Nothing’s market positioning with the Nothing Phone 3a Lite is as confusing as the ancient Egyptian’s ability to build the pyramids. Because not only is this the first ultra-budget phone in their lineup, but it’s nearly identical to the CMF Phone Pro 2 released only a few months back, their sub-brand specifically built to make ultra-budget phones.

Nothing Phone 3a Lite

The Nothing Phone 3a Lite gets the basics right - screen, battery and software - but it also sands off of what made Nothing phones feel fun and different. If you just want the cheapest way into NothingOS and don’t care much about lymph or speed it will do the job, but the CMF Phone 2 Pro or a discounted Phone 3a are simply better buys.

Pros

Large 6.77" AMOLED 120Hz display is nice
Good battery life
NothingOS 3.5 is still clean despite some bloatware sneaking in
Design looks different from other ultra-budgets...

Cons

...but it's uninspired and boring by Nothing standards
Distilled Glyph LED is pointless now
Performance is fine but never snappy

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So what gives? No clue. But here we are. The Phone 3a Lite, a distilled version of the Phone 3a and the Phone 3, features the same transparent industrial design as its brethren, but unlike the CMF series, it adds some aluminium and glass to round out the design, making it slightly more premium.

Everything else is identical, to the 6.77” AMOLED display, the Media Dimensity 7300 Pro chipset, 8GB RAM, and more. It even has three cameras, although the 50MP telephoto lens from the Pro 2 has been swapped for a small 2MP macro camera.

The price is around the same, too: AED 759 (vs AED 799), and you get around the same Android experience at a budget price. However, unlike the CMF phone, you don’t get to use the quirky accessories, nor do you get the bold orange colour that another brand’s flagship has made it so desirable at the moment.

Design and Features

I will be honest, I am not entirely sure how to feel about the Nothing Phone 3a Lite looks. This is supposed to be the “3a Lite”, but the design is clearly inspired by the Phone 3 rather than the 3a, which is a bit confusing.

As such, you get the same scattered-like camera lens at the back, along with a transparent rear, glass on the front and back (Panda glass), a plastic frame and IP54 splash resistance. It feels decent in the hands, however, with the 199g weight and 8.3mm thickness giving it a slightly chunky feel. But it’s comfortable to hold for long sessions.

The problem for me is that the personality just isn’t there. The Phone 3’s design was weird and divisive, but at least it looked like Nothing was trying something bold. It keeps the transparent back, with some of the nuts and bolts showing, but has stripped away what made Nothing phones visually interesting.

The triple camera layout - 50MP main, 8MP ultrawide and 2MP macro - somehow looks even more awkward here, almost like the lenses were dropped in and left wherever they landed. It doesn’t look ugly, but it also doesn’t look cool or clever.

Then you have the Glyph situation. This is the company that built its whole brand around those light strips, and on the 3a Lite it’s basically down to a single LED that blinks for notifications and calls.

It technically still does the Glyph things - you can assign patterns and use Flip to Glyph - but in practice, it just reminds me of those old phones where the flash would blink when a notification came in. It works, but it doesn’t feel like a signature feature anymore, and that’s a shame. 

The display is still quality, though. You get a 6.77” AMOLED panel with a 1080x2392 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It’s sharp enough for the size, colours are rich, and the high refresh rate helps the phone feel smoother than the chipset alone would suggest. Brightness is more than fine for outdoor use - it pushes high enough that you can still see what you are doing in direct sunlight with around 3000nits of peak brightness.

Then there is the mono speaker. A lot of people will be annoyed at the lack of stereo, and while I don’t really think stereo should be the first thing to go at this price, the single bottom-firing speaker here is…okay.

For doom scrolling, voice notes, and casual YouTube, it gets the job done. If you are used to dual speakers, the sound will feel thin and a bit tinny, and it's easy to block the grille with your hand in landscape. It’s not great, but it’s not a disaster either.

Around the frame, the layout is familiar: power button on the right with the Essential Key underneath it, and separate volume buttons on the left. At the bottom, you have got the USB-C port, SIM tray with microSD support (a rarity across any price bracket!) and that mono speaker. The under-display fingerprint sensor works fine - it’s not the fastest out there, but reliable and speedy enough that you don’t really think about it after a while.

Overall, the 3a Lite doesn’t look bad. For a cheap phone, the transparent back and glass still give it more presence than a lot of plastic slabs in this price range. But from Nothing specifically, this feels plain and a bit safe. If you put it next to the CMF Phone 2 Pro, I actually think the CMF looks more interesting and put-together, and takes the necessary risks in design that has been Nothing’s modus operandi since its formation.

Cameras

The phone features three lenses - a 50MP f/1.9, 24mm main snapper with support for OIS, an 8MP f/2.2 120-degree ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP macro lens.

