Nothing Phone (3a) Pro review
Display
As mentioned, the Nothing Phone (3a) and Phone (3a) Pro have identical 6.77-inch displays with FullHD+ resolution. This makes the displays slightly larger than last year's 6.7-inch display. The refresh rate is still set at 120Hz. You still get 10-bit colors and HDR10+ support.
One thing that has changed in this generation of displays is the brightness. Now, the panels are rated for 800 nits of typical brightness, 1,300 nits in high brightness mode and 3,000 nits peak in HDR mode.
We did our standardized testing and mostly verified the expected numbers. We measure 766 nits of brightness on the slider and 1,307 nits in max auto mode. Perfectly comfortable outdoors, even in sunlight.
While we are still pretty sure that the vanilla Nothing Phone (3a) uses the same panel, it is worth noting that we got slightly lower brightness numbers while testing that one. Pretty much within the margin of error, but still consistently lower numbers.
It is also worth noting that the brightness uniformity on our Phone (3a) Pro unit isn't particularly great. At 200 nits of output, we measured upwards of 30 nits of difference in the output from one end of the display to the other.
Max display brightness test
White test pattern, 75% fill (nits)
- Manual mode
- Auto mode
Redmi Note 14 Pro 4G
Motorola Edge 50 Neo
Xiaomi 14T
vivo V40
Motorola Edge 50 Fusion
Nothing phone (3a) Pro
Motorola Edge 50 Pro
In terms of refresh rate, the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro supports 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz modes. For settings, you get Dynamic, High and Standard modes. Standard is just locked to 60Hz. There isn't that much difference in behavior between the High and Dynamic comes. The latter is well, more dynamic. It tends to switch down from 120Hz a bit more often and sometimes uses a middle-ground 90Hz mode instead of just defaulting to 60Hz for most things. There is video playback detection, and most videos are played back at 30Hz.
The only major problem we have with the refresh rate handling is that high refresh rate gaming is still not properly supported and doesn't work for most titles we tried. This has been the case with Nothing phones in the past too.
As we said, the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro display is HDR10+ certified. In terms of HDR video decoding, the phone can do HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG, just no Dolby Vision.
Battery life
The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro has a 5,000 mAh battery, which is a standard capacity nowadays.
The Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is a pretty efficient chip. The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro does quite alright in the battery department with an Active Use Score of 13:32 hours. That's a solid, even if not overly impressive, result in our book. The gaming and web browsing scores could have been a bit better, but it is what it is. We also don't particularly appreciate the downgrade in battery endurance coming from the Nothing Phone (2a) Plus.
Charging speed
Nothing claims the Phone (3a) Pro can charge at a rate of up to 50W. That's with a PD+PPS charger. Nothing, and its CMF sub-brand make and sell a few different chargers, which will be suitable. We could not procure one of those, but we tested with a third-party charger, which supports PPS up to 20V at 5A (100W). In our testing, the phone never actually drew more than 30W from the charger.
In our standardized testing charging was a few minutes slower than the advertised numbers. Fifteen minutes on the charger got us from zero to 33%. A 50% charge took us 23 minutes, and 30 minutes on the charger resulted in a 60% charge. A full top-off took us just over an hour.
The Nothing phone (3a) isn't spectacular in terms of charging speed, but it's still decent.
Charging speed
- in 15 min
- in 30 min
- Time to full charge (from 0%)
Redmi Note 14 Pro+ (Global)
vivo V40
Redmi Note 14 Pro 5G
Nothing Phone (2)
Nothing Phone (2a) Plus
Nothing phone (3a) Pro
Redmi Note 14 5G
Speakers - loudness and quality
The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro has a stereo speaker setup. It is a hybrid setup with the amplified earpiece acting like the second channel. The other speaker is positioned on the bottom frame. This inherently brings about some imbalance in the sound output since the two speakers aren't facing symmetrically.
Still, the overall quality of the sound output is pretty decent. It is comparable to the Nothing Phone (2), perhaps with a bit less bass. Not that the Nothing Phone (2) has an abundance of bass. At least you get nice and clean mids and undistorted highs.
The Nothing Phone (2a) saw a noticeable drop in loudness compared to the Nothing Phone (2). Now the Phone (3a) Pro claws back a lot of that output power, managing a VERY GOOD score in our testing, putting it basically on the same level as the Nothing Phone (2).
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
Connectivity
The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro is a 5G device with SA/NSA Sub-6 support on both Nano-SIM slots simultaneously. For positioning, it supports GPS (no L5), GALILEO, GLONASS, BDS, and QZSS.
Local connectivity is covered by dual-band Wi-Fi 6 ax. Unfortunately, there is still no Wi-Fi 7 or tri-band support. You do get Bluetooth 5.4 with LE support. There is NFC on board as well. No FM radio or 3.5mm audio jack, though.
The USB Type-C port is backed up by a basic USB 2.0 data connection, with a maximum transfer rate of 480 Mbps. There is USB Host/OTG support but nothing else fancy, like video output over Alt mode.
In terms of sensors, you get an STMicro LSM6DSV accelerometer and gyroscope combo, a Memsic MMC56X3X magnetometer and compass combo. Finally, there is a Sensortek STK3A5X light and hardware proximity sensor. There is no barometer on board, though.
Reader comments
- Anonymous
- 7 hours ago
- mAW
Was expecting better battery ngl
- Anonymous
- 8 hours ago
- nw}
In the end the phone after A year will melt in ur hands to safe the planet
- Anonymous
- 10 hours ago
- gEh
I'm disappointed to see them drop symmetrical bezels and even made them thicker. It was what made Nothing stand out to me. The corner radiuses look weird on the 3a.