Great budget phones with one big flaw

I like the Nothing Phone 3a — the Phone 3a Pro, too, for that matter. I think they’re the best phones the company has put out in its short history, and I believe they are well worth the price of admission. And, for most of the world, I can say that you should go out and buy one. I can tell you that they make significant improvements over their predecessors, the Phone 2a and 2a Plus, and that they deliver even better value with new triple-camera setups and shiny Qualcomm chipsets.

But I have bad news for US-based Android enthusiasts like myself. Like all of the upstart brand’s recent releases, neither the $379 Nothing Phone 3a nor the $459 Nothing 3a Pro will work properly on major US networks, making this pair of exciting budget phones complete non-starters stateside. Here’s why that decision frustrates me and why I hope it changes really soon.

Right now, it’s tough to get excited about a lot of the budget-friendly Android phones launching in the US — especially in terms of design. It often feels like an endless cycle of Samsung recycling cheaper versions of its flagship Galaxy S design, Google trying to figure out what the Pixel A series should actually look like, and Motorola trying to spice things up with a mix of vegan leather backs and bright colors. Of those, I admire Motorola’s approach, but I wouldn’t call it exciting. Nothing’s ever-changing lineup of semi-transparent designs, though? Now, that’s a different story — one that’s much more fun to tell.

From most angles, it’s the same story across both the Nothing Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro. They have almost everything in common, from their matching plastic frames to the position of their buttons to the slim, even bezels that run around the sides of their respective 6.77-inch, 120Hz AMOLED displays. Even the Glyph Interfaces and semi-transparent layouts are identical, with three LED panels surrounding the one very obvious element that sets these two budget phones apart: The camera bump. On one of these phones, it works, but on the other, it really, really doesn’t.

Yes, before I can continue praising Nothing for a lot of the things that I like about its latest round of budget phones, I have to talk about the elephant in the room — almost literally. Although the more affordable Nothing Phone 3a slides by with three simple cameras, all lined up in a small, unobtrusive row, the Phone 3a Pro packs its sensors into what I can only describe as the body of a typical smartwatch and then slaps them on the back of an otherwise sleek, well-balanced slab. Of course, there’s a reason for the massive bump, as I’ll get to down below, but it doesn’t make the phone any more comfortable to carry.

In fact, despite Carl Pei’s protests to the contrary, I’d say the Nothing Phone 3a Pro feels nearly as top-heavy as the mega-wobbly Pixel 6 Pro from a few years ago. It threatens to topple out of my hand whenever I try to pick it up one-handed or hold it too close to the bottom. Perhaps the only benefit to such a beefy camera bump is that it worked nicely as a grip while I watched the Washington Spirit take on Bay FC on my favorite free streaming service, NWSL Plus. It’s also served the same purpose nicely while gaming — it’s much easier to tilt and steer with a beefy camera bump than with something smooth and slight, like the one on any number of Moto G devices.

But, while the difference in camera bump is the main thing that swings me towards the more affordable Nothing Phone 3a, it’s not the only advantage — I like the cheaper phone’s colors better, too. It’s not the most significant difference in the world, nor is it a life or death factor, but I’d much rather have the light blue finish of the Phone 3a than either the gray (or grey, because British) or black of the Phone 3a Pro. I’ll also mention that neither of my units suffered from the small blemishes reported by other buyers.

On top of the additional camera sensor, one more new feature sets the Phone 3a series apart from its predecessors: The Essential Key. As Nothing explains it, this new hardware key, which sits annoyingly below the power button, is there so you can easily add screenshots and voice notes to the also-new Essential Space — which might be the best new software feature I’ve used in a long time. Although I’m not convinced by the need for a new hardware button, which you can single-press to grab a screenshot or long-press to record a voice note, I’ve fallen in love with Nothing’s quick, AI-powered summarization of whatever you save to your own personal space.

