The Nothing Telephone 2a was one of the vital memorable smartphones of 2024. It provided a quick show, large battery and persona, all for simply $349. For a follow-up, Nothing might have merely refreshed the 2a and the consequence would have most likely been price recommending. However the firm didn't try this. As an alternative, it determined to replace the 2a and launch a wholly new handset alongside it.
That new machine, the Telephone 3a Professional, has one thing you don't discover on many midrange smartphones: a periscope telephoto digicam. If you happen to can dwell with some added weight and a barely foolish design, the 3a Professional provides an almost flagship digicam expertise for $459. As for the 3a, it’s an incredible machine by itself, and a wise different you probably have even much less to spend on a brand new telephone.
Service compatibility
There are a few essential particulars I would like to say earlier than I get too far into this evaluate. Within the US, Nothing is promoting the 3a and 3a Professional by means of a "beta" program the place the corporate solely provides 14 days of after-sale assist. If there's one thing fallacious along with your new telephone and it's outdoors the extraordinarily quick guarantee interval, you may simply be out of luck. That is separate from Nothing's software program assist coverage, which guarantees three years of Android upgrades and 6 years of safety patches for the 3a and 3a Professional, along with "corrective and performance updates."
Moreover, the telephones don't assist all of AT&T, T-Cellular and Verizon's 5G bands. You’ll get fundamental connectivity, however mmWave speeds are off the desk. Lastly, Nothing notes AT&T and Verizon prospects might want to contact their service to enroll their new telephone’s IMEI for 5G entry. I point out these items upfront as a result of I believe the 3a and 3a Professional are nice telephones worthy of your consideration, however it’s additionally comprehensible if Nothing's restricted buyer and service assist put you off.
Design
The 3a and 3a Professional don't really feel like two sub-$500 handsets, and an enormous a part of that may be a new glass backing. In comparison with my iPhone 12, the 3a and 3a Professional really feel very Apple-like of their development. I particularly just like the coating Nothing used for the outer casing of the 2 telephones, which makes the body really feel prefer it's comprised of ceramic. Each are large handsets, and the feel made for a safe grip anytime I took one in every of them out of my pocket. Nothing has additionally added higher waterproofing, with each the 3a and 3a Professional providing IP64-certified safety in opposition to moisture and dirt. That's up from the IP54 score on the 2a. If you happen to spend a whole lot of time round water, loads of different midrange telephones include higher safety, together with the brand new $499 Pixel 9a.
One other new function is a button referred to as the Important Key. On each telephones, it's situated on the best facet, proper beneath the ability button. I'll have extra to say on what it does later, however for now I'll point out it feels much less strong than all the opposite buttons on the 2 telephones. It's a disgrace as a result of every thing else is so well-made.
The Telephone 3a is offered in three colours (black, white and blue) and the 3a Professional in two (grey and black). Sadly, you may't purchase the blue 3a in North America, in any other case I’d get one for myself. Almost three years after the discharge of the Telephone 1, Nothing's units proceed to have distinctive designs, although I think about some folks won’t be thrilled concerning the look of the 3a Professional.
I imply, have a look at it. The 3a Professional is a modern-day Lumia 1020, and is bound to draw confused appears to be like. Not solely does the digicam housing make an already thick telephone thicker, however the further {hardware} makes the 3a Professional a complete 10 grams heavier than the 3a. And at 201 grams, the 3a already feels substantial.
It's onerous to see in images however there's a niche between backside of the 3a Professional's digicam module and the highest of the again casing. Within the quick time I've had the telephone, it has already began amassing mud and particles there. The outer ring of the module additionally has a end that doesn't match with any of the opposite supplies used on the telephone. In the end, it feels just like the 3a Professional sacrifices a few of the 3a's cool issue for digicam efficiency. That tradeoff is in the end price it and its design grew on me, however I wouldn't choose you if you happen to discovered the 3a Professional an excessive amount of.
Show
The 3a and 3a Professional have the identical show. At 6.77 inches, it provides barely extra actual property than the 2a's 6.7-inch display screen. This time round, Nothing has additionally gone with Panda Glass to guard the AMOLED panel from scratches. On paper, that's a downgrade from the Gorilla Glass Nothing used for the 2a and what you'll discover on the Pixel 9a and Galaxy S24 FE, however wanting conducting a drop take a look at, it’s onerous for me to say if there's any distinction in sturdiness.
What I can say is the show appears to be like nice. It's nonetheless an FHD panel with a variable refresh price that goes as much as 120Hz. Nevertheless, it provides improved visibility in direct daylight with the flexibility to hit a peak brightness of 1,300 nits routinely. I by no means struggled to see the display screen, even on a sunny day after I wore polarized glasses.
