Phone (3a) Pro Teardown

Rob ⚡️ · 2025-03-20T11:45:00+00:00

![](https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2025-03-17/1742206525-572598-nothing-phone3a-product-teardown-08-large.jpg "banner") 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. ![](https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2025-03-17/1742206524-435299-nothing-phone3a-product-teardown-02-large.jpg "banner") **🔴 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… ![](https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2025-03-17/1742206524-937220-nothing-phone3a-product-teardown-05-large.jpg "banner") 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](https://nothing.community/d/27843-phone-3a-pro-what-no-one-tells-you "Palmix Art"), [Juse](https://nothing.community/d/27910-3a-pro-a-new-dimension-of-photography-for-nothing "Juse") and [Bubi](https://nothing.community/d/28315-phone-3a-pro-review-is-it-worth-upgrading "Bubi") for some example images. ![](https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2025-03-17/1742206524-741210-nothing-phone3a-product-teardown-04-large.jpg "banner") ‎ ‎ 🟡 Primary - 50 MP Samsung, f/1.88, 1/1.56” sensor, 84.5° FOV, OIS & EIS 🔵 Ultra Wide - 8 MP Sony, f/2.2, 1/4" 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, 1/2.76" 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. ![](https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2025-03-17/1742206525-224505-nothing-phone3a-product-teardown-06-large.jpg "banner") 🔴 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 ‎ ![](https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2025-03-17/1742206912-939407-teardownbts.jpg "banner") *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. ![](https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2025-03-17/1742206524-548020-nothing-phone3a-product-teardown-03-large.jpg "banner") 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: 1x 2.5GHz (Cortex-A720), 3x 2.4GHz (Cortex-A720), 4x 1.8GHz (Cortex-A520) * GPU: Adreno 810 * NPU: HTP2 🔵 UFS2.2- Storage + LPDDR4X RAM - learn more about this [in a recent post](https://nothing.community/d/29023-why-we-chose-ufs-22 "UFS 2.2") by @"Raymond"#2947 ‎ ‎**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. ![](https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2025-03-17/1742206525-387294-nothing-phone3a-product-teardown-07-large.jpg "banner") 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! > EDIT: Giveaway now closed. 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! ⬇️ Click through to view the [full entry requirements and giveaway terms and conditions](https://nothing.community/p/3-phone-3a-pro-teardown-giveaway-terms-conditions). Entries close **April 3, 2025, at 11:00 GMT.**

SnehanshuPhukon

Rob ⚡️

The essential space is definitely a useful thing

Rhehehe

Periscope looks like fun new things to try. while the rest is Nothing, so pretty much everything else is great already

Sundarasenan_J

Rob ⚡️

For me, It’s the camera which is very exciting in the 3a pro and the LTPS Amoled display with the crazy brightness of 3000 nits OMG!!!

Ichii

Overall, I love the design, that’s the whole reason why I appreciate Nothing products so much. So far I’ve really been happy with my Phone (2a), really curious to see a Phone (3a) in action !

aadarshxthakur

Rob ⚡️ it’s 50MP periscope Camera teases me much

DaniMachiedo

Periscope camera is definitely the coolest part of the hardware. The design of it also grew on me. I suppose asymmetry can look good as well 😅

Guidomelvin

Excellent teardown! It also adds an aesthetic. That’s also a big periscope lens. The grey colorway reminds me of some electronics or PCs back in the 90s.

Akshay_IVY6ceGfY5

Rob ⚡️

omg the periscope i tried in near by croma store disply model…

believe me its super cool experience… i never imagine that the phone could capture such details….

100/100 marks for periscope.

MaadhavSingal

Apple’s camera system is NOTHING compared to the periscope camera!

NikolajS_ndergaard

Rob ⚡️

I love the new camera presets!

ROHit

VIDHYASAGARMS then buy it bro. Why wait it’s a fantastic phone looks 🤩 , camera this time also 🤩🥶 (specially 3x periscope zoom quality) or camera preset and essential key 🤘 only this time colour only 🖤 and grey 🩶. I liked white 🤍 for specially in all colour 🤌.

MR_Linkin

Periscope cameraI.I like to zoom in on distant things.

O_N_M

My favourite feature of Phone (3a) Pro is the Periscope Lens because capturing memories is priceless & this is the the main specification I look for when buying a phone, but sadly no smartphone comes with a periscope camera in this price range & now NOTHING did it which I always needed. Every year my grandson performs on the stage at his school’s annual function & I always felt the lack of zoom capability because of my budget, with this periscope lens, I can zoom in without losing clarity, so that every smile and every move will be captured in stunning detail. No more blurry distant shots. Just crystal clear moments which I can cherish forever. NOTHING is making sure I don’t miss a thing (means Nothing to miss with NOTHING), even from the last row!

MuhammadEl-shennawy

Rob ⚡️ the chipset is breathtaking ✨

zabduartp

@“Rob ⚡️”#p150376El nothing 3a me ha sorprendido mucho me alegro de haber echado un vistazo a la marca ya que me han gustado mucho sus productos desde los teléfonos hasta los auriculares y lo que me ha gustado de 3a pro ha sido su zoom óptico y el procesamiento de imágenes.

Mr_Nijamu

Rob ⚡️ camera model is very unique and transparent back panel cool

BhargavPatel_739GtMTueA

Rob ⚡️ Periscope lens , new camera luts style, unique design that everyone knows what you holding. And most favourite That “Essential Space” loving it.

DuckRogers

Rob ⚡️ Quick question. As the process of picking the giveaway winners are selected by random, does posting multiple replies improve the odds of being a lucky winner? And what about the context of the reply? Because in that case I would like to say the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Also the 3a pro is the ugly duckling my heart has been longing for 🪿❤️

MarkG13

For me personally, the new Periscope lens is the feature that I think is the most exciting addition to these new phones.

DuckRogers

One more for you. A short poem that best describes what I like about the 3a pro.

3 wonky eyes,

Make for a nice surprise,

With a periscopic lense,

So you can zoom in on your friends… Nostrils 🥸

« Previous Page Next Page »