So far, I’ve relied on the Essential Space mainly as a concert organizer for the summer, snapping screenshots and filtering them into a collection dubbed “Concert Plans.” From there, the Essential Space pulls out everything from the concert date to when tickets go on sale and automatically generates reminders so you don’t miss your shot at good seats (or whatever else you decide to save). Outside of wanting to use on-screen gestures or remap the power button to also control the Essential Space, I have to say that this is one of the better uses of AI I’ve come across. Here’s hoping it stays free permanently.

Otherwise, the best thing these two phones have in common is their 6.77-inch AMOLED displays. Both 120Hz panels are made from Panda Glass, and both top out at a nearly blinding 3,000 nits. Of course, you’ll hardly spend any time at that peak brightness, but it’s a helpful maximum in case you need it. I’ve yet to find an area where the display has struggled, putting it through plenty of tiny details while catching up on highlights from the early weeks of the NWSL and MLS seasons and also coming in handy so that I could watch Nintendo Direct off to the side of my MacBook Air so I could get the low-down on the Switch 2 while writing this review.

Unfortunately, Nothing’s budget-friendly design does come with a few cuts — most notably the lack of wireless charging. This isn’t a surprise, as the Nothing Phone 2a and 2a Plus didn’t support the feature either, but it’s still disappointing. I’m waiting for the day when I unbox a cheap Nothing phone and see that transparent coil design staring back at me. Also, the Phone 3a and 3a Pro have IP64 ratings against water and dust, which is good but not quite great. We’re used to seeing limited ratings in this segment, but Motorola’s $300 Moto G Power (2025) launched with IP68 and IP69 protection only a few months ago. Nothing ditched the transparent ends of its charging cables, too, which is less of a functional complaint and more of a stylistic one.

While I already knew that I would like most of what Nothing changed on the outside of its latest budget phones — or at least on the base Phone 3a — I was much more curious about the changes under the hood. Previously, the company had reserved Qualcomm chipsets for its flagship-equivalent Phone 1 and Phone 2, opting for MediaTek silicon on its more affordable Phone 2a series. Now, though, it’s Qualcomm all the way down, with the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 at home on the Phone 3a and 3a Pro. The two, unsurprisingly, also share identical RAM and storage configurations, with up to 12GB across all models and up to 256GB of fixed space for apps, files, and whatever else (though the base model in most markets pairs 8GB with 128GB).

I wondered whether the switch was made with an eye on improved performance or to open the door to a more extensive set of AI-powered features, but there’s only one way to find out. So, I set up the Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro for our usual gauntlet of benchmarking tests. I figured that with their identical hardware, they’d also probably put up just about the same scores, and I was right — well, mostly right. Across both our CPU and GPU-intensive tests, the Phone 3a and 3a Pro finished neck and neck, occasionally trading very slight advantages, like the Phone 3a Pro putting up stronger single-core GeekBench performance and the Phone 3a taking the lead on PCMark’s comprehensive Work 3.0 test.

Perhaps more surprising to me is how the two phones fared against what I thought would be their closest competitors. I figured that Nothing’s previous flagship, the Phone 2, would probably come out ahead with its Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, but I didn’t expect the previous Phone 2a Plus to mostly stay ahead of the curve, too. Google’s Pixel 9, which is standing in for how we expect the Pixel 9a with its matching Tensor G4 to perform, also outpaced the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 across both legs of the GeekBench 6 test, though it came back down to Earth during the comprehensive Work 3.0 benchmark.

And then there’s the graphics performance — another chance for the Phone 3a and 3a Pro to bring up the rear. At first, I thought there might have been an issue with my graph, as I couldn’t find the red line of the Phone 3a, but once again, the two phones simply put up identical numbers. If nothing else, the scores are incredibly consistent, though they’re also consistently behind the Phone 2a Plus from 2024.

