- (Edited)
This review has been culminated after using Phone 3a for past 10 days as a daily driver and Everything is documented. This is a long one, enjoy!
(1/?)
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*Before we start*
This is a review sample provided to me by Nothing. Also, thank you @Deepanshu_Saini_ for guiding, helping and listening to every feedback! 
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If you want to check out the Video version of This review, you can click the link below.
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*Let’s start with the design* 
Right from the get go nothing has yet again iterated their iconic design in a meaningful way, I’d say. The overall glyphs’ location remains the same, but there are some design tweaks with the glyphs and they have retained their iconic transparent design back. What I like the most about this Nothing phone 3a is design is the inclusion of glass back. I have always felt the design of Phone 2a always had that plastic feel because it was made of plastic. Like that laminated feel, but Phone 3a feel so much better. But I can’t say the same thing about the dimensions, because it is a large phone and personally for my small hands it is not ideal. It was already less than ideal for phone 2a, but it is more so for 3a. I always had that feeling that, oh my God, I will drop my phone right now. I didn’t feel any difference with the weight, but I’d suggest Nothing for their future iteration with the design, please try to make it at least a bit smaller. It also has the same power button and volume button as phone 2a, but they have added a new Essential Space button, about which I’ll talk about later. Overall, I’ll give it 8.5 out of 10.
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*Display* 
Now flipping it to the front, we get a 6.77” flexible emulator display with 10-bit color reproduction, which also has 120 Hz refresh rate, which is apparently hard to provide in a ₹60k phone. It also has 2160 Hz PWM Dimming and 480 Hz touch sampling rate which can scales to 1000 Hz while gaming, if it’s relevant to you. This certainly an upgrade over phone tower, which had a 8 bit color 120 Hz AMOLED display, but if you daily drive it, there is no reason to upgrade to Phone 3a, But if you’re looking for a phone which has a fairly bright display with great colors then this might be it! I’ll give it 8.3/10
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*Performance* 
Now, currently we’re talking about just media experience, how’s the actual performance? It runs on Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, a 2nm TSMC fabricated chip, paired with 8GB RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage. Btw storage type being this old hasn’t caused me THAT much of problem, but sometimes app felt delayed while opening, nothing major though. Average day-to-day has been great for me with little to no lag, partly because of 7s Gen 3 and partly because of Nothing OS 3.1’s optimization. It can get warm sometimes, while doing some heavy tasks, like gaming, but nothing alarming. Talking about gaming, that also seemed pretty, nothing extra-ordinary but pretty great. I’m not much of an avid mobile gamer, but I played BGMI for 1 hour, it was a constant 90 FPS, the heat was at 36°C (My room was 28°C, though). But if you focus is at gaming, I’ll suggest you to look else were, this is NOT a gaming phone. Overall, I’m feeling a 7.5/10.
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*Battery* 
This is part where I’m the most impressed about this phone. Battery in this thing is a BEAST, let me tell you this much. It was already a BEAST on the Nothing Phone 2a, but it more so in this. I frequently get over 8 and ½ hours of screen on time, every day, and this metric tracked one of my most intensive days with this phone, playing games, browsing social media, benchmarking, etc. In normal usage, I’d get 2 days’ worth of battery life, which is MORE THAN SUFFICIENT for most of the users. Safe to say, if you want a phone with long-lasting battery life, this is it. And my experience was the same as Phone 2a. Overall it’s a 10!
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*Nothing OS 3.1* 
I’ve actually made a whole video detailing everything in Nothing OS 3.0, and my views regarding Nothing OS hasn’t changed that much, if you want to check it, it is linked below. But some nifty improvements that were in this thing is certainly applaudable. Like the camera experience is so much better, the introduction to Presets was great, but admittedly I didn’t get enough time to review them properly, that’s why I will be leaving them out of this review. Stability wise, it is great as well. I had a run-in with camera crashes but it was swiftly fixed. It is great, I’ll give it 8.5/10 (different from my video, Ik). I’ll bundle in my essential space thoughts here. Essential space is a new button that has been added by nothing in these three a series, which uses ai to analyze your screenshots to but to sets reminders, etc. They claim it is basically your secondary memory, which I couldn’t help but agree. It is really a powerful tool which you can use day to day in your life. And it is smart enough to analyze everything and give you a good answer. It uses an AI model in the back end, which handles everything well enough, I’d say. I’d give Essential space a 7/10, only because in the current stage, it feels barebones. It needs more features ngl.
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*Camera* 
Now the main juicy part. Nothing phone (3a) consists of a 50MP main sensor, an 8MP ultrawide sensor and a 50MP 2X telephoto sensor. Now, the maintenance quality has been good. The color reproduction has been good, but occasionally, I mean, 10% of the time, the colors can be a bit too saturated. I have noticed, even after the latest update. I wish nothing had separated the vibrant tomb and the neutral tomb, giving us two option neutral and vibrant through their new camera presets. But, well, that’s a suggestion for them to consider in the later. The 8MP ultrawide on paper sounds bad, but do note that 50MP Ultrawide on Phone 2a was not so good. And it is comparable to nothing Phone 3a, only because they do not have any autofocus system. The 50MP 2X telephoto sensor does perform well and is the MSP for phone 3a, But I can’t help but feel like that there is some more work left in the room. Like there is focus breathing issues, focusing on wrong subject, etc. and the color shift between all three senses are drastic. I hope that nothing improves them in the future updates. Because when it works, it works very well. The portrait mode looks good. The edge detection is fine enough for this budget. And yeah, the color reproduction is also good. The selfie camera is 32MP Samsung sensor, which is a downgrade from the 32MP Sony sensor on phone to about it is not really downgraded. Both of them perform pretty well. In my verdict, I’d say the camera system performs well enough for this budget for your day-to-day usage. And I’d like to give it a 7.5/10.
Some Camera Samples:
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*Conclusion* 
Overall, my point is, if you are a Phone 2a user, there is not much of an upgrade here to justify switching, but that’s not the point of this phone, clearly. The point of this phone is to attract new users and reinforce an identity they established when they launched Phone (1), basically it stands out and “makes tech fun again”. But if you are thinking of buying this phone, I’d give you a thumb up because it is a really special phone in this price bracket. Sure, there are phone with better performance and better cameras in this budget, which by the way, if you looking for a specific thing, you can go for them. Admittedly, this phone is NOT for everyone, but this is a very well-rounded phone in this budget that gives you a little bit of everything. I’d go as far as to say, this is a great phone for most of users. Overall, it’s 7.7/10 in my books.
