Tech reviewers share their initial reactions to the transparent aesthetic, camera bump, and unique visual tweaks of the new lineup. Along the way it covers Build Quality and Durability, The Essentials Button and AI Features and Performance and Battery Life, and more. A summary of reviewer consensus on whether the hardware and software experience justify the price tag.
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Tech reviewers share their initial reactions to the transparent aesthetic, camera bump, and unique visual tweaks of the new lineup.
On screen: A man wearing a blue hoodie, Matthew Moniz, sits behind a wooden desk with two smartphones in front of him, gesturing with his hands while a pink neon sign with his name illuminates the dark background.
Reviewers examine the scratch resistance of the screen's Panda Glass and discuss the limitations of its IP64 splash resistance.
On screen: An overhead shot shows a pair of hands interacting with two smartphones, a dark gray iPhone and a light gray Nothing Phone, placed side-by-side on a textured cork surface.
An exploration of the dedicated Essential key, screen capturing, voice recording transcriptions, and unique software features.
On screen: A close-up shot shows a person holding a black smartphone with their right hand, scrolling through an app interface displaying various cards and information related to saved screenshots and upcoming events.
A breakdown of processor speed, gaming capabilities, Nothing OS 3.1 animations, and all-day 5,000 mAh battery endurance.
On screen: A man in a black patterned hoodie sits behind a desk, speaking directly to the camera, with a large screen displaying a purple and orange graphic to his left and various tech-related items, including hexagonal lights…
Testing the 50MP primary sensor, the 3x periscope telephoto lens on the Pro model, and video performance across different lighting conditions.
On screen: A person is holding a black smartphone with a large circular camera module on its back, pressing a button on the side of the device.
Comparing price points and spec sheets against key mid-range and flagship rivals like the iPhone 16e.
On screen: A man in a blue hoodie sits behind a wooden desk, gesturing with his hands, with a pink neon sign of his name and a plant visible in the background, and two smartphones resting on the desk in front of him.
A summary of reviewer consensus on whether the hardware and software experience justify the price tag.
On screen: A man in a brown jacket and white t-shirt speaks directly to the camera, with a light grey background behind him that transitions to black, showing various pixelated texts and graphical overlays of smartphone screens.
0:00 Speaker A: This is one of the best looking smartphones on the market. Speaker B: Look at the size of that camera bump. Speaker C: Finally doing something interesting with AI. Speaker D: A sub $400 smartphone in this economy is truly a treasure. Speaker E: I mean, look at this blue. Speaker E: This blue is sick. Speaker F: Welcome back to RE review where we watch all the reviews so you don't have to. Speaker F: Today we're diving deep into The Nothing Phone 3A and 3A Pro 2 meteor marvels turning heads with a bold design and surprising features.
0:28 Speaker F: Lets see what the YouTubers have to. Speaker E: Say because there's still nothing that looks quite like a nothing phone and that is still true. Speaker E: I mean look at this blue. Speaker E: This blue is sick. Speaker E: It's still got the split design with the glyphs at the top around the cameras, but you know, they've tweaked a few things too. Speaker E: They've moved some screws around, changed up some of the shapes and the details. Speaker E: I think this is fire. Speaker D: To be honest, I'm a huge fan of transparent devices. Speaker D: Both nearly identical in build quality and hardware.
0:54 Speaker D: Just different cameras and camera placements and of course a different price. Speaker D: The 3A Pro is an extremely reasonable $459. Speaker D: And the regular 3A is an even more extremely reasonableer $379. Speaker D: A sub $400 smartphone in this economy is truly a treasure. Speaker G: And as you can see, things have changed up quite considerably. Speaker G: Compared with the old nothing phone 2A plus, the overall vibe is the same.
1:20 Speaker G: The 3A Pro is unmistakably a nothing phone with its transparent court proudly shown off those internals. Speaker G: But while the 2A plus sported quite a subtle Wii camera hillock that has absolutely sprouted on the three A Pro to a honking great mountain range. Speaker F: So a bold design that's got people talking. Speaker F: Some love it, some not so much. Speaker F: Let's dig deeper into what makes it stand out. Speaker A: There's a lot of nostalgia, there's a lot of like tech looking features about this phone that just make it stand out.
1:51 Speaker A: It's great for someone like me. Speaker A: Like I think this is one of the best looking smartphones on the market. Speaker A: But if you're someone like my parents, they're probably gonna look at the nothing 3A and be like, what is this? Speaker A: This looks weird, right? Speaker B: My God, look at the size of that camera bump. Speaker B: Good gravy. Speaker B: It's been a little bit polarizing to say the least. Speaker B: But quite frankly, if Nothing's designs didn't already put you off, then I don't really see how this is gonna push you over the Edge.
2:21 Speaker F: Okay, it's eye catching, but how does it hold up? Speaker F: Let's hear about the build. Speaker D: Instead of Gorilla Glass, this time around, we have something called Panda Glass, which appears to be a more budget friendly alternative to Gorilla Glass, and it's made in China. Speaker D: A panda seems way more cuddly than a gorilla, but that's besides the point. Speaker D: It's still chemically strengthened like Gorilla Glass. Speaker D: And while I can't speak to Panda's impact resistance, its scratch resistance levels are what we would expect on a flagship with scratches at a level six and deeper grooves at a level seven.
