It’s been a month of me using the Phone 4a & there are a lot of things that took me by surprise.
The jump from 3a to 4a is a calculated one but there are things that did make me doubt the Phone 4a at a lot of times.
Review thread : Let’s go ✨
Unboxing -
Typical Nothing style box, Where:
Phone
Transparent case (Tpu)
Type C - C cable
Sim ejector tool
Paperwork
Build -
It’s a glass sandwich design with a plastic frame & metal buttons + with also a metal raised bracket on the camera
Front glass is protected by - Gorilla Glass 7i while the back glass is protected by Panda Glass
It does feel premium in the hand & it isn’t top heavy.
Design -
Design on the other hand is so detailed that I love Nothing for it but sadly I have the black colour and black colour hides the details by a lot & is way too hard to keep it clean from all the smudges
I also appreciate Nothing for playing around with different colours & most people seem to love them as well. Having a ‘Pink’ colour phone was way too unexpected for me to see
First time on a Nothing ‘a’ series phone we now have a “Recording indicator" instead of the red sticker that just stayed there as a part of design.
Display -
It’s 6.7 inches 120 Hz LTPS Amoled display with 1600 HBM, the PWM value is 2160 Hz & it’s HDR10+ but sadly as always we don’t get it on Netflix (pls fix this Nothing)
IRL, The display is sharp, smooth, has good colour reproduction & is also ample bright in sunlight
No complaints here
Performance -
This time it’s Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 which is a decent update over the 7s Gen 3 in Phone 3a but it’s UFS 3.1 (finally) tho’ the ram type still stays at DDR4X
Daily usage of this phone hasn’t been a completely smooth experience as I have seen slowdowns, jitters & the phone getting unresponsive at times
But with 2 updates in, the phone has improved quite a bit on the stability front but still there are slowdowns & jitters occasionally.
Like - Animation when opening with the fingerprint is laggy at times, jittery scrolls on websites etc
Fine performance but needs optimisation
Gaming, I tested BGMI on this & it works well without any issues. Pretty expected as BGMI tends to work well on most phones.
Cameras -
50mp Main - Samsung GN9 - f/1.8
8mp Ultra Wide - Sony IMX 355 - f/2.2
50mp 3.5x Telephoto - Samsung JN5 - f/2.8
32mp Selfie - Samsung KD1 - f/2.2 (Fixed Focus)
Camera experience with this phone has been a rollercoaster ride, Let me explain ~
Main :
The 50MP f/1.88 with a sensor size of 1/1.57 main camera of the 4a works well 7/10 of the times but the rest of the times it messes up so bad that it would make you doubt yourself (Point & Shoot)
Issues? ~
White balance
Textures when the light becomes low/artificial lights
Slower shutter even in bright lights
Here are some snaps from the phone for you to judge:
Telephoto :
50 MP 3.5x with an aperture of f/2.88 & a sensor size of ½.75”
This time they did a great addition to the optical zoom focal length with this phone & that’s 3.5x.
And man I love this focal length as it’s a perfect zoom that you’ll need for at least 7x, That said I did hate the ‘Auto Macro’ function that comes with the 3.5x tho’ it doesn’t use the telephoto rather than it just zooms in the main camera & tries to take macro.
In the end what I mean is that having 3.5x Telephoto is a much usable optical focal length rather than 2x which was the case previously.
Wide-Angle :
8MP with an aperture of f/2.2 & a sensor size of ¼
The wide-angle camera is a standard 8MP shooter and it gives you exactly the same output as you expect it to give.
Here are some Wide-Angle shots below, While they aren’t anything out of the ordinary but they do the job pretty okay.
Selfie :
32MP with an aperture of f/2.2 & ⅓
Selfies on the Phone 4a are pretty nice, The phone does handle a lot of scenarios very well but it still messes up with motion blur & occational exposure misses.
Videos :
Videos on the Phone 4a are nearly the same as last year, pretty decent. Tho’ this time we also have LUTs for the videos now.
There’s one named ‘Cine Amber’ which kinda gives the vibe of an old Kodak camera. Looks good, definitely but I do wish Nothing makes this switching more fluid + also shows the camera preview while applying the LUTs at least in the photos section.
Glyphs :
After the much loved Glyph lights being a distinctive feature of Nothing phones that did turn heads this time they have lowered the number of lights at the back & came up with a new way of showing information & that’s Glyph Bar.
As always they have added a unique pattern to the glyph bar as it now has little square shapes that have a 2-step glow effect to get filled up while animating.
Works beautifully with timers & even with Live Activities (Zomato works damn too well)
Battery & Charging :
5400 mAh battery now with the 4a which is a 400 mAh increase compared to the previous gen. But does that translate in real life?
Here are some screenshots which had my daily mix usage of - Writing (Docs), Researching (Chrome & ChatGPT), Music streaming with my Ear 2/Headphone 1,Calls, Video calls & some X + Youtube
Now all this may look like it’s a lot but all this have been tested on different Nothing phones as well like the Phone 3 & even on last year’s Phone 3a which lasted around 8.5 - 9 hrs while this lasts 7hrs usually
So, the battery life isn’t bad but it does need some updates to get much more juice out of it.
Note: This supports 50W wired charging, But sadly I didn’t have any PD charger around so I had to charge it via my OnePlus charger which charged it at 10-12 watts. So, I can’t really comment on the charging speeds.
Software :
Nothing OS 4.1 based on Android 16 with a promise of 3years of Major updates and 6 years of security patches
With the 4a I did get a few new things that I liked -
Translucent pin page at the lockscreen
Depth effect in the lockscreen
Reflection remover
Pedestrian remover
New widgets - breathe
New watermarks
New tuning section in the camera (manual your style of change)
New essential widgets/apps in the widget page (Separate section in the right)
New lockscreen customisation section (Nothing crazy but its a step in the right direction)
Misc :
Speakers on this are good and the stereo separation is also done okay
Mic quality is good as I never had any problems with mic in both the cases beit calls or even recording videos
Connectivity was fine as I did feel the difference moving from my 13s to this & instantly I found this was struggling at my apartment where it’s kinda hard to find good internet speeds, But I won’t blame Nothing because you can spot the difference in connectivity coming from a flagship phone.
Fingerprint scanner performed well enough, the laggy part was just the animation which wasn’t laggy at all times, only sometimes (Requires a fix? Definitely - Isn’t a dealbreaker as of now)
So, these were my thoughts on the Nothing Phone 4a which I was using for the past month as my main phone.
It has launched in 3 variants -
8/128 costs 31,999 & with bank offerers it can lower the amount till 27,999
8/256 costs 34,999 & with bank offers it can lower the amount till 30,999
12/256 costs 37,999 & with bank offers as I have said twice will bring down the price till 33,999
Prices have definitely increased compared to the Phone 3a which stayed a great buy under 23,000 but looking at the market maybe the phone doesn’t have that crazy of a price tag as the other phone I’ve seen getting launched.
Q. The phone should have launched at a lower price tag?
Ans - Definately, And as a consumer I will always prefer value for money or crazy value for money products.
Either way these are my thoughts on the Nothing Phone 4a. I thank Nothing India for sending me a review unit to experience this new ‘a’ series phone of theirs and I also thank the Community Manager for selecting me & managing all the details and elaborations timely.
Adios, Anshu.
