Nothing’s new midrange phone has a clever but underused old gimmick
Anyone looking for a smartphone in the roughly 2,000-shekel price range will find a large selection of good, worthwhile devices. As if the existing competition were not enough, another contender has now joined it, the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, to use its full name. On the one hand, Nothing is still a relatively new and not especially well-known rival. On the other hand, it has been with us for four years, has launched several models and a budget brand, and has managed to stand out with a distinctive design. On the one hand, it has proven itself with several successful models. On the other hand, there have also been some that were less impressive. So where does the new model fit in? We received it for review courtesy of Bug, Nothing’s importer. 3 view gallery The interface is not cluttered, with a few unique touches ( Photo: Itay Shmushkovitz )
Build and design: retains its uniqueness
In this area, Nothing can be relied on, its design is always a little different from the norm. The company does not really maintain consistency, and the design changes from one generation to the next, which adds a bit of interest, no more device that looks exactly like all the competition. The front is fairly standard overall, with a 6.83-inch flat edge-to-edge screen, and the device is quite heavy at 210 grams.
There is one notable change that should have been made long ago, Nothing has integrated an AI tool called Essential Space into its latest devices, where you can save screenshots and add notes, voice reminders and written notes alongside them. In previous models, a shortcut button was also included to open this service, and for some reason it was placed next to the phone’s power button, which occasionally led to pressing the wrong button. Well, at last Nothing has discovered that there is no shortage of real estate around the device and has moved the shortcut button to the left side of the screen, with no other button nearby.
The back of the device is where Nothing phones stand out with a different design, and this time, one large lens in the upper left corner, two additional lenses below it, and in the upper right corner a small screen for displaying messages, notifications and more. This is not the first time, by the way, the company’s Phone 3 also had such a screen.
3 view gallery The unique design stands out on the back, including a small external screen ( Photo: Nothing )
In its first models, Nothing introduced its Glyph interface, LED lights integrated into the back of the device to display various notifications, timer progress, for example, and more. The small circular screen replaces that display with clearer updates, including customization and always-on display, for example showing the time, battery status or moon phase all the time. In a previous model there was also a “spin the bottle” game shown on the small screen, and that rather strange gimmick was scrapped.
The screen is protected by Gorilla Glass 7i, a model intended for midrange devices, and the device carries an IP65 rating, meaning it should be completely dustproof and able to withstand washing or splashes of water, but not immersion in water.
Hardware: midrange specs with good performance
The 4a Pro runs on a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 processor, a chip intended for midrange devices, alongside 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The memory can be expanded at the expense of storage, and the default is an extra 2GB of RAM.
Performance does not betray the fact that this is a midrange device, true, it does not feel especially fast, but for most users that will still be more than enough. The device handles every everyday task without difficulty, works smoothly and quickly, runs heavy games without overheating, and in short simply gets the job done.
The large screen displays vivid, good colors and a high level of brightness, so it is easy to use even in the sun, although there are some reflections from the surroundings. The speakers are very loud, but the sound quality is not good.
A positive point, the 4a Pro supports eSIM, and it is important to note the difference here, Nothing also launched a regular 4a model alongside it, without Pro and without eSIM support. The Pro model is equipped with a 5,080 mAh battery that easily lasts a day or two of use, depending on the load the device has to handle. The package does not include a charger, and with a 65W charger the battery filled from 15% to 50% in about a quarter of an hour, and a full charge takes about 45 minutes, not a bad result.
Software and interface: fairly clean Android, with some translation issues
The operating system is Android 16 with Nothing OS version 4.1, and as usual for the company, this is a combination of the familiar system and a unique interface. On one hand, it is Android in a fairly clean version, after setup you will not find a load of apps and games installed without asking you. On the other hand, there are some unique features in Nothing’s interface, even if the company has somewhat abandoned the idea of its distinctive display and offers it only as an option, a black-and-white icon display and a pixelated font reminiscent of an old dot-matrix printer. The default is a regular color display and the use of finger gestures for system navigation.
During use I encountered several points that need improvement in the localization of the device, despite the experience the company has already accumulated, for example at the end of a recording in the voice recorder, the option “save” appears as “rescue,” a translation of Save, instead of “saving.” To choose the display on the small circular screen on the back of the device, you need to enter the Glyph menu and select “Always-On Glyph Toys,” or in the original language, Always-On Glyph Toys.
3 view gallery The small screen on the side is a somewhat missed addition ( Photo: Itay Shmushkovitz )
And if we are already talking about the external screen, it can show timer progress, among other things, but it is not linked to the device’s “regular” timer, rather to a separate timer menu that appears inside the Glyph menu. One can see this as an advantage, since users are not forced into using the external display and it is made sure that this is really what they choose. It also has a downside, because you need to dig a bit into the settings to reach the relevant menu. In general, activating the external screen is a bit unfriendly, unintuitive or not very visible, you have to actively search for the options and there is no prompt that informs the user about the different possibilities.
After digging through the camera menu, I discovered that there is an option to use the screen on the back of the device to take selfies with the main camera or show the subject a preview before shooting. After using this feature I understood why it is not prominent, this display is also built on large black-and-white pixels, so you basically see a kind of silhouette that gives an indication of the subject’s position in the frame, but it is not a real preview of the shot.
There is also AI, of course, mainly the Essential Space service mentioned earlier. The idea here is mainly to organize screenshots and voice reminders, including Hebrew transcription, and it does not always work perfectly. And although there is audio transcription capability here, and in Hebrew(!), it is not available in the device’s voice recorder app. In addition, there is an AI news service, you choose areas of interest and receive an audio summary read by a virtual female narrator in English, including wordplay like Nothing asked me to do Something. The idea is nice and perhaps it is worth waiting for it to be refined and improved in the future, you can choose only a topic that interests you, but not information sources, and in the end you have to listen to a kind of bulletin that includes a sequence of updates. Nothing that will change your news and information consumption habits.
Camera: good, not outstanding
The 4a Pro has three cameras, a main camera with a 50-megapixel sensor, a telephoto camera with a 50-megapixel sensor and 3.5x optical zoom, and an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera. In addition, there is also a selfie camera with a 32-megapixel sensor. The cameras produce good photos, both in daylight and in night shots, without the need for flash, but it is clear that these are not flagship cameras, on close inspection there are some soft areas, and in higher-end models the cameras capture more light from the surroundings in night shots, which is also evident in the results.
One of the features Nothing emphasizes in this model is 140x digital zoom, which behaves like any digital zoom, quality deteriorates and it is hard to control image stability, because every small movement affects it. It is a nice feature, but still somewhat difficult to use.
Summary
The Phone 4a Pro is a worthy contender in a very crowded and highly competitive market, the screen is large and successful, the cameras do a good job, and the device is a bit big and heavy. In the end, this is a device that does not stand out in a particularly special way from the competition, and דווקא the unique features that are supposed to help it stand out are not especially impressive. The price is about 2,200 shekels, roughly in line with the competition in the category, but there are also some that offer a similar or stronger spec sheet at a lower price.