2:51 Speaker H: Speaking of careful, this screen is incredibly scratch prone. Speaker H: It comes with a screen protector on it, which scratched very quickly for me, so I took it off. Speaker H: Brand new device and within two hours, two new scratches on the screen. Speaker H: Oh my God, I'm so mad at myself. Speaker E: Why did I take it off? Speaker F: Durability is a mixed bag. Speaker F: Scratch prone but sturdy otherwise. Speaker F: What about water resistance? Speaker A: The other advantage to the iPhone is that you do get IP68 water resistant.
3:19 Speaker A: You drop this thing in the water, it's more likely to survive. Speaker A: Compared to the IP64 splash resistance on the Nothing 3A Pro, both have support. Speaker B: For only IP64 water resistance, so they're dust tight, but I wouldn't do any more than get an incidental splash on them. Speaker B: Certainly do not submerge them. Speaker F: Now let's talk features, especially that new Essentials button that everyone's talking about now.
3:44 Speaker G: One of the best new bits of the nothing phone 3A Pro is the Essential Space, which you can access by a quick double tap of the fresh new Essential key here on the right edge. Speaker G: Now, this is still very much a work in progress apparently, but nothing phone 3A and 3A Pro owners will get early access. Speaker G: And the idea behind the Essential Space is it basically acts as a hub to gather together all of the interesting and important content that you've gathered.
4:10 Speaker G: You using that essential key, basically you. Speaker E: Just save a bunch of stuff in here in the form of screenshots, and you can always come back here for referencing this stuff or finding information from the screenshots, or even setting reminders about that stuff. Speaker E: So kind of think of it like the Pixel screenshots app, but on steroids. Speaker E: So from anywhere you want on the phone, you can press that button once and it'll capture whatever's on your screen and save it. Speaker E: But then if you hold down that button, it will also start a voice recording that gets attached to that screenshot so you can say something you want to remember, like this is the lawnmower Andrew told me about.
4:45 Speaker E: Or remind me to buy tickets to this concert tomorrow and then that recording gets transcribed and summarized and it will even detect and set actual reminders for you to do stuff that's meant to. Speaker B: Be kind of a repository for your thoughts, journal ideas, or just reminders things you want to deal with. Speaker B: Say for example, I were to hold it down and say I finally thought of that rhyme for dinglehopper jinglebopper that is going to head into my essential space which, oh, I can also access by double clicking Essentials button is unique,.
5:18 Speaker F: But not everyone sold critiques. Speaker E: Next. Speaker A: Now quite frankly, this feature not really appealing to me, but I can see how some people might like this. Speaker A: I'm glad they didn't do what everybody else is doing and turning this into a glorified camera button, but I would have loved the option to be able to remap it to, let's say, a different application. Speaker C: This is interesting. Speaker C: I've probably talked more about the essential space than I have collectively about all of the AI features that are in every single smartphone at the moment.
5:47 Speaker C: Because they're all the same thing. Speaker C: It's, you know, image manipulation, it's help writing text messages, it's summarizing notes, it's all this kind of stuff which is very, very impressive. Speaker C: But in reality you don't have a lot of use for it. Speaker F: So the AI is divisive. Speaker F: But how does it perform day to day? Speaker G: Now performance comes courtesy of the Snapdragon 7S Gen 3. Speaker G: Now of course everyday performance as smooth as you like and I did slapping a bit of Wuthering waves on this bad boy, even boosted the graphics up to the settings.
6:15 Speaker G: And you know What? Speaker G: The nothing Phone 3 a pro coped with it rather bloody well. Speaker G: I was expecting to see a lot more judders and drops in that frame rate than I actually experienced. Speaker B: The 3A is more of a sequel to the 2A. Speaker B: It actually has a less powerful Snapdragon 7 gen 3 processor compared to the nothing phone 2. Speaker B: In practice this resulted in lower performance pretty much across the board, but especially in gaming, coming in at around half the performance of the already not class leading Nothing Phone two.
6:46 Speaker C: They both feel buttery smooth, they don't lag, they don't crash, and they run Nothing os, which I think I've said this recently that all the major Vivo etc, all the all the major Android smartphone manufacturers, they have their own flavors of Android and for me they all feel quite similar in a very good way. Speaker C: They're all very good. Speaker C: The One that doesn't feel similar is Nothing os. Speaker E: Hey, shout out specifically to Nothing Software team. Speaker E: This is running nothing OS 3.1 on top of Android 15.
7:14 Speaker E: They do up to six years of software updates with these phones and so many things like these little animations. Speaker E: Things like swiping down the notification bar or expanding a folder from the home screen, or even swiping between recent apps. Speaker E: So many of these little animations have been optimized to feel super smooth every time. Speaker E: And you can feel it now. Speaker E: It's not immune to hiccups like you sometimes feel the mask slip off a little bit and you're moving through some heavy apps or you're gaming for a while and the stuff that's stressful on the gpu.