For the worth, Nothing picked the right display screen. It's quick, vibrant and, due to a brand new 480Hz sampling price, extremely responsive. One facet of the show that will annoy some is that Nothing went with an optical in-display fingerprint sensor as an alternative of ultrasonic. Ultrasonic sensors are usually sooner and extra correct, however in addition they value extra to make, in order that they're sometimes solely discovered on flagship units just like the Galaxy S25. Don't let that scare you away from the 3a and 3a Professional although. Exterior of a little bit of pokiness throughout setup, I haven't had any points with the fingerprint sensor.
Cameras
The cameras on the 3a and 3a Professional are the entire package deal. Beginning with the 3a, Nothing has made a number of tweaks. For a important digicam, you continue to get a 50-megapixel Samsung GN9 sensor paired with an f/1.88 lens and optical picture stabilization (OIS). As an alternative of the 50MP ultrawide digicam on the 2a, the 3a has an 8MP sensor from Sony and a barely wider 120-degree discipline of view. Most notably, the telephone now comes with a 50-megapixel telephoto digicam with 2x optical zoom.
Whereas extra producers are starting to incorporate telephoto cameras with their midrange telephones, it's nonetheless not a function you discover on each machine. For $379, the 3a's telephoto has no proper being pretty much as good as it’s, and I used to be continuously stunned by the element within the pictures I took. Throughout the whole package deal, Nothing has actually pleasing picture processing. The distinction that the software program provides to images is likely to be an excessive amount of for some, however it in any other case does an incredible job of manufacturing heat and welcoming pure colours. Like a whole lot of telephones in its worth vary, the 3a's cameras can wrestle in low gentle or when it has to deal with harsh daylight.
One idiosyncrasy of Nothing's picture processing is that images will typically look unusable earlier than you press the shutter. For instance, vibrant scenes will ceaselessly have blown out highlights. Nevertheless, as soon as the telephone has had a second to use HDR, those self same photographs will typically end up nice. I didn’t know this after I first began utilizing the telephone, so typically I gave up on a shot earlier than taking it. That is true of the 3a Professional too, so maintain that in thoughts if you happen to determine to purchase one in every of them.
As for the 3a Professional, it provides a close to flagship expertise and the spotlight is the telephone's periscope digicam. It has a 50MP Sony sensor with an f/2.55 lens and built-in OIS. The telephoto provides a 3x optical zoom, however you may as well push it to 6x with a lossless crop. Both method, the pictures produced by this lens can look sharp and detailed, so long as the topic you're attempting to shoot is comparatively nonetheless.
As you may see from the pattern gallery, a few of the cats I attempted to {photograph} round my neighborhood got here out a bit blurry. That's as a result of the 3a Professional tried to get away with utilizing a comparatively gradual shutter velocity. Nevertheless, for much less difficult scenes, the periscope digicam constantly felt like dishonest, and I needed to maintain reminding myself it is a telephone that prices lower than $500.
The telephoto additionally has a macro mode, permitting it to concentrate on topics as shut as 5.9 inches away. It may be difficult to guage how shut it is advisable to be to the topic, however after I was capable of nail focus, the 3a Professional produced detailed pictures.
The primary digicam on the 3a Professional is equally nice. Like on the 3a, you get a 50MP sensor with an f/1.88 lens. Nevertheless, it comes with a distinct Samsung sensor that has dual-pixel autofocus, which helps the 3a Professional lock in sooner and extra precisely. Right here, Nothing’s picture processing goes a protracted solution to ship images that look nice. Colours are vibrant with out being overbaked and there's simply sufficient element to fulfill anybody who's on the lookout for it.
I didn't take too many selfies. The 3a Professional has a slight edge in that division due to a better decision 50MP sensor, however the 3a isn’t any slouch both with its 32MP sensor. Neither telephone has a front-facing digicam with autofocus, however that’s typically the primary function producers lower to make a extra reasonably priced machine.
Within the US, the 3a Professional has no counterpart. There are telephones just like the Motorola Edge 50 Professional that provide an incredible telephoto at a comparable worth, however it's not offered in North America. If a digicam with attain is essential to you, the 3a Professional's closest stateside competitor is the Galaxy S24 FE, however it usually prices $650. And for that cause, I believe it's well-worth contemplating over twin rear digicam telephones just like the Pixel 9a.
