We’re back once more for a peek at the internals of our latest smartphone! Phone (3a) Series brings a host of upgrades over the Phone (2a) Plus, so what better way to visualise those than to lift the lid and see some of that new hardware. In this post, I’m digging into Phone (3a) Pro in Grey.
As you probably already know, smartphones are built in layers, almost like a sandwich, so let’s look at the 3 biggest components before focussing in on the internals that fit between them.
Display
On the front of (3a) Series you’ll find a FHD+ AMOLED flexible LTPS display. At 6.77” this is our largest to date, delivering a 91.43% screen-to-body ratio.
With an adaptive 120hz refresh rate for smooth scrolling and a 1000 Hz touch sampling rate (+316% faster than (2a) Plus), Phone (3a) Pro brings near instant responsiveness when gaming. There are improvements to brightness too, with 3000 nits peak, (3a)'s display is up to +131% brighter compared to (2a) Plus.
Just like the (2a) Plus display, you can see that the rear of the screen features a large heat spreading copper surface. Near the top you’ll spot the selfie camera and proximity sensor cutouts and the slanted square cutout near the bottom is for the in-display fingerprint sensor to see through.
The long black flexible printed circuit (FPC) is how our screen receives a display signal; it trails to the top of the device via a hole in the midframe and connects to the motherboard.
Midframe
On (3a) Pro, the midframe and buttons are produced using 100% recycled aluminium, a more premium material that is equally elegant and durable. As with our (2a) Series, (3a) devices have antennas embedded around the midframe to ensure great reception. In addition, (3a) Series features an additional high-performance gaming antenna in the middle of the frame. This means that when holding horizontally for gaming, the signal won’t be blocked by your hands, ensuring stable and smooth gaming network connectivity. Compared to the (2a) Plus this improvement can reduce lag by over 50% when using a mobile network.
The big rectangular space in the middle of the midframe is for our 5000mAh battery, with the space above perfectly shaped to house the motherboard. The long, thin space at the bottom is where the daughterboard sits, along with the speaker, optical fingerprint reader and SIM tray.
Rear Cover
The premium materials found on the midframe continue onto the rear of Phone (3a) Pro where we find a 2.5D rear glass panel, a significant change from the plastics used on our (2a) devices. Integrated at the top is the housing for our triple rear camera system along with the LED flash - let’s zoom in a little closer to this part, there’s lots to see…
Above, we get a great look at the space inside the camera bump of (3a) Pro. The lenses of each camera are positioned as close together as possible and positioned precisely to ensure a smooth transition between them when you’re zooming in and out. At the very top is a small diffused aperture for the flash LED to fire through. Speaking of cameras, we have some macro shots of the sensors themselves:
Phone (3a) Pro Camera System
(3a) Pro hosts our best camera system to date, featuring a versatile array of lenses for portraits, macro, long zoom shots and more - it’s super versatile. Paired with our new Camera app which enables sharable, Personal Presets and even allows for the use of LUTs via the .Cube format, there’s infinite possibilities to explore. Take a look at some of our recent community reviews from Palmix, Juse and Bubi for some example images.
Primary - 50 MP Samsung, f/1.88, 1/1.56” sensor, 84.5° FOV, OIS & EIS
Ultra Wide - 8 MP Sony, f/2.2, ¼″ sensor, 120° FOV
Periscope Zoom - 50MP Sony, f/2.55, 1/1.95” sensor, 33.6° FOV, OIS & EIS
Front - 50 MP Samsung, f/2.2, ½.76″ sensor, 81.2° FOV
Phone (3a) Pro Periscope:
(3a) Pro features a flagship periscope zoom, a first for any Nothing smartphone. A prism, paired with a horizontally stacked lens assembly, is able to offer 3x optical zoom and up to 60x ultra zoom. In the above image, you can see how much larger this component is compared to a regular camera module - our teams worked hard to implement these segment-leading zoom capabilities with the least possible impact on overall device thickness.
Prism - reflects light towards the lens assembly and shifts to deliver OIS
Stacked assembly of 4 lens elements - directs light to the sensor and shifts to attain focus
Sony LYTIA 600 sensor - turns light into a digital signal which informs the image
BTS image showing the periscope alongside (3a) Pro’s camera system housing
(3a) Series Chipset
We heard our customers asking us to bring a Snapdragon chip to our midrange lineup, so for (3a) Series, we used the 7s Gen 3. A powerful chip that can handle gaming or multitasking with up to 33% faster CPU and 11% graphics improvement compared to (2a). It’s also more efficient, meaning there’s an overall improvement in battery life.
We’ve cropped in to the motherboard in the image above, as a bonus, you can see the proximity and ambient light sensors at the very top, helping to illustrate where these chips sit within the device. Shoutout to our photographer David Wilman for removing all of the thermal material so we can get a good look at these components in all their glory!
Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 5G (SD7635) - Up to 2.5 Ghz built on TSMC’s 4nm process.
8-cores: 1× 2.5GHz (Cortex-A720), 3× 2.4GHz (Cortex-A720), 4× 1.8GHz (Cortex-A520)
GPU: Adreno 810
NPU: HTP2
UFS2.2- Storage + LPDDR4X RAM - learn more about this in a recent post by @Raymond
The underside of the Glyph Interface
And finally, the eagle-eyed fans will have spotted that (3a) Series has had a Glyph update, with an adjusted arrangement, all 3 of the Glyph segments are now addressable, with a total of 36 zones. Below we look at the rear of the top left Glyph (Internal notation: Glyph ‘C’), used for our Glyph Progress feature - counting the dots you’ll find 20 addressable segments for a smooth progress animation.
We hope you enjoyed diving into Nothing Phone (3a) Pro’s fresh look and internals with us - as always I had a lot of fun peeking inside our latest product to bring a fresh perspective to you all!
Like this post and drop into the comments below and tell us your favourite spec or feature of Phone (3a) Pro for a chance to win one!
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