Honestly, I think the on-paper performance of the Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Plus surprised me so much because it didn’t mirror my day-to-day experience. I spent plenty of time with both phones out and about (well, as much as I could without a reliable SIM option) and didn’t notice a stutter or a stumble from either one. I dipped into light gaming in both Warhammer 40,000 Tacticus and Pokemon TCG Pocket when I could find a reliable Wi-Fi network, and I downloaded enough podcasts and playlists from Spotify to the Phone 3a that I could easily take it for hours of listening through my CMF Buds Pro 2.

The Phone 3a also reliably made it through a long day that involved waking up for a long run, swinging through a wedding party, and dashing off to Washington, DC, for the Spirit’s home opener before coming back home to make it to a friend’s birthday party. I have to admit I only took the Phone 3a with me for the day, though, as I could only make space for one data-free smartphone in my pocket in addition to the iPhone 16e I was already carrying for testing purposes.

As you might imagine, though, that lack of 100% viable data options in the US makes it challenging to tell how the Phone 3a or 3a Pro would stand up to a long day of usage. The situation isn’t quite as bad as it previously was with Nothing’s program, as both the Phone 3a and 3a Pro now support at least some 4G and 5G bands across all of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Of the three, though, you’ll have the easiest time activating your device on T-Mobile’s network, as both AT&T and Verizon require you to contact the carrier directly in order to allow list your device.

Annoyingly, allow listing isn’t exactly the same as full certification for your device, as you still risk dropping either 4G or 5G signal depending on the bands in your area, but it’s better than nothing. Personally, I just did not have the patience to sit on the phone with Verizon’s customer support in order to move my SIM to a phone that may or may not work in my area — especially if it meant I would have to call back in order to move my SIM once again to a phone with proper band support. Thankfully, you can check the supported bands for both phones on the FAQ page for Nothing’s Beta Program.

Ultimately, though, the personal research and time investment required to get these phones working in the US is still a tall ask for any buyer, and a big hurdle that prevents me from recommending this phone to folks in the same way as a Pixel A or Galaxy A series phone — with those it’s plug and play, no extra steps needed, and that goes a long way.

If the Nothing Phone 3a series does work in your area, though, and you can muster the energy to go through the whole process, I can’t recommend the experience of Nothing OS 3.1 — based on Android 15 — highly enough. It’s one of the better near-stock flavors of Android that remains, and it blends just enough of a Pixel UI-like interface with dot-based widgets and fonts for things like the weather and your daily step count. Nothing also relies on Google’s version of a few handy editing tools like Magic Eraser, which I much prefer over Nothing trying to invent a version of its own. The Phone 3a series will be supported for six years of updates, but the company has confirmed it’ll only receive t a trio of major Android updates, which will carry it through until Android 18. That’s a decent enough update policy for the money, but not quite on par with Samsung.

Another vital piece of using a phone day in and day out is how its battery holds up. Once again, the Phone 3a and 3a Pro are identical twins sporting 5,000mAh cells with matching 50W wired charging support. As such, you’d be forgiven for expecting the two to hand in matching battery life performance — I know it’s certainly what I expected. Instead, our controlled battery test gave the Phone 3a a clear advantage in three categories (a simulated Zoom meeting, web browsing, and snapping photos with the camera) while only really falling far behind the Phone 3a Pro while looping through a 4K video. I ran both tests on the same day, both in my temperature-controlled apartment and with the display brightness locked at around 75%, so I’m not sure how the Phone 3a lasted so much longer.

In real life, I expect the battery life between the two to be a bit closer together, though you shouldn’t have any issues using your choice of Nothing Phone beyond a day. I managed to take both phones through a busy weekend away from their respective chargers and didn’t find myself sweating my remaining charge until I was about done on Sunday afternoon. Of course, we have to keep in mind that I wasn’t taking calls or responding to texts on either device, which would likely drop the performance.

