Nothing’s latest two phone releases include the Phone (3a) and the Phone (3a) Pro. While the Phone (3a) has already impressed us in its review, it’s time for us to put the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro through its paces to find out whether it’s worth its starting price tag of Rs 29,999. Here’s our Nothing Phone (3a) Pro review after a month of extensive use.
Design & Display
The Phone (3a) Pro’s design is unlike anything you’ve seen from Nothing or even in the smartphone industry in general. While the huge camera module on the back may remind you of those Ultra smartphones by Vivo, Oppo, and Xiaomi, the camera layout won’t.
An oddly placed three sensor setup on the back is sure to turn heads in public places as it did in my case. People were interested in knowing which device it is while some knew right away that it’s from Nothing.
While the design itself isn’t my cup of tea (where I prefer the Phone (3a)’s design over the Pro’s), Nothing has done a pretty good job over the past few years in creating an identity for itself. For what it’s worth, the Phone (3a) Pro looks better in Grey than black as the design is much more prominent in this shade (same as the vanilla Phone (3a)).
Even though the flat sides are plastic, they don’t feel cheap. The metal buttons and glass back make the device feel even more premium in the hand. The device further feels bigger in the hand and is on the heavier side, which definitely adds to the premium feel in a way. The buttons feel tactile when clicked while the Haptics are identical to Phone (3a)’s — tight and powerful enough for this price point. In addition, photos don’t do justice to how huge the camera module looks and feels on the back.
The glyph interface on the back is identical to the Phone (3a) and the LEDs look decent on the grey shade when they light up. The amount of glyph-oriented features also remain identical to the vanilla model in the (3a) series, including essential notifications, progress for uber cabs and zomato orders, volume indicator, etc.
These features are a decent addition for those who like the glyph interface but again, as I mentioned in the Phone (3a) review, there are no new features compared to previous year’s Nothing devices, which shouldn’t have been the case.
The stereo speaker setup on the device is loud and clear but do not expect a lot of bass. As for the fingerprint scanner’s performance, it’s quick and accurate, and there’s nothing to complain about with it.
Speaking of the display, the handset sports a 6.77-inch AMOLED FHD+ screen with a Resolution of 1080 x 2392 pixels, HDR10+, 2160Hz PWM dimming, up to 3000 nits peak brightness, 240Hz touch sampling rate, and a 120Hz refresh rate.
Because this is the same panel as the Phone (3a), the performance is also identical. The colors appear decent, with excellent sharpness and smoothness. Viewing angles are surprisingly impressive, and the brightness remains strong even under direct sunlight. Unfortunately, there’s no support for HDR in apps like Netflix.The uniform bezels on the front enhance the aesthetics, and overall, I found the display impressive.
Software and Performance
Under the hood, the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset, paired with up to 12GB of LPDDR4x RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 2.2 internal storage.
Despite the use of a lower mid-range chipset, the Phone (3a) Pro’s performance impresses. During our Nothing Phone (3a) Pro review period, it was smooth, responsive, quick, and didn’t show any signs of lag in daily usage. As I stated in the Phone (3a) review, UFS 2.2 storage may not be the version of storage power users would be expecting but none of that affected the device’s ability to handle daily tasks.
While Phone (3a)’s RAM management was average, the Pro model, with its higher 12GB RAM, runs apps in the background like a champ. They stay in memory for a considerable amount of time and there are no issues in that area. You may do casual gaming on the device but don’t expect to play titles like Call of Duty at highest graphics. BGMI does support 90Hz Refresh Rate gameplay and it works well for the most part.
Aside from RAM management, rest of the performance aspects remain quite identical to the Phone (3a). Nothing OS 3.1 is among the best operating systems for a smooth, snappy, and well-rounded experience. It offers just the right level of customization, a distinctive design, and a practical set of features.
Nothing OS 3.1 has a great design language that doesn’t make it too complicated to operate but maintains a good amount of features at the same time. Features like Circle to Search, lock screen clock styles, newly designed quick settings panel, App lock, game mode, are all supported.
