That's a lot of phone for 400 bucks
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Nothing Phone 3a: https://geni.us/AO7pBa
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Playlist of MKBHD Intro music: https://goo.gl/B3AWV5
Phone provided by Nothing for review.
~
http://twitter.com/MKBHD
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Save up to 40% off at https://ridge.com/mkbhd and celebrate Ridge’s 12th anniversary
Nothing Phone 3a: https://geni.us/AO7pBa
MKBHD Merch: http://shop.MKBHD.com
Playlist of MKBHD Intro music: https://goo.gl/B3AWV5
Phone provided by Nothing for review.
~
http://twitter.com/MKBHD
http://instagram.com/MKBHD
http://facebook.com/MKBHD
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TechTranscript
00:00You know, there is something kind of refreshing about a budget phone from a company that doesn't have a bunch of more expensive phones in
00:06their lineup to protect
00:10So this is the new nothing phone 3a which starts at
00:15$379 and the phone 3a pro which is $459
00:22The naming is a bit confusing
00:23But all you really need to know is both of these phones do a shockingly good job of feeling like
00:29$1,000 flagship phones with just a few small asterisks
00:40The pro phone for those wondering is basically the same as the 3a but just with a better camera system
00:46We'll get to that in a minute
00:47but I feel like I have no choice but to start with the way this phone looks because there's still nothing that looks quite like
00:53A nothing phone and that is still true. I mean look at this blue. This blue is sick
00:59It's still got the split design with the glyphs at the top around the cameras
01:03But you know, they've tweaked a few things too. They've moved some screws around changed up some of the shapes and the details
01:08I think this is fire to be honest still got the little red square to the 3a pro is similar
01:14But basically a monochrome version and then with a way bigger camera
01:18Cliff like a camera plateau now some people were already ragged on their camera design because it already leaked everywhere
01:24So we've seen it and to be fair. It's definitely unconventional and not symmetrical at all
01:29But I still think it's nice the gigantic bump even becomes a nice place to rest my index finger when I'm holding the phone
01:35So if the goal is still to be the budget phone with an interesting aesthetic or to just be a unique looking phone in general
01:41I think mission accomplished like find me a more interesting phone design out there right now. I'll wait
01:49Exactly
01:50So once it comes to using this phone
01:53like I said, it is impressive how close this
01:56$379 phone gets to feeling like a thousand dollar flagship
02:01Like I feel like I can see a lot of nothing's growing maturity here, too
02:04You know, they're a little bit bigger of a company now
02:06They can afford to get more premium parts and from better suppliers
02:10And it's a paying off with a bunch of little improvements that stack up to feel really nice
02:15Like this phone 3a has a glass back now instead of the plastic from before
02:19It's also now IP 64 rated instead of IP 54
02:22it even has a much brighter AMOLED display now that gets up to 800 nits normally, but up to
02:283,000 nits peak for HDR, which is one of the highest numbers I've ever seen on paper
02:33But forget the numbers though this just like I said feels like a flagship
02:36It's an enormous phone first of all even bigger again than the 2a it's now a 6.77 inch
02:42Jumbo size display with even bezels all the way around. It's a high refresh rate
02:46It just feels like other flagships do now. Yes
02:50It's not quite as bright as the actual ultra phones and yes
02:54The optical fingerprint reader under the display is a little slow sometimes
02:57But those are small prices to pay when you're reminded of well the price you're paying and then they are back to a Qualcomm
03:03Chip again on this phone from a MediaTek chip last generation
03:06So it is a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip with 12 gigs of RAM
03:11Now some budget phones are trying to be the spec monster on paper for the price
03:18This phone is not trying to do that. It is a lot of RAM, but that's not what this is
03:21I think this is an appropriate mid-range chip for this phone, especially because whatever they're doing with their software is
03:28Super impressive and it really elevates the value of the thing like this budget phone
03:33Feels as quick and smooth most of the time as the spec monsters
03:38So a shout out specifically to nothing software team. This is running nothing OS 3.1 on top of Android 15
03:45they do up to six years of software updates with these phones and
03:49so many things like these little animations things like swiping down the notification bar or
03:54Expanding a folder from the home screen or even swiping between recent apps
03:59So many of these little animations have been optimized to feel super smooth every time and you can feel it now
04:06It's not immune to hiccups
04:07Like you sometimes feel the mask slip off a little bit and you're moving through some heavy apps or you're gaming for a while
04:13And the stuff that's stressful on the GPU
04:16You can absolutely find a way to get this phone stuttering a little bit
04:19But I cannot be mad at the performance of this phone despite it not being a spec monster
04:25It is so smooth and I like a lot of features. They've been adding to nothing OS 2 the lock screen customization is yet
04:31Another one that's taken obviously a big cue from iOS
04:34but you can see now you can long press and dive in and mess with the clock and
04:38Drop in a few widgets on your lock screen if you want to so the software is great
04:42but you might be wondering about AI because I don't know if you've noticed but
04:47Nothing is one of the last big name smartphone companies that
