Nothing Phone 4a Pro hands-on review: This could beat iPhone 17e at its own game

After revealing the lower-priced Nothing Phone 4a at MWC 2026 earlier this week, Nothing has gone and unveiled the Nothing Phone 4a Pro — the other mid-range phone that will be arriving on sale before the end of the month. If you thought the regular Phone 4a was impressive, then you're going to love what the 4a Pro has to offer.

This isn't a flagship phone by any means, but it looks as though Nothing has added a bunch of the features that made last year's Nothing Phone 3 stand out. All while keeping the price firmly in the best cheap phones category. Not only do the phones share some design cues, the 4a Pro also features an enlarged Glyph Matrix to show you important information from the back of your phone.

Priced and feature-packed as this phone seems to be, it seems to be gunning for those people who want a premium flagship-like experience without suffering the ever-increasing costs. While we'll have to wait for a full review to see just how well the Nothing Phone 4a Pro handles that task, the brief time I've spent with the phone certainly paints a positive picture. Here are my early thoughts on what the phone has to offer.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro hands-on review: Specs

Nothing Phone 4a Pro hands-on review: Price and release date

Prices for the Nothing Phone 4a Pro will start at $499, which gets you a model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. If you want more than that, you'll have to fork out $599 for a variant with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space. Color options are Silver, Black and Pink.

Pre-orders for the Nothing Phone 4a Pro open on March 13, with release date of March 27. However, the first phones will drop a little early on March 21. It'll be available from the Nothing website and other retailers.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro hands-on review: Design and Display

Interestingly, Nothing has opted for an all-metal unibody design with the Nothing Phone 4a Pro, rather than the semi-transparent plastic designs it's offered on other devices. The only glimpse you get of the phone's inner workings are on the camera bump, which houses the triple-lens camera and the Glyph Matrix display.

So while there are some elements of Nothing's quirky design, the phone does look more like a typical smartphone than ever before. Which is kind of a shame, if you ask me.

Nothing has made the phone thinner, and with a thickness of 0.31 inches, it's actually slimmer than the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Sadly, with a weight of 7.4 ounces, it isn't that light, though it was noticeably easier to hold than my Pixel 10 Pro — despite being a larger device. Though that's no huge surprise given how chunky Google's phones tend to be.

The display is a 6.83-inch AMOLED panel made from Gorilla Glass 7i, the same as the newly released Pixel 10a, though it offers noticeably more than Google's cheap phone. We're talking a 144Hz refresh rate and up to 5,000 nits of peak brightness.

Needless to say, that is an absurd figure for a mid-range phone display, and we will have to test that to see how bright the Nothing Phone 4a Pro really is during testing. With listed outdoor brightness and typical brightness of 1,600 and 800 nits, respectively, I seriously doubt that it will. I certainly didn't notice anything particularly special about the brightness during my brief time using the phone.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro hands-on review: Cameras

I haven't had the chance to test the Nothing 4a Pro's cameras yet, so I can't really comment on the kind of photos they might have to offer. However, there is some impressive hardware here, and more than you'd typically find in a phone that sells for under $500.

The main lens is a 50MP sensor with an f/1.88 aperture, which is joined by a 50MP (f/1.88) telephoto lens with 3.5x optical zoom and 7x "in sensor" zoom. No doubt that's another hybrid digital zoom, like Apple's "optical quality zoom" that blends high-resolution shots that are cut down to simulate closeness.

Nothing also offers up to 140x zooming shots, which it claims is a world first. However, we haven't tested the quality on these shots, and experienced what kind of AI corrections will be made to make them look good. Because zooming that far, even on a higher-resolution camera, often looks terrible without some kind of upscaling.

I'm a little torn about the inclusion of the 8MP (f/2.2) ultrawide lens. On the one hand, the fact that Nothing has included all three major lenses, and not padded out the lens count with a terrible macro lens, is a fantastic thing. It's rare to get telephoto photography at this price point anyway, so having ultrawide to go with it is a major win. But an 8MP lens just looks disappointing in 2026, especially compared to the pair of 50MP lenses it comes with.

The front camera is a 32MP (f/2.2) selfie camera, and Nothing says the phone will be able to record 4K Ultra XDR videos at 30fps 1080p lets you record the same at 60fps, and slo-mo footage at 120FPS.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro hands-on review: Performance

Being a sub-$500 phone, and given all the extras Nothing has included on the 4a Pro, it's no surprise to hear it does not have flagship-tier performance hardware. Instead, it's packed with a Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chipset. That, combined with the 8GB of base RAM, means this is not a phone to rival the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S26, or even the Galaxy S25.

Nothing promises that gains have been made in performance, with a new, larger vapor chamber and promises of improved gaming. However, this is not something we can really discuss with any certainty until we do some hands-on testing for ourselves.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro hands-on review: Battery and charging

There's a slightly larger battery inside the 4a Pro, with 5,080 mAh compared to the even 5,000 mAh that was available in the Nothing 3a Pro last year. Nothing says that this will last up to 17 hours on a single charge, though we will have to do our own testing to see just how accurate that claim really is.

For reference, the Nothing Phone 3a Pro lasted 14 hours and 33 minutes in our custom battery test. I'd hope the 4a Pro will exceed that figure, thanks to extra efficiencies in the chipset and the slightly bigger battery. That said, I would not be upset to have a phone capable of lasting over 14 hours of regular use, even if it isn't quite the 17 hours Nothing promises.

Wired charging is 50W once more, and in typical Nothing style, there is no wireless charging to be found. We didn't get it on the Nothing Phone 3, so there was no chance it would debut on the 4a Pro.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro hands-on review: Software and AI

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro will come running Nothing OS 4.1, which is based on Android 16. Like previous iterations of the software, the idea is that it's a version of Android that offers a more minimalist approach and fewer distractions. Frankly, I find the design a little too monotonal, but I can certainly see the appeal.

Nothing has promised three years of Android updates, which is pretty weak in my opinion, though you will get six years of security updates. So if you plan on keeping the 4a pro for the long term, you will be protected from whatever threats or exploits pop-up for the immediate future.

In terms of AI, Nothing offers direct integration with ChatGPT out of the box and features a log of all your AI usage each day. The main AI feature is the Essential AI tools, which have been a mainstay for the last couple of generations.

This is powered by the Essential Key, which doubles as a dedicated screenshot trigger, but the main benefit is the Essential Space, which uses AI to organize notes, ideas, screenshots and other things of that nature. Other notable features include Flip to Record, and Essential Space, which uses AI to offer better and more personalized results over time.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro hands-on review: Outlook

If you were impressed with what we've seen for the Nothing Phone 4a, then the Nothing 4a Pro should blow your mind. Or at least get close. Considering how much you're expected to pay, there's a ridiculous amount on offer here. $499 for a triple-lens camera phone that doesn't have a useless third camera is incredible enough.

I wouldn't want to see it go head-to-head against the likes of the iPhone 17 Pro Max or Pixel 10 Pro XL, but compared to the iPhone 17e and Pixel 10a? This could easily be a strong contender for best cheap phone. There are still plenty of things we don't know about, and that's going to require plenty of hands-on testing. But in the meantime, I'm fairly optimistic about the Nothing Phone 4a Pro's chances of taking on the major players once again.

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