If the iPhone 16e was a little too expensive and the Galaxy A36 came across as a smidge stale then Nothing's newly-minted Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro might be the budget-friendly smartphones you've been craving.
Picking up where last year's Nothing Phone 2a left off, the new devices promise to deliver a fresh take on the trademark tendencies attached to boutique brand.
To start with, both the Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro feature a 6.77-inch AMOLED screen clocked at 120Hz and a peak brightness of a 3000 nits. This is far from the only spec or feature the two smartphones have in common. Both devices come with 50W fast-charging via USB-C, an IP64 rating against water and dust damage and a new Essential Key that acts as a shortcut for a suite of new AI apps and functions that are built into the Essential Space app.
Under the hood, the Nothing Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro both run on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor, a 5000mAh battery and the latest version of Nothing OS. The Phone 3a is available in two memory configurations: 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage or 8GB of RAM with 256GB of storage. In contrast, the Phone 3a is only available with 8GB of RAM with 256GB of storage.
Although the two handset differ slightly when it comes to looks, they represent a clean continuation of the trendy and transparent tech look that Nothing have relied on in the past. To that end, both the Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro incorporate a updated version of the Glyph lighting setup found on previous phones by the brand. This inclusion offers a total of 26 lighting zones and 10 new ringtones and notification sounds to tinker with.
While this LED setup is roughly uniform across the two devices, the camera hardware adjacent to it is not. The baseline Nothing Phone 3a features a 50MP main lens, a 50MP telephoto lens and an 8MP ultrawide lens on the back.
The Nothing Phone 3a Pro ups the ante here, swapping out the telephoto lens for a 50MP periscope one that touts 3x optical zoom, a larger Sony Lytia 600 sensor and superior macro photography capabilities. It also offers a beefier 50MP front-facing camera that easily eclipses the 32MP one found on the Phone 3a in size. The Nothing Phone 3a Pro also incorporates a superior a 50MP main camera sensor that's been co-engineered with Samsung to offer enhanced image clarity, reduced noise and more accurate results.
In Australia, the Nothing Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro will be available for preorder through JB Hi-Fi from this week. The Nothing Phone 3a starts at $599 and will go on-sale on 11 March 2025. That price puts it on par with the likes of the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion, which was one of our favorite thrifty smartphones from last year.
The Nothing 3a Pro will hit shelves from 25 March 2025, with prices starting at $849. That's a pretty solid price to pay for a phone that looks this nice let alone one that promises to deliver big improvements when it comes to smartphone photography, which is an area where this brand hasn't always necessarily excelled.
We'll have to wait to test out the device for ourselves to see if the Nothing Phone 3a and its pro-grade counterpart live up to the hype but, on paper but there's a non-zero chance that either could end up being one of 2025's best budget-friendly smartphones.
At this stage, none of Australia's major mobile providers will be selling the Phone 3a or Phone 3a Pro on a plan. That means you'll need to pair it up with a SIM-only mobile plan. Check out the widget below for a round-up of the most popular SIM-only mobile plans in our database this month.
2 min read
