Nothing Phone 4A/Pro Review: I Have a Theory

Summary

MKBHD reviews the Nothing Phone 4A and 4A Pro, two mid-range phones that represent a strategic pivot for Nothing as a company. The 4A starts at 349 Euros for European markets while the 4A Pro comes in at $499 for the US. Notably absent is a “Nothing Phone 4” flagship, which Brownlee attributes to Nothing’s inability to compete on flagship specs against Samsung, Apple, and Xiaomi given their smaller order volumes and rising RAM prices.

The 4A features Nothing’s signature semi-transparent design in a striking matte blue with triple cameras, a Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, and Nothing OS 4.1 on Android 16. The 4A Pro steps up with a unibody aluminum body, a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, and an upgraded pixel-dot glyph matrix on the back for customizable notifications. Both phones run refined software that Brownlee praises for its snappiness and unique home screen customization through the new community-driven Playground widget store.

However, Brownlee notes that many of the 4A Pro’s “flagship-style” specs — 144Hz refresh rate, 5,000-nit brightness, 140x zoom — are largely marketing numbers that offer negligible real-world improvement over the standard 4A. He concludes that the 4A Pro is less of a true “Pro” and more of a slightly up-badged version for the US market, while the standard 4A represents the better value proposition overall.

Highlights

”The most compelling budget phones right now”

“So in a world where the pretty underwhelming Pixel 10A just came out for 499 bucks and the iPhone 17E just came out for 100 bucks more than that, this is a perfect slot for Nothing to just jump right in and just be the alternative.” — Marques Brownlee, 1:09

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”Nothing can’t make a competitive flagship right now”

“Because they can’t. It’s actually, it’s kind of impossible for them at this moment to make a competitive, super high-end flagship phone. Like the last time we saw them really try a high-end phone was the Nothing Phone 2 last year for $800. And that did not go well.” — Marques Brownlee, 6:31

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”Savvy fans would call them out”

“But they also know that their most savvy fans are intelligent enough that if they made a new flagship but didn’t put the flagship chip in it, they’d probably get called out. So instead, they’re making a mid-range phone and an upper mid-range phone.” — Marques Brownlee, 8:16

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”World’s first 140x ultra zoom… why stop there?”

“The Pro has the world’s first 140x ultra zoom. Wow. But I mean, why stop there? You might as well be a nice even 150 or 200. But what’s stopping you? It’s just digital crop, just go to 1,000 at that point.” — Marques Brownlee, 11:30

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”The 4A Pro is not really a Pro”

“This 4A Pro is less of a Pro version of the phone and more of a slightly up-badged, up-featured version of the same thing for 150 bucks more for the US market. Still a fine phone, but the 4A is where it’s at.” — Marques Brownlee, 11:44

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Key Points

• Nothing Phone 4A pricing (0:12) - The 4A starts at 349 Euros for European markets; the 4A Pro at $499 for the US
• No flagship this year (0:23) - There is no Nothing Phone 4 with a flagship chip, just the 4A and 4A Pro
• Blue design praised (1:21) - The matte blue 4A with semi-transparent back is called the best-looking Nothing phone ever
• Nothing OS 4.1 software (1:42) - Runs on Android 16 with improved smoothness and UFS 3.1 storage
• Playground widget store (2:22) - Community-driven store with creative custom widgets including arcade games
• Glyph LED interface (3:06) - Seven LED dots on the 4A; full pixel-dot matrix display on the 4A Pro
• 4A Pro unibody aluminum (3:51) - Premium metal construction that feels nicer but is very fingerprinty
• No wireless charging on either (9:37) - The 4A lacks wireless charging, and the 4A Pro’s metal body also prevents it
• 144Hz is marketing (10:10) - The 4A Pro claims 144Hz but practically never exceeds 120Hz in daily use
• Triple cameras are average (10:46) - Nice to have three lenses but actual image quality is “perfectly average”
• 8MP ultrawides can’t do 4K (11:11) - Neither phone can shoot 4K from the ultrawide since the sensor is only 8 megapixels
• Carl Pei’s strategy (7:00) - CEO announced they won’t make a flagship every year, framing it as making upgrades more meaningful
• RAM price pressure (7:29) - Skyrocketing RAM prices make it harder for smaller companies to compete on flagship specs