The cameras are as you expect from a smartphone at this price - strictly okay, but they get the job done. In daylight, the cameras are able to take balanced shots in terms of colours and dynamic range, with a reasonable amount of detail. Some shots do appear to be slightly over-sharpened and under fluorescent lights; they can also look a little hazy, but solid for quick snaps (or as quick as the processor can manage).

Unlike the CMF Pro 2, it doesn't have a telephoto lens, so capturing zoomed shots of just about anything is out of the question. It quickly loses quality across the board, even at 2x, and while 10x digital zoom is possible, it's just poor.

What Nothing did include instead of the telephoto lens is a macro lens, but it's just...bad. The focal point appears to be extremely limited, and the images are blurry with no detail.

Nighttime shots perform as well as the daylight shots. The cameras are able to take a good amount of light and keep the colours and range in check, but do lose out on the detail under low light.

Software Experience and Performance

The Nothing Phone 3a Lite runs on the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro (4nm), with 8GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB storage, plus a microSD slot. It ships with Android 15 and NothingOS 3.5, and Nothing is promising three major Android updates and six years of security patches. That’s a reasonably solid commitment for a budget device.

In everyday use, the phone is smooth enough, but never really fast. NothingOS is tuned well enough nowadays, and the 120Hz panel helps a lot with how the phone feels. Apps open without any freezing, scrolling looks clean, and you can hop between a few recent apps without everything constantly reloading. For general social media, messaging, browsing and video, it’s completely usable.

At the same time, you can always feel where it sits in the lineup. Pretty much every app takes that half-second to open and finish the animation, and after a while, you start noticing that the phone is just a fraction behind your taps. The camera is where it feels slowest - opening the camera, swapping between modes and taking shots all feel a bit sluggish. It’s not unusable, but it’s definitely not snappy. I don’t have the CMF Phone 2 Pro with me anymore, but from memory, that phone felt a little snappier on the same chipset.

For gaming, it’s what you would expect from this hardware. Causal games and 2D titles are fine, and lighter 3D games run decently once you dial settings down. Heavier games are playable if you are okay with low to medium settings and the odd frame drop. You are not buying this as a gaming phone, and it behaves like a mid-range chip should.

NothingOS 3.5 itself is still nice to use. The whole UI has a clear visual style, the widgets and fonts are clean, and it still offers a very minimal and fresh Android experience than other smartphones.

You also get Essential Space, which you can trigger with a tap on the Essential Key on the side. You can use it to quickly save whatever’s on your screen, add a note or record a voice memo. All of that gets collected in the Essential Space app, where the phone uses on-device AI to pull out dates, tasks and memories and make them usable. It’s a decent way to keep all your screenshots, ideas and reminders in one place, but I still haven’t been lured to use it all the time.

That said, Nothing is wavering a bit on the “no bloat” story. You now get Facebook and Instagram pre-installed, and there’s something called Lock Glimpse feature that turns the lockscreen into a kind of content carousel unless you switch it off (mercifully, it does present the option right at the initial setup). If you have ever used a Huawei or an Honor phone, you will have an idea of what this is. Thankfully, this can be turned off and the pre-installed apps can be uninstalled, but the little bloat sneaking into an otherwise clean OS is indeed worrisome. 

Battery Life

The 3a Lite features a 5000mAh cell, 33W wired charging and 5W reverse wired charging, with no wireless charging. With heavy use - social apps, camera, and some video - I could get around 4-5 hours of SoT and still end the day with roughly 25-30% left. If you are lighter on the camera and gaming, you can easily stretch it into the next morning. That’s pretty solid for the price.

Reverse wired charging is a nice little bonus if you want to top up a small accessory like earbuds, though at 5W it’s more of an emergency thing than something you rely on often. But it gets the job done in a pinch.

Should You Buy the Nothing Phone 3a Lite?

On its own, the Nothing Phone 3a Lite is a decent starter phone. You are getting a big 120Hz OLED screen, good battery life, a clean and distinctive Android skin, and a transparent design that still looks more interesting than most budget phones you will find. If all you want is the cheapest way into NothingOS, it does what it’s supposed to do.

The issue is what happens once you look around it. The regular Phone 3a sits above this with a fuller Glyph setup, a nicer back design and better cameras, and it’s already getting discounted in a lot of places (AED 1049 on Amazon). Then there’s the CMF Phone 2 Pro, which is extremely close to this phone in terms of core hardware, and frankly, looks more exciting, and you also get a telephoto lens if you fancy that. 

So, should you buy the 3a Lite? If you specifically want a Nothing-branded phone, and just want the lowest possible buy-in without caring too much about design flair, speaker quality or raw speed, the 3a Lite is fine, and you will get along with it. But at this price point, I would personally drift more towards the CMF Phone 2 Pro because it just looks and feels a bit more exciting and different, and feels like a better use of your money.

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