Nothing Phone (3a): Australian availability, pricing and my early thoughts

Their existence wasn’t exactly a secret, though the Nothing Phone (3a) and Nothing Phone (3a) Pro do have the potential to shake up the mid-range phone space in Australia.

As widely tipped by just about everyone, Nothing has lifted the veil on its two latest smartphones. Here’s the basic rundown of each phone and my early thoughts.

How much do the Nothing Phone (3a) and Nothing Phone (3a) Pro cost in Australia?

The Nothing Phone (3a) sells in two variants, with the entry level 8GB RAM/128GB storage variant selling in Australia for $599, while the higher tier 12GB RAM/256GB version will run you $689.

If it’s the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro that you hanker for, it’s slightly more expensive as you might expect for a Pro phone, though not into flagship pricing spaces by any stretch of the imagination. It’ll cost you $849 AUD.

When can I buy the the Nothing Phone (3a) and Nothing Phone (3a) Pro in Australia?

Pre-orders for both phones opens from 9:30pm on the 4th of March through JB-HiFi, because they’re an exclusive through that chain of stores.

Actual on-shelf sales for the Nothing Phone (3a) kick off from the 11th of March, while the Nothing Phone
(3a) Pro arrives on the 25th of March.

What do the Nothing Phone (3a) and Nothing Phone (3a) Pro offer?

This calls for a specifications table!

Nothing Phone (3a): Alex’s Early Take

The mid range space is getting seriously interesting right now.

There are plenty of shiny flagships out there, but for the past few years I’ve been arguing that the real value lies in the mid-range space, because the balances between power, battery life and camera quality have tilted towards meeting the needs of most folks without requiring you to drop thousands of dollars on a phone.

The Nothing Phone (3a) has an annoying use of brackets that makes me irritable every time I have to type them, but I’ll forgive it based on what it’s bringing to market.

I really did quite like the Nothing Phone 2a when I reviewed it last year for Gizmodo Australia – and it’s deeply annoying to me that I can’t link to that review – but it seems as though Nothing is really stepping up its game in terms of value for a mid-range handset, especially for the upper tier storage models.

In the mid-range you can usually expect decent performance and battery life, but cameras are where you see limitations a-plenty. The fact that you’re getting actual telephoto in a phone at this price range is seriously tempting; I’m a big fan of having phone camera flexibility on tap, and all three phones offer that.

Of the three, I do feel that the 12GB/256GB version will be the real value play here; it’s not that much more than the base 8GB/128GB version for more RAM and more storage, while still staying below the price point of the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro.

You do also get Nothing’s Glyph interface on the back of the phone, and look, honestly, while I can’t reproduce that Gizmodo review for rather obvious copyright reasons, I did note in that review that the Glyph part of the Nothing Phone 2a felt rather more of a gimmick than a truly useful feature. Maybe the Nothing Phone (3a) will get me excited about it, but it’ll have some serious work to do.

Both phones also feature a side "Essential" Key, though Nothing's pitch here is more of an AI shortcut than a fully fledged action button a la the iPhone 16, for example. Instead, a single press will send content to the phone's AI-led "Essential Space" while a long press will record a voice memo sent to the same application area.

Double tapping will send you to your saved Essential Space content. Is that a great time saving feature, or a gimmick that I won't use much? I'll have to wait and see how well it's integrated -- and just how smart its AI might be.

So what are you not getting? IP64 is decent in terms of water resistance, but it’s not up there with what Samsung announced on Sunday in the form of the IP67-rated Galaxy A26/A36/A56 phones.

Samsung’s also doing a fair bit more in terms of OS updates with 6 years of both compared to the 3 years OS/4 years security promises from Nothing.

I’m waiting for my review model to come in so I can start testing it out – watch this space.

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