Efficiency
On high of up to date digicam {hardware}, the 3a and 3a Professional function a brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset. Relative to the 2a's MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Professional, Nothing says the brand new Snapdragon SoC has a 33 % sooner CPU and 11 % sooner GPU. Once I ran the 3a Professional by means of Geekbench 6, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 earned a single-core rating of 1,115 and a multicore rating of three,082. For context, the Dimensity processor scored 1,123 and a pair of,603 when my colleague Sam Rutherford reviewed the 2a final yr. For one more level of comparability, the Exynos 2400e within the Galaxy S24 FE simply beats each the Qualcomm and MediaTek chips with scores of two,140 and 6,690, respectively.
I do know that’s a whole lot of numbers , however I put them upfront to set expectations: consider the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 extra as a finances chip than a flagship one. For on a regular basis use, I discovered it was greater than sufficient for my wants. With 12GB of RAM, the 3a and 3a Professional supply loads of headroom for scrolling by means of social media, multi-tasking and AI functions like Gemini.
Nevertheless, the telephones are much less ultimate for gaming. Once I tried to play video games like Diablo Immortal and League of Legends: Wild Rift, I discovered it was potential to run them at 60 frames per second, however the 3a and 3a Professional would sometimes drop frames and I couldn't play both sport with all their graphics settings maxed out.
Battery
Just like the 2a, the 3a and 3a Professional function a 5,000mAh battery. Looping a YouTube video till the battery died, the 3a went 19 and a half hours on a single cost. If you wish to spend a day gaming, the 3a Professional is nice for about eight hours earlier than it wants charging. For extra common use involving a mixture of social media use and net looking, I used to be capable of get near 14 hours of display screen time.
As soon as the battery is empty, the 3a and 3a Professional assist 50W quick charging, up from 45W on the 2a. Neither telephone comes with an influence adapter contained in the field, and Nothing didn't present me with one for testing, however the firm claims the 3a and 3a Professional can go from zero to one hundred pc battery in lower than an hour utilizing its new charger. Most individuals most likely have a 20W energy adapter mendacity round, and based mostly on my observations, you may anticipate to cost the telephones from 10 % to full in about an hour and a half.
In case your finances permits for it, it's positively price spending further to purchase Nothing's new charger since few telephones on this worth vary supply charging as quick because the 3a and 3a Professional. The tradeoff is neither the 3a or 3a Professional assist wi-fi charging, however if you happen to ask me, I’d take sooner wired charging over Qi compatibility each time.
Software program
The 3a and 3a Professional arrive with Android 15 and the newest model of Nothing OS out of the field. As I discussed firstly, Nothing has promised to assist these telephones with three years of Android updates, so if you happen to purchase one now, you may anticipate to get at the least Android 18 earlier than you may want to think about upgrading telephones. Google and Samsung supply longer assist, however relative to the remainder of the Android ecosystem, Nothing’s coverage is fairly good.
This was my first time utilizing Nothing OS and I’ve to say I'm an enormous fan. Nothing hasn't gone overboard customizing inventory Android, and there's actually no bloatware to talk of. Each the system and fast settings menus largely observe the format established by Google, so navigating the interface is simple. One good contact is that Nothing consists of its personal monochromatic icon pack, with many well-liked third-party apps coated. There are 18 customized widgets that come customary with Nothing OS they usually all look nice.
The one main new software program function included with the 3a and 3a Professional is tied to the Important Key I discussed. A single faucet of the button lets you take a screenshot, which you’ll instantly annotate. If you happen to lengthy press as an alternative, the 3a and 3a Professional will begin recording a voice memo. Lastly, a double faucet opens the Important House, the brand new app the place all of these screenshots and notes are saved. An algorithm will routinely transcribe any voice memos and do its greatest to categorize all of your clippings into classes, although you may as well create your individual. Nothing plans to do extra with Important House sooner or later, however for now it's restricted in its performance, and you may't rebind the Important Key to do one thing else if you happen to don't discover the app useful.
If you happen to're the kind of one who makes use of Apple Notes religiously, I can see the Important Key and Important House being an effective way to maintain your digital life tidy. I discovered it much less helpful, largely as a result of I've by no means been a lot of a notetaker. I’ll say I do assume it's a good suggestion, and, with a bit extra iteration, Nothing might create one thing that feels, properly, extra important.
Wrap-up
The Nothing Telephone 3a and 3a Professional supply large worth for $379 and $459. It's actually onerous to criticize Nothing for any of the part decisions, and if you happen to're keen to take a threat on the corporate's restricted US guarantee and wish one thing distinctive, these are the telephones to purchase.
For everybody else, it's safer to purchase one thing just like the Pixel 9a or Galaxy S24 FE instantly out of your service. You gained't have to fret about calling your service about your telephone, and also you'll get an extended one-year guarantee. Moreover, each Google and Samsung supply as much as seven years of software program assist with their newest units.
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