe-trotting trip to Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona last month, I can confidently say that Nothing’s formula works exceptionally well at standing out from its midrange competitors.
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Nothing’s hardware design is the most immediately apparent reason to buy into the Nothing ecosystem. In a few short years, Nothing has established itself as a tech brand with an undeniably original aesthetic that centers around transparent casing that showcases select internal components.
While the transparency primarily reveals framing structures and hex screws rather than circuit boards and memory chips, it still creates a distinctive visual signature. lol
Distinctive design in a sea of sameness
Complementing the design are the Glyph LED lights surrounding the camera bar, which elevate the transparency beyond mere aesthetics into functional artistry. These lights dance and flash for incoming calls, timer alerts, and music playback, adding practical value to the unique design approach.
I particularly appreciated how the blinking Glyph helpfully notified me of new notifications when I had the phone tucked in my breast pocket during MWC.
Nothing Phone 3a’s transparent design and Glyph notification system is unique.
Jason Howell/ZDNET
The camera bar is a distinctive design element, with its pill-shaped surround elegantly housing three sensors within an angled, oblong frame. The 3a’s glass back panel is also a nice premium upgrade from the 2a’s plastic backing, adding an extra touch of sophistication.
While the polycarbonate frame feels comfortable and smooth in the hand, I did notice a small dent from a minor drop that a metal frame would likely have repelled.
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The volume and power buttons share a uniform, flat pill shape that’s easily identifiable by touch and offers satisfying tactile feedback with each press. Setting itself apart is the Essential Space button, which features a shinier, rounded design that protrudes slightly further than the others. Nothing is clearly trying to draw users’ attention to this new button, hoping they’ll be tempted to press it!
Overall, the design is impressive, not just because it’s unique and unlike any other smartphone out there but also because it’s such a strong statement for a device that sits firmly in the midrange of Android smartphones. Style and distinctiveness aren’t qualities that midrange smartphones often exhibit, yet with the Nothing Phone 3a, they’re among its most noticeable selling points.
The Nothing Phone 3a OLED display is gorgeous.
Jason Howell/ZDNET
The Nothing Phone 3a display is another standout feature, especially considering its price point. The 6.77″ LTPO OLED panel delivers exceptional quality with 3,000 nits peak brightness, rich colors, and sharp detail. Even under direct sunlight, the screen remains bright and punchy, while the 120Hz refresh rate ensures smooth scrolling and animations for eyes like mine that these premium upgrades have spoiled. This display truly rivals what you’d expect from devices twice its cost.
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What’s particularly impressive is the Nothing Phone 3a’s implementation of PWM dimming at 2160Hz, a frequency that’s practically imperceptible to the human eye, making it comfortable for extended viewing. This is significantly better than many premium devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, with its much lower 480Hz PWM frequency, which can potentially cause eye strain and headaches in sensitive users.
Surprisingly restrained software experience
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor is an excellent choice for this mid-ranger, particularly as it’s paired with 12GB of RAM. The processor is designed to bring advanced AI capabilities to lower-tier devices, but considering the Nothing Phone 3a has comparatively minimal AI integrations to begin with, the processor is more than sufficient at driving the software experience and gaming.
I only noticed occasional lag when capturing certain images with the cameras, and even then, that was mostly detected in low-light situations.
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The sometimes cluttered Essential Space on the Nothing Phone 3a.
Jason Howell/ZDNET
With Nothing OS 3.1 (on top of Android 15), the company adds subtle customizations while maintaining Android’s core experience, including the option to add Nothing-specific widgets to the lock screen, a nostalgic callback to Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. With Google set to reintroduce lock screen widgets in Android 16 for all users, it will be interesting to see how Nothing adapts its approach when the update arrives in the coming months.
One very big and notable new software inclusion is Nothing’s Essential Space feature. It’s so important to Nothing that they included the aforementioned hardware button to drive the new feature. It’s also one of the only signs of modern AI integration creeping into Nothing’s OS, at least for now.
Tapping the hardware button takes a quick screengrab and allows you to append notes with that image. Holding the button takes the screengrab and fires off an audio note recording that ends only once you let go. On-device AI transcribes the audio recording and makes everything searchable within the Essential Space thread.
After a slow start, I began to lean into this feature as a reminder engine, and that’s when I understood its value. While it took some time to build the habit, after experiencing its benefits, I began relying on it to document important moments throughout my day.
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Though promising, Essential Space still has room for improvement. The interface can become visually cluttered with multiple entries, and accidental button presses throughout the day add to the disorganization.
I’m genuinely excited to see how this feature evolves and find myself wishing my Pixel 9 Pro had a similar dedicated button to help manage my forgetfulness.
Cameras are nothing special
The Nothing Phone 3a camera system is one area where its midrange roots become apparent. Well-lit environments with static subjects can produce quality images, but the absence of optical image stabilization means even slight movements often produce smeared, grainy results that don’t translate well to larger displays.
Barcelona streets, captured by the 5MP telephoto lens.
Jason Howell/ZDNET
While the ultrawide camera passes immediate scrutiny on the small screen, image quality deteriorates noticeably upon even minimal zooming, exposing the 8MP sensor’s constraints. The 2x telephoto looks good even when cropped to 4x, but it lacks dynamic range, which was evident in some outdoor shots, with the Barcelona skylines becoming a wash of white against the cityscape below. Portrait mode typically required multiple attempts to achieve acceptable edge detection around my head.
Good-quality low-light photography is possible but inconsistent, demanding exceptional hand stability to compensate for the lack of stabilization. Ultimately, the camera performance is the most obvious sign that this device is a midrange smartphone.
Boats in a Barcelona harbor at night, captured by the 50MP main lens.
Jason Howell/ZDNET
For a sub-$400 device with numerous premium-like features, the 5,000mAh battery proves to be the icing on the cake. With the Nothing Phone 3a, achieving a day and a half of battery life is consistently easy.
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50W fast charge support is an impressive bonus as well, especially compared to my Pixel 9 Pro, which charges at almost half that speed despite costing more than twice as much. While wireless charging fans might lament its absence, I firmly believe this is a solid omission for devices in this price range.
Battery anxiety was never an issue, as the phone rarely dipped below 30% on my heaviest use days. This performance held true even while navigating Barcelona during Mobile World Congress, which speaks volumes about its reliability when you need it most.
ZDNET’s buying advice
Despite rare and understandable compromises in camera quality, the Nothing Phone 3a makes all the right tradeoffs for a budget device. It stands out with its signature design, delivers impressive battery performance, and features a phenomenal display.
The Essential Space feature is refreshingly subtle in its AI implementation, unlike most competitors, who aggressively showcase their AI capabilities. Nothing’s Phone 3a reflects remarkable restraint and a clear vision from a young company. While some may dismiss Nothing’s design choices as pure novelty, experiencing their devices firsthand reveals their unique signature is more than superficial.
This article was originally published on March 24, 2025, and was updated on May 9, 2025.
