Nothing Phone 3a Pro and 3a has issues... 🤦🏻♂️ (Review)
(Reviewed based on Nothng OS 3.1 firmware Asteroids-V3.1-250217-2235)
The Phone 3a Pro and the 3a retains everything we liked about the 2a including that Glyph interface, but has some pretty substantial additions/improvements like a bigger screen which means they’re taller, Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 instead of an SoC from Mediatek with more processing power. On the camera front it’s got 3 rear cameras instead of 2 including a telephoto for the 3a, and a more capable periscope lens for the 3a Pro. They also have improved water resistance, a glass backing instead of plastic, and the Essentials button which is a unique take on how AI can actually be useful to everyday life instead of just something people forget about.
The Essentials Button
The Essentials button is captures screenshots and, if you’re in the camera app, capturing what the camera’s seeing. But of course, it goes beyond that. Everything you capture goes into the Essentials Space app where it is catalogued, pulling information that describes it from the web and making it even more searchable.
If you press and hold the Essentials button, you can even trigger voice recording so you can tag voice notes to those screenshots. The voice notes are also transcribed and the info can be used to set to-do lists and reminders. The thing is, the voice transcription needs to be polished, because it’s really bad, and it even transcribes what I said in English into Korean and some other language which I can’t make out. (German?)
But assuming everything works fine, that’s 4 different actions rolled into one. Taking the screenshot, voice recording, data collection from the web, and executing actions based on that data. That’s extremely useful for me!
And that’s just the beginning. Nothing has promised more features coming to further enhance the Essentials button and the Essential Space app.
Artificial Intelligence
It does support Google Gemini so it’s got all those goodies like circle to search and so on, but really, the 3a Pro and the 3a doesn’t have that many AI features baked into Nothing OS.
A great example is the camera app. There’s no AI photo unblur, no AI eraser, so it’s a more vanilla camera experience. This is true at the time of this video, but I’m holding out for such features to eventually make their way to the 3a series since they do have a rather capable NPU.
Camera Lenses
Before we talk about camera performance, the main differences between the 3a Pro and the 3a is that the Pro has a periscope lens which has more zoom, up to 3x optical and 60x digital zoom, instead of the 2x optical and 30x digital zoom of the 3a.
That’s why the Pro’s camera bump is bigger and deeper, because space is needed to accommodate that.
Interesting fact about the zoom lenses. I was trying to shoot some macro, and it turns out that the 3a’s telephoto has a further zoom distance than the 2a, even though the lenses are supposed to be similar. But the 3a Pro’s focusing distance is as close as it was on the 2a, although it uses a new periscope lens.
Photo (Front Camera)
As for the front camera, we’ve got 50MP for the Pro, 32MP for the 3a, but strangely, the regular 3a’s front cam has a wider field of view than the Pro. Another difference is the 3a selfie seems to be a little more contrary.
Photo (Rear Camera)
As for the quality of the rear cameras, at 0.6x ultrawide, they’re both practically identical. But using the main camera lenses at 1x you can see that the 3a Pro looks a little less contrasty, lifting the shadows a bit more. Same story with the Pro’s 3x Optical and 3a 2x Optical telephoto but if you look closer, the Pro’s periscope lens is able to capture more detail. Obviously in digital crop territory, the 3 Pro looks cleaner because it’s starting off at a closer zoom than the 3a.
Video
Shooting videos on both phones, stabilization is just as smooth on both the wide and telephoto lenses, but just as with regular photos, the 3a Pro’s shadows look more lifted than the 3a, and digital zoom looks cleaner on the Pro model because of the periscope lens. So far both phone cameras perform decently. That being said, on the current firmware, there are some problems with the cameras of both the 3a Pro and the 3a.
Camera Issues
At 1x wide angle, both the 3a Pro and 3a have severe color shifting. In this case, it stutters into magenta when the picture should actually be leaning more blue because of the lighting. No such issue exists on the previous model, the 2a.
The second issue is the 3a Pro’s stabilization. For videos it’s okay, but when shooting pictures at 30x, or up to 60x digital zoom, it’s extremely unstable, very hard to keep a lock on a subject even when my hands are not moving. This does not happen on the regular 3a which maintains a smooth lock at 30x. Most definitely an OIS issue with the periscope lens element which hopefully, can be resolved with a new firmware update.
Sound Quality
As for their speakers, after comparing them A-B, they sound the same. Both are tuned equally, and their volume levels match. But I have to say their speakers are average, there’s no bass, and there’s no spaciousness to the audio playing music or watching videos. Furthermore,I can’t seem to find any sound settings on them, so what you hear is what you get.
About the codecs the Nothing phones support, it’s a wide range, so as long as you have compatible earbuds and headphones you’ll be able to stream over the most popular codecs from aptX HD to LDAC, to LHDC V5.
Verdict
Obviously the 3a Pro is the better choice if you need that Periscope zoom. That is, if you can get past that monster camera bump. It’s so thick compared to the 3a that you can really feel the difference in your pocket. But generally speaking, for what they have, what they can do, the Essentials button, and the uniqueness of the Glyph interface and Nothing OS, they do stand out from the rest of the midrange market.
But as you saw, Nothing needs to fix that color shifting issue shooting photos in low light, the 3a Pro’s stabilization, and polish up transcriptions, perhaps through a firmware update.
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Nothing Phone 3a Pro - Link TBA
Nothing Phone 3a - https://amzn.to/4iNjZO6
