Nothing Phone (4a) Pro review: an exciting mid-range phone… finally
If this $499 Android phone doesn’t pique your interest, what exactly would?
🏆 Rating: 4/5
✅ Pros
📐 Stand-out design with bold Glyph interface
📱 Gorgeous display that’s big and bright
🔋 All-day battery life with fast charging
🫧 Nothing OS is clean and organized
🤖 Essential Space can actually be useful
❌ Cons
📸 Camera quality needs improvement
⚡️ No wireless charging or MagSafe
📶 Not available at carrier stores
The Shortcut review
If you haven’t heard of Nothing before, it’s time to get educated. The company has been making design-forward products for over five years now, with its transparent earbuds and smartphones making waves in a debatably boring state of affairs for consumer technology. Nothing dares to try something different with every product it makes, and the $499 Phone (4a) Pro is among the most unique yet.
I’ve been testing this mid-range Android phone, and I’ve gotta be honest: it’s really good. The design is polarizing at first with its aluminum body and humongous plateau on the back, but it somehow works. I like how whimsical the Glyph interface is and the way its features feel like minigames in your favorite childhood video game. Performance and battery life are great for the price, and Nothing’s software remains clear of any unnecessary jank.
Can you find a phone with a better camera for $500? Sure, the Pixel 10a is sitting right there. How about one that runs iOS? Absolutely, Apple is happy to sell you the iPhone 17e. But is there any phone that comes close to how unique and valuable the Phone (4a) Pro is at this price? Definitely not, which is driving me to recommend it to almost everyone I meet.
Review notes
🎡 Welcome to Funky Town. Take one look at the Phone (4a) Pro, and you’ll say to yourself, “Huh… I didn’t know they made phones like this.” It’s an unorthodox design, even for Nothing: an aluminum unibody with a semi-transparent cut-out for the cameras and Glyph interface. Nowadays, every phone is some variant of a glass/plastic and metal sandwich, while this phone goes in a much funkier direction, which is very on-brand for the London-based company. I personally like the design, especially all the fun colors it ships in. (We got the boring silver model to review, but you can also get it in Pink and Black as well.)
⚪️ Glyph Matrix… (a) Series. Nothing took the Glyph Matrix from the flagship Phone (3), made it a bit bigger, and dropped the resolution down to 137 mini-LED dots, a stark change from the Phone (3)’s 489 mini-LEDs. It functions the same, with little easter eggs and games (although not as many as what Nothing’s flagship has), and you can use it as a gimmicky viewfinder for the camera. However, as whimsical and charming an unorthodox feature like this can be, the reduced resolution and utility of the Glyph Matrix couldn’t appeal to me the same way it did on the Phone (3). That being said, Nothing would be accused of having an identity crisis if it got rid of the Glyph interface at all, so I’m happy to see it’s made its return. I’d just like some more functionality next time.
⚡️ Aluminum body means no wireless charging. I’m personally a fan of having an aluminum phone, if only because it makes the device feel more premium than glass sometimes can. But it’s not without its faults. Wireless charging can’t travel through metal, and therefore doesn’t work on the Phone (4a) Pro. Is that a huge deal? Not really, but as a regular wireless charging user, I wish it was there. That being said, the aluminum design delights me nonetheless.
👀 The boldest phone for under $500. There’s no question that this is the phone you should buy if you want to stand out on a budget. There’s no other $500 phone on the market that looks quite as eye-catching as the Phone (4a) Pro. Plus, the aluminum won’t crack when you drop it, and it’s rated IP65 for water resistance. Not only is it a good value, but it dares to do something entirely different, which is nothing short of exciting for this category.
📺 A big, bright display. This screen is fantastic for the money you spend. At 6.83 inches, the Phone (4a) Pro gives you a lot of room for watching movies, playing games, and scrolling through social media. It’s a good-quality AMOLED panel with a sharp 2,800 x 1,260 resolution, and its 144Hz refresh rate keeps everything responsive and animations fluid. It also gets up to 5,000 nits bright which is… insane. That’s nearly twice as bright as most flagship phones, and while you’ll only see it in certain conditions when you’re watching HDR content, it’s still cool that Nothing includes it in a mid-ranger.
🔭 140x zoom helps the cameras stand out… The Phone (4a) Pro also stands out thanks to its camera system, which is stacked with features. The most notable is 140x zoom, the first for any smartphone (according to Nothing, anyway). That’s farther than you can go on the Pixel 10 Pro XL or Galaxy S26 Ultra, which is impressive for a budget phone. Are photos good at 140x? Absolutely not, but it’s a fun party trick.