Mentions

Companies

• Nothing (0:00) - Maker of the 4A and 4A Pro phones, strategically avoiding flagship competition
• Apple (1:09) - iPhone 17E mentioned as a $599 competitor
• Google (1:09) - Pixel 10A described as “pretty underwhelming” at $499
• Samsung (7:12) - Mentioned as a larger competitor with better component pricing leverage
• Xiaomi (7:12) - Mentioned as a larger competitor
• Qualcomm (0:38) - Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 in 4A, Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 in 4A Pro
• Asus (10:21) - Referenced for similar 144Hz marketing in past phones

Products & Technologies

• Nothing Phone 4A (0:00) - 349 Euro mid-range phone with Snapdragon 7s Gen 2
• Nothing Phone 4A Pro (0:18) - $499 upper mid-range with aluminum body and glyph matrix
• Nothing OS 4.1 (1:42) - Custom Android 16 skin with Playground widgets
• Pixel 10A (1:09) - Google’s budget phone described as underwhelming
• iPhone 17E (1:09) - Apple’s $599 budget option with single camera
• ChatGPT (6:00) - Custom ChatGPT widgets available in the AI toolkit
• Essential Space (6:12) - Nothing’s focus mode accessed via side button

People

• Carl Pei (6:44) - Nothing CEO who announced the decision to skip flagships this year

Surprising Quotes

“We’re just not gonna do a flagship phone every single year just for the sake of it. Just because every other company has a new flagship every year doesn’t mean we have to.” — Marques Brownlee (quoting Carl Pei), 7:00

“Neither of these Nothing phones has a ton of AI features, which is music to some people’s ears these days.” — Marques Brownlee, 5:50

“Also, the countdown animation for a timer is super intricate, but it’s too bad I’ll never use it because it doesn’t integrate with the built-in clock app on the phone.” — Marques Brownlee, 5:24

“And oh my god, we’re already so far into 2026.” — Marques Brownlee, 2:49

“Also neither of these phones can shoot 4K video from their ultrawides because 4K is 12 megapixels and these ultrawides are both 8-megapixel sensors.” — Marques Brownlee, 11:11

Transcript

Marques Brownlee: 0:00 All right, so this is the new Nothing Phone 4A and 4A Pro. Two of the most compelling new budget phones available right now. So this 4A is 349 Euros, getting released in Europe and a few other markets. And then this 4A Pro is starting at $499 US. And notice there is no Nothing Phone 4, just 4A and 4A Pro.

Marques Brownlee: 0:30 We’ll get to that in a minute. But these are good phones. I happen to think they’re the two best-looking Nothing phones of all time. The 4A, this blue one, is definitely the most competitively priced. It’s running the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 and has triple cameras, a high refresh rate OLED display, a 5000 plus milliamp hour battery… …and I’ll put all the specs up actually here for both phones so we can just get that out the way. You can see them all here.

Marques Brownlee: 0:58 And you’ll see the 4A Pro is a slightly higher-end version of the 4A on paper, but it also has a few unique design features of its own. So in a world where the pretty underwhelming Pixel 10A just came out for 499 bucks and the iPhone 17E just came out for 100 bucks more than that, this is a perfect slot for Nothing to just jump right in and just be the alternative.

Marques Brownlee: 1:21 And this blue one is so nice. It’s got the matte blue sides all the way around, the semi-transparent back with the classic Nothing dotted text and all these textures and shapes seen through the plastic back. It’s nice. And it has the triple cameras up here. So when you see the iPhone 17E with one single camera and the Pixel 10A with dual cameras, this starts looking even better.

Marques Brownlee: 1:42 And then the Nothing software experience has been gradually improving over time. So this is Nothing OS 4.1 on top of Android 16. And I already liked how well they’ve always done with the smoothness and responsiveness, so phones without super high-end chips still feel really nice to use. They’ve also majorly updated the storage to UFS 3.1, so apps will open faster and the animations throughout the OS continue to get refined, so I’d say the snappy factor is super high.

Marques Brownlee: 2:13 But there’s also just straight-up more home screen customization features now too. There’s more control over like how the folders appear on your home screen. And this is also my first time using the Playground, which is the community-driven store on the web where people can make even more insane custom widgets that you can add to your home screen. Like this one, which is literally just an arcade game in a little one-inch by one-inch box. Or this one, which just counts down how much time is left in the day, the week, the month, and the year. And oh my god, we’re already so far into 2026.

Marques Brownlee: 2:54 Anyway, yeah, I like the Nothing software, clearly. It’s got good character. I feel like sometimes I’ll use a Nothing phone for a while and then I’ll move to another phone and I’ll find myself missing some of the Nothing home screen features specifically because no other phone has quite the same set of stuff. It can be a volume indicator for music when you’re playing stuff and flip the phone over, or it can be a progress bar indicator for an upcoming Uber or Google Calendar notification, or a glyph timer as it counts down, and also yes, the red dot blinks as a video recording indicator, which hey, maybe more phones should have, you know?

