It’s been quite a time since I’ve been using the recently launched Nothing Phone 3a. Every time I use the smartphone, it leaves me wondering how can be a budget mid-range device be so good. But it’s not all blue, there are some obvious cons as well.
I will be making this review pretty straightforward. I’m not going to waste your time with unboxing stuff or listing specs you can find anywhere. Instead, I’ll cut straight to the chase.
This review has three parts: what I liked about the gadget, what I didn’t like, and my final take. If you’re here for an honest opinion, stick around—I’ll give it to you straight.
What does the Nothing Phone 3a get right?
Design
The moment I unboxed the smartphone and held it in my hands, I was able to feel the “difference”. It doesn’t feel very premium, neither does it feel cheap but it does feel “different”. It’s not like the typical devices we get on the budget. It feels sturdy in the hand. The design, though subjective, is still attractive and standalone.
Glyph Interface is another good feature and it’s really useful. You can use it as an indicator for calls, volume level, messages etc and the fun fact? It can also be synchronized to the music being played on the device.
OS
The Nothing OS 3.0 also brings an overall positive experience. The UI feels fast and lightweight. There are good customization options as well. You can refer to our full review of Nothing OS 3.0 for more context.
Display
Another thing it gets right is the display. Though it’s not the absolute best display you can get in the segment. The display is vibrant and gets bright enough on the outdoor exposure. The 120Hz high refresh rate is also implemented well across the UI. There are no green tint issues as reported on past Nothing devices. While there is no Corning Gorilla Glass protection, it does gets a Panda Glass protection which is alright.
Camera
Now coming down to one of the most hyped features of the device-the cameras. It has a triple rear camera setup with a 50-megapixel 24mm primary lens with 1/1.57″ sensor size and f/1.88 aperture. The secondary camera is a 50-megapixel 2X optical zoom telephoto with f/2.0 aperture and 1/2.74″ sensor size. The tertiary camera is an 8-megapixel 16mm ultrawide lens with f/2.2 aperture. On the front, we have a 32-megapixel 1/3.44″ selfie snapper with an aperture of f/2.2. The primary camera gets the support of OIS whereas others don’t.
Technicalities aside, the overall camera output is nice. The primary camera performs well in both low light and artificial light conditions. The colors come out to be good and the lens switching is also fine with a little color shift. The ultrawide camera is average at its best. In natural lighting, it captures decent shots with good details. But on the other hand, it becomes barely useful in case of low light or artificial light conditions.
Check out all samples in Google Photos.
Primary Camera:
Ultrawide:
Telephoto:
5X and 10X Digital Zoom:
Low Light Shot:
Now my favorite part of the camera – the telephoto. This lens in particular has impressed me the most amongst all the other lenses. It captures the details well, works well in both natural lighting and artificial lighting conditions and gets the colors right with no useless contract or saturation boost. The company says that it can do up to 4X in-sensor zoom. In my testing, I found the telephoto to be pretty usable up to 8X zoom and beyond that, images start to come out softer and noisy.
The camera app is also very optimized with lots of options. One of the standout features of the Nothing Phone 3a series is the ability to import and use custom LUTs (/cube files). These are like a preset template that you can download and use from the internet and can also create one yourself. If you know how to use it, which is pretty easy, you can get some really good-looking cinematic shots from the device.
There are four different portrait modes: 24mm, 50mm, 70mm and 100mm. You can adjust the intensity of the blur as well. For best-looking portrait shots, I recommend shooting at either 50mm or 70mm. 24mm makes the FOD wider while the 100mm doesn’t capture a lot of details. The overall optimization of the portrait mode is also fair enough. It gets the human tone right and edge detection is also fine, it works well 8 out of 10 times.
The 32-megapixel selfie camera also performs very well. It gets the details and colors right. The images captured in low light and artificial light conditions are also pretty good. In a nutshell, it’s an easy all-rounder camera device you can get under the budget of $350.
Battery
It gets a 5000mAh battery and optimization is fabulous. I was able to get a total screen-on-time of 10 hours and even beyond on light-to-moderate usage. You can easily expect 7+ hours of screen-on-time on heavy usage. And keep in mind that this is not even the silicon carbon battery tech.
What does the Nothing Phone 3a don’t get right?
The Nothing Phone 3a is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor. For the budget, it’s a good chipset but not the most powerful. It can easily run lightweight and medium-sized games. However, it doesn’t do much well when it comes to heavy games. The support of 120FPS is incoming for the BGMI on the Phone 3a, but it even fails to give a stable gameplay experience in the existing 90FPS. And on top of that, the ongoing UFS 2.2 fiasco makes me doubt the device’s longevity.
Saying that “there’s not much difference between UFS 3.1 and UFS 2.2, and it’s cheaper too” doesn’t justify the use of UFS 2.2. From my own experience, the limitations of UFS 2.2 are noticeable. When multitasking or capturing a large number of images, there’s a clear drop in performance – after a while, the images take significantly longer to load. The difference is real, and it’s hard to ignore, especially if you are a performance-heavy user.
Another thing that I don’t like about the device is its adoption of a charging technique. The company claims that it can support up to 50W of PD and PPS fast-charging tech. In my testing, I found the charging speeds to be pretty absurd. Using the 65W PD charger, it sometimes takes 80 minutes to fully charge and sometimes even 100 minutes. An update may fix this, but until today (when the review was written) the issue has not been fixed. As far as I can recall, three updates have been pushed to the unit.
Another issue I have with the phone is how haptic feedback and multitasking are implemented. While this might lean more toward being a software drawback, since the phone runs on the same software, it feels necessary to bring it up here. The haptic feedback feels underwhelming and poorly tuned, and the multitasking capabilities are equally disappointing. These are areas where the experience falls short, and they impact the overall usability of the device. While the UI is good, it doesn’t feel as exciting.
Final Verdict – Is it worth buying the Nothing Phone 3a?
Final Ratings: 3.8/5
The Nothing Phone 3a is a solid contender in the mid-range smartphone category. It nails the basics with decent cameras, a good display, and reliable battery life. That said, it’s not without its flaws. The cameras can be hit or miss, there’s no Corning Gorilla Glass for added durability, the haptics feel a bit underwhelming, and it doesn’t quite lead the pack in terms of performance. Still, if you’re after a well-rounded device that covers the essentials, the Phone 3a is worth considering.
Pros:
- Solid build for the price. The design feels refreshing.
- It has a good display with fabulous peak brightness in sunlight.
- Versatile cameras with 2X optical zoom telephoto.
- Nothing OS feels fast and smooth.
Cons:
- UFS 2.2 effect is visible on heavy usage.
- The haptic motor is fine but not implemented well.
- The charging protocol is not very optimized.
- Lack of Corning Gorilla Glass protection.
- The cameras can be inconsistent sometimes.
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