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The Nothing Phone (4a) serves as a perfectly respectable mid-range smartphone with a solid cameras, a good battery life and striking design. I can't help but feel that the Pro model is a better pick for not much more money.
The Good
- Brilliant visual design
- Respectable everyday camera
- Big battery life
The Not So Good
- Glyph matrix feels a bit underpowered
- Pro model make more sense
Need-to-knows
- One of the best-looking phones around, especially in Pink
- Long battery life
- Cameras will get you by
- Nothing OS is superb
This has been the craziest ever Q1 in terms of tech events and launches. I know for a fact I’m not alone in saying that, as a tech reviewer, it’s incredibly hard to keep up with everything. Even with an absolutely awesome team doing a lot of the hard work.
Take the Nothing Phone (4a). The embargo for the review of this phone lifts today, 5th March – right after an absolute boatload of Apple releases and Samsung Unpacked. And that’s before I get to the Nothing Headphone (a) – oh, and the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro.
This is not Nothing’s fault. Every brand needs to shout as loud as possible to be seen today, but it’s hard to ignore that there are just so many Android smartphones out there – and that means the Phone (4a) needs to be really good.
It’s off to a good start, at least, because it’s priced at £349 and it looks, predictably, really cool.
Is that enough? Let’s find out
At a glance
| Feature | Nothing Phone (4a) |
|---|---|
| Colours & Storage | White, Black, Blue, Pink • 8GB+128GB / 8GB+256GB / 12GB+256GB |
| Size & Weight | 163.9 × 77.5 × 8.5 mm • 205 g |
| Processor | Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 (4nm) • 8-core Kryo CPU up to 2.7 GHz • Adreno 810 GPU |
| Memory & Storage Type | LPDDR4x RAM • UFS 3.1 storage |
| Display | 6.78″ AMOLED • 1224 × 2720 • 120Hz adaptive • Gorilla Glass 7i |
| Brightness | 800 nits typical • 1600 nits outdoor • 4500 nits peak |
| Cameras | 50MP main (OIS) • 50MP periscope (3.5× optical zoom) • ultra-wide • 32MP front |
| Video | Up to 4K 30fps • 1080p 60fps • slow-mo 1080p 120fps |
| Battery & Charging | 5,080 mAh • 50W wired charging • 7.5W reverse wired |
| Audio | Dual stereo speakers • 2 HD microphones |
| Connectivity | 5G • Wi-Fi 6 • Bluetooth 5.4 • NFC • Dual Nano-SIM |
| Durability & Biometrics | IP64 • In-display fingerprint sensor |
| Software | Nothing OS 4.1 (Android 16) • 3 Android updates • 6 years security updates |
| In the Box | Phone • USB-C cable • case • pre-applied screen protector |
Specs and pricing
The Phone (4a) is powered by the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 and has either 8 GB or 12GB of RAM, depending on the storage option you choose. On that note, there are three tiers, with the full pricing and configurations as follows:
- 8GB + 128GB: £349 / €349 / AUD $649
- 8GB + 256GB: £379 / €389 / AUD $749
- 12GB + 256GB: £399 / €429 / AUD $849
The display is a 6.78-inch Flexible AMOLED unit with a 1.5K resolution, 440 PPI, 1,600 nits of peak brightness, and a variable 120Hz refresh rate. Dust and water resistance are capped at IP64, and there’s Corning Gorilla Glass 7i taking care of proceedings. And 34% more bend resistance. Which is nice.
The Phone (4a) also has the largest battery Nothing has ever put into its a-series devices, weighing in at 5,080mAh.
Design
This is a Nothing phone, which means – please excuse the pun, they’re almost impossible to avoid in these reviews – it looks like nothing else on the market.
The rear casing is as translucent as it has always been on Nothing phones, and in the white colour I was sent to review, it’s a fascinatingly alluring phone – even if it does look very similar to the previous model. It looks very similar to the Nothing Phone (3a) in that it has serious Star Wars droid vibes. I’m here all day for that.
If white isn’t your thing, there are also black and blue versions and a very fetching shade of pink, which is a super smart move by Nothing. An injection of colour will potentially open this device up to a whole new market – particularly when it’s bolstered by Nothing’s Gen Z-friendly marketing.
The display is lovely and a triumph at this price point. It is a big device, and I wish there were a smaller version, but maybe I’m a dying breed of people who are still obsessed with how small the iPhone 13 mini was.
Does it make the list? My picks for the best phone!
There’s a Glyph Bar on the back of the Phone (4a) because of course there is. IT features 63 mini-LED rectangles with seven squares and pumps out a frankly ridiculous 3,500 nits of peak brightness.
The Glyph Bar can be set to flash for notifications and calls, and can even work with third-party live updates for services like Uber. It remains, in my humble opinion, entirely gimmicky, just like every iteration of Nothing’s Glyph interface. Flashing to indicate you’ve received a notification or call is fine, but anything beyond that is far better served by, well, just picking up the phone and using it normally.
This is why we love Nothing, though, isn’t it?
