Released back on March 11 of this year, it has already been eight months since Nothing released their mid-range offering, the Nothing Phone (3a). Since then, it has taken both the global and the Bangladeshi market by storm. So, I decided to give it a try and see if it really lives up to its hype.
From the moment I picked it up, its semi-transparent back and the Glyph Interface with its distinctive design language immediately made it stand out to me.
The internals were nothing to scoff at either. Under the hood you will find a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset, paired with 8 or 12 gigabytes of RAM and storage variants of 128 GB or 256 gigabytes. This, combined with the Nothing OS built on Android 15 made the day-to-day user experience very clean, smooth and seamless to me. And aside from that, it had enough horsepower to run pretty much any game out there.
It also boasts a shiny display of 6.77-inch AMOLED panel, full-HD+ resolution (2392×1080) with a 120Hz refresh rate which makes it very smooth and watchable. The stereo speaker that it comes with delivers a loud, clear and well-balanced sound which compliments the display well.
The battery clocks in at 5,000 mAh and I could always go a whole day of heavy usage without having to charge it twice. For cameras, the Phone (3a) keeps things fairly solid: a 50-megapixel main sensor with OIS, an 8-megapixel ultrawide and a 50-megapixel telephoto (2× optical) unit. The selfie camera is 32-megapixel. And on practical terms, the photo quality was good over the boards.
The Nothing OS also promises several years of updates which guarantees the phone’s longevity. This whole well-balanced package comes at the reasonable price of Tk 31,500-37,000 (unofficial).
Verdict
If you are after a smartphone in the mid-range segment that boasts a truly unique design and delivers a smooth overall package, the Nothing Phone (3a) is a compelling option. It will not out-gun premium flagships, but for the price it comes at, it hits an excellent balance between performance, design and features.
