The price for Nothing’s more affordable phone line has risen, but value for money is still very much a feature.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Triple lens camera works very nicely | Only IP64 rated water resistance |
| Distinctive style with extra-bright Glyph interface | Battery life could be better |
| Shifted Essential Key is easier to use (or not hit accidentally) | Fewer software upgrades than competing options from Samsung or Google |
Score: 4/5
In this review
Nothing Phone 4a Specifications
Nothing Phone 4a Design
Nothing Phone 4a Camera
Nothing Phone 4a Performance
Nothing Phone 4a Battery
Nothing Phone 4a Verdict
Ethical disclaimer:
The Nothing Phone 4a used in this review was sent to me by Nothing, and it typically doesn’t ask for phones to be returned. As always, this makes no difference at all to my end review, and Nothing has no oversight or influence on my reviews, there’s no commercial deals in place or advertising to fuss about. Which is as it should be, really.
For more on ART’s Ethics position, see here.
Design
Nothing’s particular design style tends towards the ostentation; they’re best known for essentially clear phone backs with lots of tech-centric exposed parts (or simulacra of the same). They’re designed to stand out.
The Nothing Phone 4a certainly meets that remit. It’s available in White, Pink, Black or Blue finishes. I’m a sucker for a blue phone, and I do think the Blue model looks particularly nice, but the model that Nothing sent my way was the all-white variant instead.
It’s certainly eye-catching in its own way, and I’ll give Nothing plaudits for not calling it “Astonishing” White or any other kind of superlative. You pick a colour, and that’s the colour you get, and I appreciate the simplicity of this kind of approach.
Another design feature I appreciate on the Nothing Phone 4a is that Nothing does include a simple clear protective case in the box. Every single phone deserves protection, and including it as standard is a nice consumer-first touch that I always appreciate at any phone price point. If you really must keep the Nothing Phone 4a in its naked configuration, you’re looking at a phone with Corning Gorilla Glass 7i which is nice to see, as well as water and dust resistance rated at IP64.
The variable pricing of the Nothing Phone 4a depending on configuration has me somewhat split on that score; at the entry level price of the phone it’s above average, but for the full-fat model it would have been nice to see IP68, because that’s very much something you can get in a phone for $849.
If all this talk of IP ratings has you scratching your head, you can read my guide to water resistance here, or watch the video below.
The Nothing Phone 4a is built around a 6.78 inch 120Hz capable AMOLED display that displays reasonably well. Maybe it’s the stark whiteness of the frame on the model supplied to me, but I noticed the bezels on the Nothing Phone 4a a little more than I usually would. Not to a level where it fussed me, but something to keep in mind if you’re more of an all-screen purist.
As a successor to the Nothing Phone 3a, the Nothing Phone 4a builds on the design ideas in that phone with just a few tweaks.
In control terms, volume and power/assistant buttons sit on the right hand side, but the “Essential Key” button that works with Nothing’s particular suite of AI features has been shifted to the left hand side of the phone.
That’s a subtle change, but it’s a very welcome one; having the Essential Key and Power/Assistant buttons on the same side frustrated me no end last year, but this isn’t a problem any more.
Nothing’s other big design feature for its phones is some kind of rear LED light panel, or in Nothing-Speak, the “Glyph Interface”. For the Nothing Phone 4a, this comprises a vertical array of 7 mini-LEDs at the rear that Nothing says is up to 40% brighter than prior generations.
Nothing is not wrong in this, because they are very bright indeed, and I’m thankful that Nothing does note that they might not be suitable for those with light sensitivity issues or epilepsy.
One neat feature here if you’re privacy minded is that by default the lowest LED in the stack will light up and flash red if you’re recording video. I appreciate letting people know when they’re on camera, though the flipside here is that it can be rather distracting if you’re trying to shoot to camera this way.
Also read:
Nothing Phone 3a Review
Camera
One of the big selling points for the Nothing Phone 3a last year was that it was one of the lowest-cost phones you could buy that incorporated a proper telephoto lens into its camera system.
The bad news here is that the price for the Nothing Phone 4a has jumped up a little this year; where the Nothing Phone 3a was priced at $599/$689 last year, this year’s iteration will run you $649/$749 or $849 respectively.
The good news is that telephoto is still very much part of the recipe, with some nice quality upgrades. If you were just counting megapixels it’s the same as last year, with a 50MP Wide, 8MP Ultra-Wide and 50MP telephoto lens at the rear and 32MP at the front, but the telephoto sees a bump from 2x in last year’s model up to 3.5x, and the primary lens goes from an aperture of f/1.9 to f/1.88, giving it more scope for low-light shooting.
All of this does have to be qualified by the fact that this is still a mid-range camera phone, not a full pro-level powerhouse. Don’t push it too hard, because the cracks will show, but still, it can deliver some genuinely pleasing results.
The boost in telephoto performance can lead to some nice shots, and you can (if you must) digitally boost it up to 70x. Look, I’ll give you an example that also shows why I do like having telephoto as an option on a camera.