04:51Isn't heavily pushing a ton of AI stuff in their new phones. They don't have an AI image generator
04:59They don't have a whole bunch of
05:01Writing tools or AI summaries for notifications or Genmoji or anything like that. There is no object removal from photos
05:09Nothing, but there is one
05:12Really interesting big new AI feature. So you see this here. They've added a single button to the side of the phone
05:18It's actually a different shape than the other buttons
05:20It's kind of dome shaped instead of flat and it's right under the power button. So it's super reachable. You can't miss it
05:25This is the AI button if you double press it it opens up the essential space and this is an entire
05:33Separate area of the phone just focused on making the AI helpful to the user
05:38so here's what that means basically you just save a bunch of stuff in here in the form of screenshots and you can always come
05:43back here for referencing this stuff or
05:46Finding information from the screenshots or even setting reminders about that stuff
05:50So kind of think of it like the pixel screenshots app, but on steroids
05:53So from anywhere you want on the phone, you can press that button once and it'll capture whatever's on your screen and save it
06:00But then if you hold down that button
06:02It will also start a voice recording that gets attached to that screenshot so you can say something you want to remember like
06:09this is the lawnmower Andrew told me about or
06:12remind me to buy tickets to this concert tomorrow and then that recording gets transcribed and summarized and
06:19It will even detect and set actual reminders for you to do stuff with that information at a later date
06:25I think that's an awesome start to something that could be really cool someday. It's it's still kind of being built out
06:31I have this personal rule where I won't dump my life into something if it's not multi-platform and this isn't it's just on this phone
06:39So there's no web version of this. I can't access this on my computer or a tablet or anything else like that
06:44So I'm not gonna dive all in on something like this
06:48But maybe someday in the future could be cool or I could just ignore it completely and pretend it doesn't exist
06:53You could too
06:55Although I will say you are going to press this button accidentally a whole bunch of times now both the 3a and 3a Pro
07:02Have the same 5,000 milliamp hour battery and excellent battery life both have 50 watt charging now
07:08Which is a little faster than last year
07:09But basically that's 0 to 100 in an hour and they are both still missing wireless charging
07:15So that that's one of the stings that for me someone who's used to wireless charging on a bunch of phones
07:20That's a tougher trade-off
07:21But this is one of the things that they've decided to stick with for nothing phones, although it is still pretty fast wired charging
07:27so at least you have that so the only difference you really need to know about is
07:31The cameras the 3a Pro is the one theoretically you should want if you care more about cameras
07:37And if you don't then the 3a should be fine for you
07:41That's on paper. Anyway, so I shot a bunch with the 3a and the 3a Pro cameras
07:45And what was interesting is I didn't find a whole lot of difference in most situations
07:50Between the primary cameras on these phones, even though the sensor on the pro is slightly bigger
07:55They're both 50 megapixels, but the pro has a little bit better autofocus in general
08:00The pictures from both of them are passable, you know
08:02The sensor is big enough to get you a soft background for close-up subjects
08:05The colors aren't too over-processed. Although you might get some fringing and overexposure, but generally they're pretty decent looking photos
08:12The 8 megapixel ultrawides are also identical which is to say pretty meh
08:17But the 3x periscope telephoto lens on the pro definitely gives you a more usable far range and macros
08:25Than the 2x on the 3a so I love a good periscope zoom
08:28I just think I was expecting to notice more of a difference between these two given how dramatic of a difference this huge
08:35camera table makes
08:37But it's not actually that big of a difference from my experience. So the more, you know, so here's my final thoughts on this nothing phone
08:45Refresh first of all as someone who just came from reviewing the iPhone 16e
08:49This spec sheet on paper makes the iPhone 16e spec sheet on paper look terrible
08:55This looks loaded. Obviously, it's triple cameras. It's a much bigger brighter AMOLED display. It's high refresh rate
09:02It's also a massive battery and great battery life while you have 60 Hertz and a smaller phone and you know
09:08The single camera on the 16e and it's way cheaper
09:11So just a lot of value here in general, which is what we expect from nothing from the a-series
09:16But my other thought is I am now way more curious about
09:20Nothing phone 3 like a genuine flagship from this company because if they're able to make this for this value
09:27I kind of wonder what a snapdragon 8 elite and a silicon carbide battery and
09:32Maybe even wireless charging and a whole bunch more specs loaded into a phone like this
09:36Could be because they're so good at software already. I kind of hope we see something like that
09:41Hopefully soon but speaking of soon shout out to this video sponsor
09:45Ridge because they are running a 12-year anniversary sale right now that depending on when you're watching this could be over pretty soon
09:51So link below so for the sale now
09:53You can get discounts up to 40% off 40% off on
09:57Wallets, but also key cases and travel gear like luggage. It's all stuff that I've been using lately so I can vouch for its quality
10:04So head over to ridge.com and knock yourself out before it's too late. Thanks for watching
10:09Catch you guys in the next one. Peace