When you tick your Phone 3a or 3a Pro down to zero, you’ll again have the same option for getting it back up and running. Yes, as mentioned above, both phones support 50W wired charging and only wired charging without a see-through charging coil. This is, of course, faster than most budget phones in the US will support, so you might have to grab yourself a new wall charger if you do decide to give Nothing a try. Also, despite their identical setups, the Phone 3a Pro charged slightly faster than the Phone 3a, holding onto peak speeds for a few minutes longer. This put it close to the 56 minutes that Nothing claims for a full charge, though the Phone 3a’s mark of around 63 minutes isn’t bad, either.

While I don’t love the massive camera bump on the back of the Nothing Phone 3a Pro, it offers a pretty significant advantage over the Phone 3a — at least when you want to zoom in. For the most part, the two budget phones take the same approach to their hardware, picking up almost identical 50MP primary cameras with 24mm-equivalent focal lengths and shallow ƒ/1.9 depths of field. The sensor on the Nothing Phone 3a Pro is a hair larger, but the difference in pixel size is hardly noticeable. Nothing also chose identical ultrawide sensors for its latest launches, opting for relatively small 1/4-inch 8MP sensors with 120-degree fields of view.

However, when you make your way to the third sensor on the back of each device, you start to notice differences. For starters, this is the first time Nothing has ever opted for a triple-camera setup on any of its devices, so there’s automatically more flexibility at play — a must-have to compete against the best camera phones and a big advantage over other budget camera phones that very rarely have dedicated zoom hardware. That said, the Phone 3a’s straightforward 50MP 2x optical telephoto sensor is a bit limited compared to the Phone 3a Pro’s 50MP periscope telephoto — which may well just be the cause for the massive camera bump. The latter carries Sony’s stacked LYTIA 600 sensor, which uses a prism to capture and redirect light through the series of lenses, allowing a larger sensor to fit into a smaller space. It’s set to 3x optical zoom with up to 6x lossless zoom via sensor cropping, while the Phone 3a offers 2x optical zoom with up to 4x quality via a crop.

Honestly, it’s a long, relatively technical way to say that the Nothing Phone 3a Pro delivers slightly better zoom results than its counterpart, topping out at 60x zoom rather than 30x, you’ll have to pay a little more for them and get comfortable with the top-heavy design. As for the actual results from both phones, it’s much harder to tell a difference at shorter zoom lengths. I found myself pretty happy with everything taken between 0.6x on the ultrawide and about 10x zoom, though unsurprisingly, both phones were at their best when optical quality was still within reach. Let’s check out some shots.

Despite its relatively low resolution of 8MP, I’ve routinely been impressed by what comes out of the Nothing Phone 3a’s ultrawide camera. Although there’s some glare from the lights of Audi Field to the left, the details around the stadium are good, as is the color recreation through the sky. I’m also pleased with the colors through the magnolia tree in the night mode shot, which is lit only by the pagoda that you can see off to the left edge of the frame. It wasn’t a bright evening, so Nothing’s one-second timer had its work cut out for it.

This row, however, shows a mix of strengths and weaknesses from Nothing’s more conservative cameras. Even though I quite like the Night Mode shot to the left (featuring the pagoda mentioned above), I wish the framing around the seagull were slightly tighter and the 10x zoom quality on Washington Spirit’s Makenna Morris as she takes a corner kick is, well, not great. You’ll see below how much of a difference the 3x optical telephoto sensor makes concerning that first point, but I’m not sure that even the more powerful hardware would help enough under the tricky lights of a soccer stadium.

Switching to the Phone 3a Pro, I have to say that I like the contrast better across all three daylight shots. The wood of the pier below the gulls is slightly darker where the shadows sit, and the copper sundial shows much more detail than the corresponding shot I’d taken (but not included) with the Phone 3a. If ever there was a time for Nothing’s lenticular filter (the vertical wavy glass), it would be in the second shot with the neon signage, though I’ve yet to train myself to toggle to it since I’ve never used it on another phone — outside of the Phone 2a, of course.

