Extensively used 3a for 3 months now. Here is my impression of the phone and NOTHING as a brand
In India 3a is priced (128Gb) at ₹23k but one has to invest around 1.5k to 2k extra for charger so consider an investment of around ₹25k.
The physical looks of the phone is good but actually looks doesn’t matter as you have to use back cover for ur phone bcoz of its glass back & as Jerry always says “ Glass is glass and glass can break”. Also for protection at the front , they hv provided Panda glass but no mention about the protection at the back. Trust me on this the back glass scratches a lot. I used it without case for a week and there are visible scratches all over the back. At least phone comes with pre applied tempered which scratches a lot but does its job.
Snapdragon 7sG3 does the job and phone feels snappy and handle light tasks with an ease. I haven’t feel any lag. Played CODM and BGMI and it handles them well but phone does get warm very quickly.
Consider this as normal task handler device rather than power beast. Nothing’s competitors Moto, Iqoo, Realme provides powerful processors in this price range.
Cameras, as a hardware is good but photos are hit and miss. Sometimes it takes such beautiful pics maintaing natural color tones & the other times it overwhitens images for some reason. Ultrawide is not great and in low light it is unusable. Moto edge 60 and Iqoo neo 10r provides better photos consistency than 3a.
I hv been hearing massive idle battery drain in nothing community but thankfully that is not the case in my 3a. Overnight (about 6 hrs) with data turned off and connected to 5G, there is 3-4% battery drain which is fine. The competitor brands provides massive batteries in this price range from 5500-6500 mAh..and provides generally above 65w charging with charger in the box
Call quality remains good but I sometimes face connectivity issue with the Internet. Shifting from 5G to 4G though other phones in my home shows constant 5G..
Now comes the highlighting point the SOFTWARE and it has been marketed by Nothing and their consumers a lot. Its good. No ads, no 3rd party app, just clean android experience with a bit of Nothing touch in UI and and widgets but U can find bugs here nd there. Brands provide updates to enhance user experience but in my 3 months of use I received 3 updates. In 1st update they removed battery health/charging cycle option, in the 2nd update pedometer widget doesn’t automatically update when added as a locked screen widget amd with AOD on, it just freezes. So, they are providing updates but with bugs. They should improve on software experience as this is their selling point.
Comes with LPDDR4X Ram type and UFS 2.0 but Chinese competitors provide 5x and 3.0 in the same price range. Bcoz of this heavy app takes time to load
So, to conclude Nothing 3a doesn’t have great hardware, camera, battery and charging speeds as compared to its rivals but it gets its points in software but I hv also used Moto edge 60 nd it also hv clean android and heavily loaded with AI features.
One can go for Nothing if u want to feel their software experience but if u really want a premium value for money chinese competitors Iqoo, Realme nd Pocco provides far superior performance. Even Moto is also a great combination of camera, battery, light weight and performance…