Here I am at a local park, quite far from the kid’s play area. Here’s an ultra-wide shot to take in the park itself
Here’s the wide shot of the same location using that 50MP sensor rather than the 8MP Ultra-Wide:
Let’s zoom in just a little with a 2x zoom, which is almost certainly just a crop of that primary wide lens:
Using the actual telephoto gives us a nicer perspective on the play equipment at 3.5x zoom:
7x zoom (a crop most likely of the telephoto, with maybe some mixed info in from the primary wide as well) also works well too.
Pushing it to 70x though, even with a relatively simple surface shows flaws. Basically, don’t push it.
Nothing Phone 4a Sample Photos
Performance
Where last year’s Nothing Phone 3a and Nothing Phone 3a Pro both ran on the same Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor, Nothing’s mixing up its plans for its regular and Pro series with a slightly different offering under the hood for each.
For the Nothing Phone 4a, that equates to the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 processor with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of storage, depending on how much you spend. Storage isn’t upgradeable through microSD card, and for the record, the unit sent my way was the 12GB/256GB top of the range variant.
In terms of pricing, the entry level 8GB RAM/128GB variant will run you $649, the mid-level 8GB RAM/256GB model costs $749 and the premium end model runs $849. That does represent a price bump from last year where pricing started at $599, but that’s inflation and the rising cost of RAM for you, I suppose.
More challenging again however is the question of comparison, because Nothing’s pricing for the Nothing Phone 4a spans most of what I’d call mid-range pricing. It means there’s a lot of competing phones in this space to work with in terms of comparison.
So how does the Nothing Phone 4a compare in benchmark terms? Here’s how it stacks up using Geekbench 6’s CPU test:
Not a bad result – the iPhone is the outlier here, cheap right now because the iPhone 17e has just been announced – but at the lower end of the performance curve while still representing a slight bump up from the prior generation.
It’s much the same story if we look at GPU performance by way of 3Dmark Wild Life Extreme:
You can essentially do better for the same kind of money, but at the same time, benchmarks don’t tell the complete picture and the reality here – as it has been for some time – is that the everyday performance of the Nothing Phone 4a is going to be perfectly adequate for most users.
The Nothing Phone 4a runs on Android 16, with the promise of three years of OS upgrades and six years of security updates, slightly behind the curve of the likes of Samsung and Google officially, and Apple unofficially.
Nothing has its own take on Android, dubbed “NothingOS”, which changes up the UI and gives you the option for a monochrome display style that’s certainly quite eye-catching, though honestly not entirely to my taste. You make that choice when setting up the Nothing Phone 4a, but if you do need to flip it back, it’s pretty easy to do:
The Nothing Phone 4a also features Nothing’s “Essential Key”, a quick gateway to Nothing’s small suite of AI features including note taking and transcription, screen recording or screenshots.
These all function though they’re not exactly what I’d rush towards as a key differentiator just yet. I am notably in the AI-skeptic space, but I’m still waiting for that big “must-have” AI app on smartphones to blow me away. The wait continues…
Battery
The Nothing Phone 4a is built around a 5080mAh battery, just slightly larger than the Android average, with the claim of “up to” 17 hours of continuous mixed usage, “up to” 21 hours of YouTube viewing or “up to” 26 hours of Instagram use.
Quick tip: If you’re browsing Instagram for 26 hours continuously on any kind of regular basis, please seek help.
That aside, I’ve put “up to” in quote marks there because it’s the catch all term that all phone makers use to give themselves breathing room around actual battery life under any circumstance.
I’ve written here (and produced video) about the issues with battery testing and how it’ll always be an imperfect science, but to give some kind of comparative weight, I put the Nothing Phone 4a through my standard YouTube battery life test up against that same crew of comparatively priced phones. Here’s how it fared:
Any phone that can make it to over 90% battery will typically be good for most people to last out a single day’s usage, but still, the Nothing Phone 4a doesn’t exactly cover itself with glory here, giving me significant pause for thought about that claimed 21 hours of YouTube viewing.
Something tells me that Nothing might not have the phone brightness up to maximum or much volume going in those circumstances.
Like most phones these days, you don’t get a charger in the box, though Nothing does promote the Nothing Phone 4a as being good for fast charging with the claim of 100% charging capability within 64 minutes from flat.
Annoyingly given the higher price of the tested 12GB/256GB unit, there’s no onboard Qi or Qi2 wireless charging capability at all – a missed opportunity at this higher price point, I feel.
Nothing Phone 4a: Alex’s Verdict
Nothing’s position in the phone space has been strongly focused on affordability, not in the true “budget” sense, but certainly in a “value for money” way, and the Nothing Phone 4a mostly delivers on that promise.
The question of pricing is a tricky one; it’s undeniably annoying to see a slight price rise across the range, and the fact that the top-end model (as tested) runs to around the same prices that Nothing charged last year for the Nothing Phone 3a Pro does mean you need to select and compare carefully. The price of that phone puts it in the conversation with the Pixel 10a that I’ve also just reviewed, for example.
Also read:
About the Author