Camera system
The Nothing Phone (4a) features a triple camera system with the following specs:
- Main: 50MP Samsung GN9 with OIS; captures 64% more light than rival 1/1.95″ sensors.
- Telephoto: New tetraprism periscopic lens (50MP Samsung JN5) offering 3.5x optical, 7x lossless, and 70x ultra zoom.
- Ultrawide: 8MP Sony sensor with 119.5° field of view.
- Video: 4K recording at 30 FPS with a combination of OIS, EIS, and AI anti-shake technology.
It’s powered by the TrueLens Engine 4, which uses AI and ‘semantic segmentation’ to capture scenes as our eyes see them. Apparently.
I have no idea what that means, but I can tell you that the Phone (4a) is an ok everyday camera. For me, the images don’t please as instantly as Pixel devices (or most OPPO, Xiaomi, and Vivo phones), but they get the job done. You can get some decent portraits out of it, and the presence of both the ultra-wide and an optical zoom is lovely at this price point.
Related: Vivo V70 review
The downside is that as soon as you zoom beyond 1x, the results are quite inconsistent. The images aren’t particularly sharp and just lack any kind of drama.
This doesn’t make the Phone (4a) a bad phone. I think the camera system is absolutely fine for the price and the hardware powering it, but I have a suspicion that the real photography smarts are going to be found in the forthcoming Phone (4a) Pro, which I’m yet to get my hands on.
Performance and battery
Nothing promises 120FPS gaming on the Phone (4a) in titles like Battlegrounds Mobile India and 90FPS in Call of Duty: Mobile. They also tell us that the custom CPU scheduler and Nothing OS optimisations will deliver higher performance than ever before in an a-series phone.
I am not the person to test those claims. I have zero inclination to sit down and run benchmarks on mobile telephones, and the last game I played on my phone was the one where you have to line blocks up to make them explode.
What I can tell you is that the Nothing Phone (4a) feels perfectly speedy in everyday use. And, by that, I mean scrolling through the Nothing OS interface, opening and switching between apps, scrolling endlessly through Instagram and TikTok, and taking photos. It’s a speedy, capable phone. Push beyond that, and, well, you’re into unknown territory and, potentially, a need to buy a more powerful device.
More: Nothing Phone (3) review
The battery, at 5,080mAh, is as big as it should be at this price point. It isn’t made from silicon kryptonite, but it does have 50W fast wired charging, which can reach a full charge in 64 minutes. There’s no wireless charging. In my testing, the battery life on the (4a) is s superb and will easily get your thought a busy day.
Conclusion: Who should buy the Nothing Phone (4a)?
At £349, the Nothing Phone (4a) remains a bargain. Like many battery-powered devices, it has endured a price bump this year thanks, I’m sure, in no small part to the ongoing RAM crisis.
The question of who should buy it, however, is a tricky one to answer. Nothing’s phone lineup is undeniably convoluted, with the (2a) (presumably to be replaced by the (3a)), (3a) Lite, (4a) Pro, and (3) all vying for your attention with not exactly colossal pricing differences separating them.
And that’s before we take into consideration the ultra-low-priced CMF Phone 2 Pro.
Put simply, I don’t really know where to start when it comes to recommending the best Nothing Phone for the budget-conscious. Because they’re all rather tempting.
What I do know is that you can’t really look past Nothing when it comes to budget smartphones. That’s been the case for quite some time, and the Phone (4a) continues that trend.
7 Comments
What an odd final score. You have no problem with the device, apart from the missing wireless charging, and 6/10? Come on, the entire review sounds like 8-9/10, or is that 6 because the camera is ”not instantly pleasing” whatever that means?
I mean I clicked to see the only apparently dissatisfied score atm, maybe some problem others overlooked, but its just a special snowlake kinda clickbait
yea pretty weird review mate. for the price its at least 80%, re whos it for, ill tell you. people like me who appreciate a company not afraid to prioritize design and who mainly shy away from generic corporate slab phone greed. they could charge twice the price for these phones, and be like teenage engineering, who charge premium for good design, but they dont. yes im a nothing fan boy and proud! (ill be queuing up on the 21st to get a 4a pro! 🙂
The Nothing Phone (4a) stands out with its stylish design, smooth performance, long battery life, and solid value for the price geometry dash
thanks for this information
Space Waves
Nothing’s clean software and unique design still make the Phone (4a) appealing, but the increasing competition means long-term support and carrier experience matter more than ever before buying. Checking real customer feedback at https://cricket-wireless.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.html can be useful if you’re planning to use the phone on Cricket, since network support and customer service can have just as much impact on the overall experience as the hardware itself.
Thank you for sharing this information. It was clear, useful, and easy to understand.
카드깡
This phone is a shameful betrayal of the control the user had over the original Nothing Phones. Now we have “essential” data scooping ai products with buttons that are almost impossible to J accidentally activating, after which they capture speech from the television or nearby conversations which can easily end up plopped into the users conversations or into the databases of the tech fascists who seek to weaponize personal information in pursuit of world domination. Peter Thiel and the Chinese state controlled tech industry share these goals.