Moving on, I can’t seem to get a firm grasp of Nothing’s color science from one shot to the next. I love the warm, almost film-like hues in the roses off to the right side, and I can see a little bit of the warmth carried over as I look down one of the streets in Baltimore’s Fells Point neighborhood, but the warm punchiness disappears a bit as I get to the otherwise colorful houses. On a sunnier day, they’d pop off the screen, but I feel like they’re flat against the white, cloudy sky.

Of course, you could sit and argue all day long about whether the Phone 3a’s default zoom options for 2x and 4x zoom are better than the Phone 3a Pro’s toggles for 2x, 3x, and 6x, but the truth is that everyone will have their preferences. For example, I’d much rather have the weight and balance of the Phone 3a, but I found myself jumping to the Phone 3a Pro’s 3x zoom length more than any other during my testing. Perhaps the best thing left to do is to compare the entire zoom ranges head-to-head to see where the Phone 3a runs out of steam.

Across the two galleries, there’s not much to pick out from either phone between 1x zoom and about 5x or 6x — outside of the bizarre color recreation from the Phone 3a Pro at 2x zoom. I’m largely willing to dismiss it, as it didn’t happen in any other camera samples I captured. However, at both 10x and 30x zoom, the Phone 3a Pro has a clear advantage over its more affordable sibling, offering a brighter image at 10x and much better sharpness with less color bleeding at 30x zoom. By the time it hits 60x zoom, though, both the detail and sharpness have pretty much fallen off, with the letters of the Domino Sugars sign still visible but most other details in the structure taking on the sharpness of a low-poly video game character.

Once you get past the zoom capabilities on the Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro, the camera experiences start converging again. Both phones opt for high-resolution selfie cameras, with the Phone 3a nabbing 32MP and the Phone 3a Pro going for 50MP, meaning all selfies bin down to more manageable sizes by default. I don’t notice much difference between each set of shots, with solid details on both sides, but the color profile on the Phone 3a Pro is a bit redder, both in my face and in the brick of the building behind me. I’ll also mention that Nothing’s selfie angle jumps to 1.2x zoom (about a 27mm equivalent) by default. It’s not a significant issue, just an odd choice to rely on something other than 1x zoom when you flip the camera around.

Also, I appreciate that the Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro have hopped on the resurgence of camera filters, following closely behind Apple’s Photographic Styles. Both phones offer 10 filters to choose from (well, nine plus the lenticular filter that covers your image with a wiggly pane of glass), and you can upload custom LUTs that you might have lying around from Premiere Pro or another video editing platform. You can also swipe through a few camera presets, which automatically jump to specific zoom lengths and filters to save you some time in the settings menu. I’ve relied more on the camera filters than the presets since the presets don’t change too many settings.

The last piece of Nothing’s identical pie is video support on the Phone 3a and 3a Pro. No matter which phone you pick up, you’ll have up to 4K resolution at 30fps to work with from the front and rear cameras and 1080p at up to 120fps on the back. To my eye, the stabilization and quality look about the same, but the Phone 3a Pro will handle moderate zoom just a bit better thanks to its longer telephoto focal length — so long as you can manage the slightly heavier build.

You can also check out full-resolution versions of these camera samples (and several more from both phones) at this Google Drive link.

As I said from the start, I really like both the Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend either one for its mix of battery life, flexible cameras, and near-stock Android skin. Nothing’s transparent design continues to win me over, too, even if there’s not much purpose behind the style. I’d even tell a prospective buyer to give either the Phone 3a or 3a Pro a try just for the convenience of the Essential Space — and I’d actually have to do so since the reliance on the hardware button means that the feature isn’t backwards compatible. I’d sway most people to the $379 Nothing Phone 3a over the $459 Phone 3a Pro simply due to the price difference helping alleviate some of the minor gripes like a limited IP rating and software policy, plus the latter’s beefy camera bump. But despite those grumbles, there’s not a truly glaring issue on either budget phone, given the price points… right up until you want to use one in the United States.