📸 … but quality is another story. As for taking normal pictures, the Phone (4a) Pro can kick out decent results if you’re careful. The 50MP f/1.9 main camera is the best of the three on the back, with its ability to capture good lighting and detail in well-lit environments and even in the dark. The 50MP periscope telephoto lens is the driver behind 140x photos, and it can produce good pictures during the day, but tends to fall apart at night due to its tighter f/2.9 aperture. The 8MP ultra-wide camera is a pure afterthought, capturing some of the worst wide-angle pictures I’ve seen in a while, and if you want to take selfies, you’ll be better off with the main camera instead of the 32MP selfie shooter. Colors could also be a bit livelier across the sensors, and while you have a lot of tools to tweak colors and exposure before you tap the shutter button, it’s not enough to save it from lower-end hardware and software processing. If you want the best pictures on a budget phone, you’ll want something like the Pixel 10a which takes more life-like photos.
📹 Video struggles quite a bit. I don’t recommend this phone if you want to take a lot of videos. While it can technically shoot at up to 4K 30 fps, the quality itself is subpar, with a lot of artifacting and noticeable jumps when you switch between lenses. The only redeeming quality is the recording light on the back, which lights up red when you start filming. Beyond that, videos aren’t great and will need some edits if you want to share them.
🔋 Great battery life and speedy charging. The Phone (4a) Pro can effortlessly last a full day of mixed to heavy usage. The 5,080mAh battery inside the phone was able to keep up while I tested things like the camera, GPU, and how bright the screen could get in direct sunlight. At the end of day, I’d have around 20-30% left in the tank, which is enough of a cushion to help me feel comfortable using it as my main phone all day long. Some mid-range phones like the OnePlus 13R can last two days on a charge, but if all you need is a full day without any stress, this is a great phone for that. Plus, it recharges at 50W over USB-C, which juices the battery back to 50% in under 30 minutes every time.
📱 Nothing OS is clean and responsive. I’m happy to report that Nothing refuses to lose its ways when it comes to software. Nothing OS atop Android 16 is a delightful experience through and through, with the company’s quirky fonts and animations throughout that give vanilla Android a unique look without bogging things down. All of Nothing’s built-in apps give the phone a personality, and it doesn’t fall in the trap of customizing absolutely everything like Samsung’s One UI and OnePlus’ OxygenOS.
3️⃣ Just three years of upgrades. The only major downside is the software update. Nothing is committing to three years of major upgrades and six years of security updates, which is behind what a lot of manufacturers are doing nowadays. It’s not a huge deal since it’s a mid-range phone and will likely slow down faster than flagships, but it’d be nice to see 4+ years of major Android updates instead of just three.
🤖 Essential Space and AI are somewhat useful. I can never commit to using Nothing’s AI features, but that’s not because they aren’t good. Essential Space is a handy app (that has its own hardware key, by the way) for remembering things, analyzing screenshots, and surfacing what Essential Memory deems as important. You can now have all of this data backed up to the cloud, too, which is nice for those who might plan to stick to Nothing phones moving forward. I think I just fail to trust AI to remember things for me, because I want to try and remember them myself. But if you’re someone who needs a little help, this is a great feature for that.
⚙️ Snappy performance. Oh yeah, performance. It’s totally fine! The Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chip offers enough punch to keep things feeling snappy, while the GPU performance has been noticeably increased over previous Nothing phones to deliver better gameplay. It’s paired with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and up to 256GB of storage, giving you plenty of room to store your apps and photos over time.
📝 Tidbits:
The fingerprint scanner is surprisingly accurate and snappy for a $500 phone.
I like how loud the speakers get, but they don’t have a lot of depth or life otherwise.
There’s a clear case in the box which is barely enough to protect the phone, but at least the unique design shines through.
Should you buy the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro?
Yes, if…
✅ You want your next phone to stand out
✅ You’re on a budget
✅ You want actually useful AI features
✅ You appreciate clean software
No, if…
❌ You need the best camera quality on a budget (get the Pixel 10a)
❌ You need wireless charging (get the Pixel 10a)
❌ You don’t want a giant phone (get the Pixel 10a)
❌ You need better battery life (get the OnePlus 13R)
Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut and co-host of The Shortcut Live. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop and Instagram @LegendaryScoop.