Nothing Phone 4a review: The perfect mid-range balance

In India, the sub-Rs 30,000 smartphone market is fiercely competitive, packed with powerful options. However, the UK-based smartphone brand, Nothing, is standing out with unique offerings, such as transparent design, powerful features, and more that resonate with today's smartphone buyers.

Now, after its controversial flagship launch with the Nothing Phone 3 model, the company is back with its new generation (a) series models, the Nothing Phone 4a. At around Rs 30,000, the smartphone offers plenty of eye-catching features that include a new Glyph bar, AI-powered Essential Key, 50MP periscope lens camera, a 5400mAh battery, and, of course, its head-turning transparent design. But, is it really worth the hype?

We have been testing the Nothing Phone 4a model for over two weeks to test if it offers a perfect balance between performance, camera capabilities, battery life, and everyday usage, or if it is just another style-first device in an already crowded segment.

Nothing Phone 4a design and display

This year, Nothing has tweaked the Phone 4a’s design, with a reworked pill-shaped camera module that looks more refined than the Phone 3a’s, a new Glyph Bar instead of the earlier Glyph light interface, and subtle pink tint options. 

The Glyph Bar comes as a new addition that looks polished and functions just as well. It consists of 63 LED lights, which are divided into six stacked small boxes.

Despite the changes, the smartphone retains the signature transparent glass back with a flat design, making sure that the smartphone design does not look repetitive.

The Phone 4a comes with a plastic frame in the middle, and glass on the front and back, and measures 8.55 mm in thickness, and weighs 204.5 grams. Therefore, the smartphone is bulkier in looks and weight. For durability, it offers an IP64 rating for dust and splash resistance and Gorilla Glass 7 protection.

Overall, the Nothing Phone 4a looks impressive and maintains its unique identity that grabs people’s attention.

In terms of display, the Nothing Phone 4a features a 6.78-inch 1.5K AMOLED display that offers up to 120Hz refresh rate, HDR 10+ support, and up to 4500nits peak brightness. It also offers 480 Hz touch sampling rate and a 2500 Hz touch sampling rate in Gaming Mode. 

The combination of features offers a pleasant viewing experience with crisp colours, vivid contrast, and fluidity across OTT, YouTube, social media, and even gaming. The display also feels brighter and more responsive, making it well-suited for everyday use.

Nothing Phone 4a camera

The Nothing Phone 4a features a triple camera setup that includes a 50MP main camera with a Samsung GN9 sensor, a 50MP periscope telephoto with 3.5x optical zoom and an 8MP ultrawide camera. While the camera specifications look impressive on paper for a mid-range phone, the verdict comes from its real-world performance.

In daylight conditions, the Phone 4a offers impressive results with accurate and balanced colours and crisp details, making the images look natural with good dynamic range and clarity. However, when indoors, the colours may look slightly washed out. 

In addition, the Phone 4a captures stunning portraits and close-ups with detailed focus, natural background blur, and well-controlled edge detection, delivering a pleasing depth effect and lifelike subject separation.

The low-light images on the Phone 4a are also decent, considering the price, with sharp detailing, accurate colours, and reasonable noise management. Using night mode also helps refine the lost clarity and brings out more shadow detail.

The 50MP periscope telephoto is the standout with impressive sharpness and colour accuracy. It beautifully captured candid shots at a distance, but anything beyond the 3.5x range could degrade the image quality. Lastly, the 8MP ultrawide camera is also decent, but the best in the segment.

The 32MP selfie camera also captures promising images with natural skin tones. Overall, the Nothing Phone 4a consists of an impressive pair of cameras at the given budget.

Nothing Phone 4a performance and software 

The Nothing Phone 4a is powered by the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 processor paired with up to 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. In real-world usage, the smartphone offers impressive performance when it comes to day-to-day tasks such as browsing, messaging, scrolling through social media, content viewing, and others. Even with casual gaming, the smartphone performed well, and we did not face any major stutter or heating issues.

However, if you push the Phone 4a a little extra, such as playing BGMI on higher graphics settings, or extending gameplay beyond 30 minutes, you may notice some heating, and frame rates can begin to fluctuate. That said, no major lags or slowdowns were observed. Overall, multitasking and switching between apps were smooth, and it provided a promising performance throughout the usage.

The Nothing Phone 4a runs on Nothing OS 4.1, based on Android 16, offering a clean and intuitive user experience. While you may find some pre-installed apps, such as Netflix or Google apps, you will end up installing them. It offers several customisation options, and the black and white aesthetics also looks wuite futuristic.

The smartphone also offers AI-powered tools via the Essential Key, from where users can access Essential Search, Essential Memory, and Essential Apps features. Nothing is also working on the Essential Voice feature that will convert speech into text.

Nothing Phone 4a battery

The Nothing Phone 4a is backed by a 5400mAh battery, a massive upgrade from the previous generation model. The smartphone lasts an entire day on a single charge with medium to heavy usage, consisting of calls, browsing, social media, and mostly OTT content viewing. The smartphone supports up to 50W charging that takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes to fully charge the device. Therefore, the charging speed is slower than expected.

Nothing Phone 4a verdict

The Nothing Phone 4a phone is an all-rounder device, but prioritises more on identity and user experience than on aggressive specification, and it works best for the brand. It is a polished, everyday companion that simply feels more premium than its price tag suggests, making it a competitive mid-ranger.

From an attractive design to offering promising camera capabilities, the Nothing Phone 4a offers a perfect balance compared to others in the segment. However, the smartphone feels bulky, and the charging feels slow. Apart from these, the Nothing Phone 4a is perfect for people who chase distinctive design, a clean software experience, and reliable day-to-day performance over raw power.