Unfortunately, despite everything that I’ve loved about my time with both of Nothing’s Phone 3a models, they pretty much hit a hard stop when it comes to my actually using them and recommending them to people here in the US. Due to the continued reliance on launching devices in the US as part of a “beta program,” neither the Phone 3a nor the Phone 3a Pro comes with complete band support across all three major carriers. Yes, the coverage is getting better, as I detailed earlier — Nothing now boasts coverage for most of the required bands for AT&T and is finally taking a crack at 5G support for Verizon — but the 14-day return policy might not be long enough for you to decide whether your new Nothing Phone has the band scope to work well in your area, and that’s after already jumping through annoying hoops to get there in the first place.

If it does, though, or you live in a region with official support, it’s extremely easy for me to tell you to pick up the Phone 3a or the 3a Pro. I prefer the much smaller camera bump and the slightly more fun color options of the Phone 3a, but you might find yourself drawn to the somewhat better flexibility of the Phone 3a Pro. Either way, you’ll get a matching experience under the hood, along with wired charging that runs circles around Motorola and Samsung at this price point, and the Glyph Interface will keep people turning their heads to look at what you’re carrying. I just wish I could give these phones a glowing endorsement for US buyers — and I really hope Nothing listens and embraces the market here sooner rather than later (perhaps with the Nothing Phone 3!)

Thankfully, the world is your oyster for great alternatives. Both Samsung and Motorola continue to raise their respective budget games, with the former onto the Galaxy Ax6 series of its affordable lineup. The Galaxy A36 5G ($399.99 at Amazon) is probably your best bet for US-based buyers, though it comes with some tradeoffs compared to the Phone 3a lineup. Samsung will give you significantly more software updates (up to six compared to just three), but you’ll lose the high-resolution telephoto sensor in favor of just a 5MP macro shooter, and you’ll drop from a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset to a Snapdragon 6 Gen 3. On the bright side, Samsung’s $400 smartphone packs Gorilla Glass Victus Plus on both the front and back for a little extra durability.

Motorola’s recent Moto G Power (2025) ($299.99 at Amazon) is another good, slightly cheaper option, mixing impressive IP68 and IP69 protection with an eye-catching vegan leather finish. It takes a step further back in terms of processing power, carrying MediaTek’s Dimensity 6300, but it does add wireless charging to the mix, which is nice for flexibility. You can expand beyond the base 128GB of storage, too, thanks to a microSD slot. Remember that it’s only in line for a pair of major Android updates, so you’ll hit the end of the phone’s lifespan even faster than the Nothing Phone 3a.

If you have more money to spend, it gets easier to recommend some truly excellent alternatives to Nothing’s Phone 3a series. Google’s upcoming Pixel 9a ($499 at Amazon) is priced very competitively against the Phone 3a Pro, even if it comes without the benefit of a zoom camera. What you do get, however, is the light, smooth Pixel UI experience with plenty of software updates in the pipeline and a freshly streamlined design. We’re still waiting to get our hands on the Pixel 9a to see how its latest round of Gemini features stacks up and whether or not we genuinely miss the camera bar, but at $499, the price feels right for the peace of mind of a phone that works in the US.

Stepping up even further, the OnePlus 13R ($599.99 at OnePlus) and Apple iPhone 16e ($599 at eBay) might be worthwhile, albeit for very different reasons. OnePlus’s mid-ranger is an excellent bet for its stacked spec sheet, which is pretty much copied and pasted from a 2024 flagship. It packs some of the fastest charging you can get and still comes with a charger in the box — even if it’s a USB-A block. OnePlus has also taken steps to lighten its Oxygen OS skin, making it feel a little bit more like the OnePlus we fell in love with. Apple’s new mid-range iPhone is a little different, combining flagship internals with the body of a much older iPhone — something like an iPhone 13 if you will. It comes ready for Apple Intelligence and will get years and years of updates, you just have to decide whether or not you can live with a notched display and a single rear camera.