Nothing Phone (3a) Review

By Krolyxon • 6 minutes read •

Table of Contents

Nothing Phone (3a) Review after 3 weeks

It’s been three weeks since i have been using the new Nothing Phone (3a) as my new personal phone. Buying this wasn’t just an impulse decision i made because its cool but rather i went through a lot of review videos on Youtube and reviews on Reddit and then i made the decision to buy it.

Previously i was using Moto g60 which was very suitable for my use case at that time, i bought it, i installed a custom ROM (Lineage OS 21) on it, which happens to be pretty easy to do with Motorola phones, thats why i decided to buy it in the first place.

Back then i used to be very hacky and loved tinkering with cellphones as well, so i had also rooted it and had installed Kali Nethunter on it as well. Never really made much use of the tools that came with Kali Nethunter, but it was cool to show off in public.

As the phone was rooted and had a custom ROM on it, its apparent that you cannot use banking apps on your phone and i really didn’t need to use them back then. But recently, i find my self needing those applications, so i had no option but to buy a new cellphone.

Now again, i wouldn’t just go and buy whats trending out there just because its cool, it has to be practical and go along with my usecase. So i went online and made a shortlist of the cellphones that fit in my budget.

Since i like having my devices clean and ad-free, brands like Xiaomi, Realme, Oppo, Vivo were instantly out of the question, the only brand i could trust was Motorola since i had pretty good experience with them, and then comes the new and hot brand, Nothing.

Why Nothing?

After bit of rational thinking and checking reviews online on various different devices online, i shortlisted two devices which fit my usecase.

  1. Moto Edge 60 Fusion
  2. Nothing Phone (3a)

Now, Moto Edge 60 came with really good specifications on paper considering its price being only ₹24,999 for 12/256 Variant with much bigger battery and display.

So why i didn’t go with Moto Edge 60? Well, the only reason i supported Motorola was because they released good smartphones with good specifications at a reasonable price and no pre-installed bloatware, but recently Motorola has started doing such things, so i wasn’t sure if i could trust this brand at all anymore.

So i was left with Nothing. Now this brand, has started gaining some trust from its community and me, since they are so transparent about their design and pricing decisions on their forums and their Youtube Channel.

Their CEO, Carl Pei reacts to different youtuber’s reviews on Nothing products and acknowledges valid criticism, which is quite rare when it comes to the modern corporate world.

And while having all of that, the phone was actually good. While not providing the best specifications on paper at it’s competitive price range, it was good enough for me, since i like to live my life the analog way and try to stay away from smartphones as much as possible.

So i went ahead and bought the Nothing Phone (3a) from offline market, it costed me around ₹25,999 (excluding the charger 💀). I wanted to have the 12/256 variant, but for some reasons they did not release that particular variant in India. So this is what i got:

Nothing Phone 3a

Specifications

Pros

Operating System:

I believe, Nothings greatest USP is it’s Operating system, Nothing OS. Its clean, it comes with no pre installed bloatware, and has a lot of built in features just to keep you away from using your smartphone all the time.

Camera

Coming from a low-end device range, the camera is significantly better than what i had previously, and comparing it to the other cellphones in the same price range, its still much more natural looking and eye-candy.

Display

The Amoled display provides really good color accuracy and the peak brightness is about 3000 Nits, which for me, really fits the purpose and is good enough for me.

Cons

Battery

Now the battery is 5000 mAh, which according to MKBHD is considered huge, but other devices provide way bigger batteries (6000 mAh, 7500 mAh) at the same price range, and i come from a 6000 mAh background so this really feels like a downgrade to me.

Essentials Key

Now the new Nothing Phone (3a) comes with a new button below the power button, called the Essentials key which is sort of a space where you can store screenshots and text notes or voice recordings with them. I don’t really use such features, and its placed at a position that i mistakenly press it every single day at least 4-5 times. Nothing hasn’t provided any customization options for that button, and as said by their CEO, they don’t plant to provide them in future either.

Conclusion

For my use cases there isn’t any better option in the smartphone industry right now, it has it’s own pros and cons. And the pros, especially the clean and neat Nothing OS is just an overkill for me and the cons are really not deal-breaker for me.

While you might have different use cases and different preferences, always do extensive research online before choosing a cellphone.

Must visit for Nothing users

  1. Nothing Community - Sort of forum, where you can share your experiences and get help from moderators.
  2. glyphtones - Community made custom Glyph Tones.