Marques Brownlee: 3:06 And then the lights on the back, of course. How can we forget the lights on the back of the Nothing phone? For this year’s phone, it’s just a straight-up bar of them. So seven LED dots lined up on the right-hand side with the bottom one being red. So it can do things like…

Marques Brownlee: 3:19 The rest of the hardware though, it’s not super premium, but it’s just fine. For this price, it’s fine. Like the 128 gigs of starting storage, it’s a little crazy on the $600 Pixel 8, but here, makes sense. It’s fine. Uh, it’s a good mix of like plastic and some recycled materials, it’s Gorilla Glass 7i on the front, and uh, it’s IP64 rated. It’s fine.

Marques Brownlee: 3:42 But if you want a little bit more, or if you live in the US where you can’t get this phone, uh, then there’s this one, which is the Nothing Phone 2a Pro. And just as soon as you hold it, you can feel that it’s just a little nicer. Like it’s doing this thing where it’s emulating a lot of the highest end, big ultra flagships, but without actually being one. Like this body is now unibody aluminum. It is also extremely fingerprinty and kind of annoyingly hard to clean for some reason, but you’re holding cold metal every single time, which is awesome.

Marques Brownlee: 4:13 And then the cameras and this new glyph matrix up at the top are in this like clear cutout, which I really like. Still triple cameras but bigger sensors, and with more of an ultra phone looking plateau. And it keeps the red dot, which is fire, I love that. So then the bezels around the display are a little thinner, so in a slightly smaller footprint, you actually get a slightly larger screen. The chipset inside is a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 instead of the 7s Gen 4,

Marques Brownlee: 4:39 and then the glyph interface on the back can tell you even more because it’s this whole pixel dot style display. It’s basically a scaled up, lower resolution but brighter version of what the Nothing Phone 2 had. The whole array that’s fully customizable unless you put entire images basically on the back of the phone here. So like if I miss a Slack notification, I have the phone face down, I have this specific icon show up on the matrix, and then I know I missed Slack.

Marques Brownlee: 5:05 Or if I miss a message from bay, then you get this heart to show up. And there’s this whole set of pre-made icons that you can use for any sort of notifications or contacts, and you can even kind of make your own by using a custom image, but I also kind of wish I could actually just draw something specific on the matrix myself. Maybe that’s a feature for a software update, Carl.

Marques Brownlee: 5:24 Also, the countdown animation for a timer is super intricate, but it’s too bad I’ll never use it because it doesn’t integrate with the built-in clock app on the phone. Either way, I like it. I like that it encourages you to basically just keep your phone face down most of the time and then you can choose if you see the notification you want to engage with to then pick it up and use your phone. But most of the time you can leave it face down. I think that’s nice.

Marques Brownlee: 5:50 Some of the other stuff is kind of gimmicky, but I appreciate that bit of functionality. Now neither of these Nothing phones has a ton of AI features, which is music to some people’s ears these days, but you know, the S24 Ultra we just saw has like a ton of photo editing stuff and playground stuff. Not so much here. They do put all their AI stuff in this intelligence toolkit is what they’re calling it. Cool. But that’s where you can see that it is pretty minimal. There’s an AI wallpaper generator, and there’s some custom ChatGPT widgets.

Marques Brownlee: 6:12 And then there’s the Essential Space that they’ve had for a few years now, which is still accessible by this shortcut button on the side of the phone. So, I have this theory about Nothing as a company, that is basically they just don’t want to make a high-end competitive flagship phone right now. Because they can’t. It’s actually, it’s kind of impossible for them at this moment to make a competitive, super high-end flagship phone. Like the last time we saw them really try a high-end phone was the Nothing Phone 2 last year for $800. And that did not go well.

Marques Brownlee: 6:44 It was a decently interesting phone, but not very competitive for the price. And fans did not love that price tag. So then a few weeks ago, there’s this video on the Nothing YouTube channel where Carl, CEO, just basically says like, we’re just not gonna do a flagship this year. Like he straight up said, we’re not gonna make a new flagship phone every single year just for the sake of it. Just because every other company has a new flagship every year doesn’t mean we have to. And the framing of it, of course, is very clever and thoughtful.