Then there’s a new key for Essential Space which is the major new software feature. We have already talked about the feature in detail in the Phone (3a) review and to round up, it’s a highly useful feature once you get the hang of it. I found myself using it to take screenshots and set reminders effortlessly.
If a screenshot included a date or location, Essential Space intelligently suggested adding it to the calendar or opening it in Maps. Nothing recently also updated it to include Essential Space within the camera app which is again a great addition. Through this, you could capture real-world content directly with a short press of the key to add notes or long press for voice input.
Compared to some recent AI features in mobile operating systems—like Now Brief in One UI 7, which rarely works—this feels far more practical and effective.
Beyond that, the handset delivered solid connectivity performance. Nothing guarantees three years of OS updates and four years of security patches, which is reasonable for the price. Out of the box, the device came with the February 2025 security patch and has been updated to the March 2025 security patch since.
Battery life
The Phone (3a) Pro features a 5000mAh battery, similar to the Phone (3a), with 50W fast wired charging.
Its battery life, same as the Phone (3a), is outstanding, easily lasting a full day even with heavy usage, including navigation. During our Nothing Phone (3a) Pro review, with moderate use, the device could stretch close to two days on a single charge.
With mostly Wi-Fi usage, Always-on Display enabled, and a mix of WhatsApp, Instagram scrolling, gaming, web browsing, calls, and YouTube streaming, the device delivered around 6 hours of screen-on time with about 48 hours of total runtime. In another cycle, it exceeded 8 hours of screen-on time, highlighting the impressive software optimization.
The device took about 45 minutes to charge from 15% to 100%, which isn’t the fastest but is reasonable.
Cameras
The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro comes with a triple rear camera setup, consisting of a 50-megapixel f/1.88 OIS-assisted Samsung primary camera, a 50-megapixel f/2.5 Sony periscope telephoto sensor with 3x Optical Zoom and OIS, and an 8-megapixel f/2.2 Sony ultra-wide angle camera. On the front, there’s a 50-megapixel sensor for selfies. It supports Ultra XDR technology as well.
The device captures excellent photos outdoors in bright sunlight, with impressive dynamic range and high levels of detail and sharpness. The colors retain a natural tone, which may not appeal to those who prefer more vivid hues.
With ultra-wide angle shots, the color scheme closely matches that of the main sensor’s photos, with commendable detail and a decent dynamic range. For some reason though, the shots from the main sensor appear to have a slightly warmer tone than ultra-wide angle photos.
It also seemed as if Ultra XDR technology was not being applied to photos from all the Sensors which was a major reason for the photos to appear largely different as I shifted through them. This seemed to be a software issue which wasn’t present in the Phone (3a).
Coming to Portrait shots, they are quite impressive, featuring a natural bokeh effect and excellent sharpness. The colors are visually appealing, leaving little to complain about in this regard.
In low light, while the colors could be slightly better, the sharpness and overall look of the photo are impressive. The device takes a second or two to focus and has a slight delay after tapping the shutter button, but the results are well worth the wait.
Turning on Night mode increases the brightness of the shot in pitch black conditions but doesn’t largely help in increasing the detailing of the shot.
The same applies to shots taken under artificial lighting. The level of detail and the way the device handles colors are truly impressive in such lighting conditions.
Selfies look better than how they did with the Phone (3a), likely because of the superior sensor. They are sharp and the colours and skin tones are handled nicely.
As for shots from the periscope telephoto sensors, they look quite impressive once again. The device supports 3x optical zoom versus 2x optical zoom on the Phone (3a).
From 1x to 2x, you can notice the drop in detailing but when you tap the 3x toggle, the colors shift slightly, making the photos warmer, but also making them more detailed and sharper. At 6x zoom, the photos don’t lose out much on detailing.
At 10x zoom, the results are still impressive but once you go beyond that, you begin to see slight noise. At 60x zoom, the maximum the device can reach, the photos become nearly unusable, resembling an oil painting due to the significant loss of detail.