7:45 Speaker E: You can absolutely find a way to get this phone stuttering a little bit. Speaker E: But I cannot be mad at the performance of this phone. Speaker E: Despite it not being a spec monster, it is so smooth. Speaker F: Performance sounds solid, but what about the. Speaker G: Battery life mounted inside of that big old chonky chassis? Speaker G: You've got a 5,000 milliamp hour battery, same capacity as the regular 3A. Speaker G: And on one of my sort of regular days, with roughly 6ish hours of screen on time, plenty of messaging, bit of video streaming and lots of audio streaming, mostly music, occasional bit of podcasts when the phone is hibernating, I found the nothing phone 3 a pro still comfortably lasting until I was all tucked up with Teddy.
8:23 Speaker G: I still end most days with roughly 20 to 30% battery life still in the tank. Speaker H: Battery life has been great. Speaker H: I really haven't had to think about it. Speaker H: It's got a 5000 milliamp hour battery. Speaker F: Now the cameras, especially that 3A Pro periscope lens. Speaker F: Let's see if it and after taking. Speaker H: 500 Photos with it, I can safely say that Nothing is one step closer to having a fully capable camera system in a sub $500 phone, but there are still few places that it falls flat.
8:49 Speaker H: The big camera news in this device is that it's Nothing's first attempt at a Periscope telephoto lens. Speaker H: With this new lens, Nothing can offer 3 times optical zoom that equates to around 70mm full frame equivalent at 50 megapixels, or 6 times optical zoom that equates to Around 140mm at 12 megapixels and in good light. Speaker H: The results are crisp without being over sharpened. Speaker G: And in my time so far with The Nothing Phone 3A Pro, I found the camera to be pretty responsive. Speaker G: You can fast tap that shutter button as you can see there and swapping between the different lenses is reasonably nippy as well.
9:20 Speaker E: So I shot a bunch with the 3A and the 3A Pro cameras and what was interesting is I didn't find a whole lot of difference in most situations between the primary cameras on these phones. Speaker E: Even though the sensor on the Pro is slightly bigger, they're both 50 megapixels but the Pro has a little bit better autofocus. Speaker E: In general the pictures from both of them are passable. Speaker E: You know the sensor is big enough to get you a soft background for close up subjects. Speaker E: The colors aren't too over processed, although you might get some fringing and overexposure but generally they're pretty decent looking photos.
9:50 Speaker E: The eight megapixel ultra wides are also identical, which is to say pretty meh. Speaker E: But the 3x periscope telephoto lens on the Pro is definitely gives you a more usable far range and macros great for photos. Speaker F: But what about video? Speaker H: In normal light it's video from a mid range phone. Speaker H: In low light it's simply not great, especially on the telephoto and wide angle lenses and in perfect light you have a great camera.
10:15 Speaker H: All of which is to say you're going to get some inconsistent results. Speaker H: And I don't think anyone will be buying this device for its video capabilities. Speaker F: So the big question is, is it worth the price? Speaker F: Let's stack it up. Speaker C: These are wonderful phones and they will take some beating in 2025. Speaker C: £32099 For the 3A. Speaker C: Even the Pro is just £449 which absolutely trounces the iPhone 16E in terms of value.
10:40 Speaker C: And even against the Android competition which is a bit stronger, these are still incredibly tempting. Speaker E: As someone who just came from reviewing the iPhone 16e, this spec sheet on paper makes the iPhone 16e spec sheet on paper look terrible. Speaker E: This looks loaded. Speaker E: Obviously it's triple cameras, it's a much bigger, brighter AMOLED display, it's high refresh rate. Speaker E: It's also a massive battery and great battery life While you have 60Hz and a smaller phone and you know, a single camera on the 16e and it's way cheaper.
11:09 Speaker D: The Nothing 3A Pro can accomplish 90% of what a flagship three times its price can accomplish. Speaker D: And the plastic frame does not bother me in the slightest. Speaker A: And if you're part of that Apple ecosystem and don't want to buy something refurbished, then yeah, get the iPhone 16e. Speaker A: Personally I think you should spend a little bit more and get the iPhone 15 instead. Speaker A: Apple Intelligence is not that good yet and I don't think you're going to be missing much. Speaker A: But but for everybody else, including myself, go for the 3A Pro.
11:36 Speaker A: Like it has that high refresh display, it has a bigger display, it has a really cool design. Speaker A: The software experience is super unique. Speaker F: The consensus? Speaker F: These phones bring a lot to the table with a standout design, smooth performance and a unique take on AI with that essentials button. Speaker F: The cameras, especially the 3A Pro's periscope lens, impress for the price, though for video and low light shots they lag behind.
12:01 Speaker F: Flagships Battery life Solid for most, but heavy users might need a top up. Speaker F: At $379 and $459, they're tough to beat for value, offering flagship vibes without breaking the bank. Speaker F: If you want a bold style and clever features on a budget, these are serious contenders. Speaker F: Just don't expect wireless charging or top tier gaming chips. Speaker F: That's it for our ultimate roundup review of The Nothing Phone 3A and 3A Pro.
12:26 Speaker F: Find full videos down below and subscribe for more re reviews where we watch older reviews so you don't have to.