Marques Brownlee: 7:12 You know, they want every upgrade to feel more meaningful, so they’ll wait longer between flagships so they have something to share. Totally valid. But also, they are a relatively small company in the smartphone space, so the order sizes that they’re placing from suppliers is smaller than the Samsungs and Apples and Xiaomis of the world. That means they pay more for the same parts. And that combined with the skyrocketing RAM prices that we all have to deal with now, just means it’s harder to compete. Like the bigger companies, they’re not immune to higher RAM prices, but a lot of them have placed larger orders or had longer lead times.

Marques Brownlee: 7:46 So that they’re kind of locked in for old prices a little bit longer and can stave off the price increase maybe one more year. So Nothing is clearly not gonna do a full-on flagship phone with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and 16 gigs of RAM and a 7,000 milliamp-hour silicon carbon battery. That stuff is all super expensive and harder to get. And they also happen to know that that’s not really the reason why people are buying Nothing phones. So they’re just gonna avoid that super crazy flagship stuff altogether.

Marques Brownlee: 8:16 But they also know that their most savvy fans are intelligent enough that if they made a new flagship but didn’t put the flagship chip in it, they’d probably get called out. So instead, they’re making a mid-range phone and an upper mid-range phone. So that’s the 4a and the 4a Pro. So there is no Nothing Phone 4 with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Now the thing is, the 4a Pro does a lot of stuff that emulates the big flagship, like I said, without going all the way to being one.

Marques Brownlee: 8:49 Like the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 isn’t the highest-end chip, but it’s definitely a really good one. And when combined with their refined animations and the quicker storage, I think honestly without playing a high-end game or… running a benchmark, most people would be hard pressed to tell the difference. It’s shaped like a flagship, it has the camera plateau of a flagship, but then there’s also some things that look kind of flagship on the spec sheet, at least more than the 4A, but that actually don’t feel like really make that much of a difference.

Marques Brownlee: 9:15 Like the peak brightness number, for example, on the 4A Pro is 5,000 nits compared to 4,500 on the 4A, which is again a nice number, but I don’t really see much of a difference holding them side by side. Now the 4A Pro is IP65 rated instead of IP64, which theoretically means it can survive more water pressure than the 4A, but, you know, they can both get splashed fine.

Marques Brownlee: 9:37 The Nothing Phone 4A also doesn’t have wireless charging. The 4A Pro, like the iPhone 17 Pro, gets all this nice new metal unibody construction which feels great in the hand, but unlike the iPhone, they didn’t add a cutout in the back, so it also doesn’t have wireless charging. Both the 4A and 4A Pro have LTPS displays, so meaning they are variable refresh rate from 30 hertz up to their max of 120, but you’ll notice on the spec sheet it says the max of the 4A Pro is actually 144,

Marques Brownlee: 10:10 which it even says in the settings and it definitely sounds like more of a flagship number, but when you turn on the frame rate indicator, you’ll see that it basically never actually hits 144 hertz. You can even force peak refresh rate, it stays at 120. It’s kind of the same situation as those other Asus phones from a few years ago where it’s just a couple supported games where it’ll bump up to 144. Otherwise, you might as well never notice.

Marques Brownlee: 10:33 And then while the triple cameras here of the 4A Pro are meant to be an upgrade from the triple cameras of the 4A, honestly none of them are really that standoutish. It’s nice to have triple cameras, don’t get me wrong, like I said, the 17E, Pixel 10A aren’t doing that, but I don’t think anybody should be buying these phones expecting anything other than perfectly average cameras.

Marques Brownlee: 11:00 The photos I’m getting are serviceable, but often a little HDR-y sometimes and often a little bit noisier than I was expecting. The focal lengths are essentially the same across both phones. It’s an 8-megapixel ultrawide, then a 50-megapixel main, and a 3.5x telephoto. Also, neither of these phones can shoot 4K video from their ultrawides because 4K is 12 megapixels and these ultrawides are both 8-megapixel sensors.

Marques Brownlee: 11:22 The only extra functionality I could find in the Pro phone over the regular 4A was instead of tapping out at 70x zoom, the Pro has the world’s first 140x ultra zoom. Wow. But I mean, why stop there? You might as well be a nice even 150 or 200. But what’s stopping you? It’s just digital crop, just go to 1,000 at that point. I… clearly doesn’t make a huge difference.

Marques Brownlee: 11:44 This 4A Pro is less of a Pro version of the phone and more of a slightly up-badged, up-featured version of the same thing for 150 bucks more for the US market. Still a fine phone, but the 4A is where it’s at. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.