The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is an aggressively mid-range Android phone. So much so that its flashy design, Glyph notification screen, and fun software make it tempting enough for someone to ditch a Samsung or Google flagship in favor of joining the Nothing bandwagon and saving some money in the process.

7/10

SoC

Qualcomm Kryo, 8-core, up to 2.8 GHz

Display

flexible AMOLED

RAM

8GB; 12GB

Storage

128GB; 256GB

Stand out from the crowd with the all-new Glyph Matrix, featuring 137 individually controllable mini-LEDs that act as a secondary display.

Pros & Cons

• Smart, sleek design
• Fun OS and system enhancements (Glyph)
• Improved button placement
• Fine everyday performance

• Only up to 256GB of storage available
• No wireless charging
• 140x zoom less useful

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Price and availability

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro retails for $499 in the US and comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. For $599, you get 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The 4a Pro has an aluminum body and comes in three colors: silver, pink, and black. In person, these colors appear fainter than in pictures online. For example, the pink is very muted and tough to distinguish from silver.

The look and feel of the Phone 4a Pro

Credit: Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

Nothing’s Phone 3 may still be its flagship device in 2026, but at first glance, I much prefer the look of the Phone 4a Pro. Maybe it’s because it matches the feel of Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro, which also has a big camera plateau. Or maybe it’s because the transparent parts get pushed to the top so that the phone can use an aluminum backing. It looks modern.

Whatever the reason, I think the Phone 4a Pro is one of the company’s best-looking phones to date. It’s both fun and sophisticated all at once. Everyone will have their own opinion on the look, but I think it just feels better to hold, too.

This device is heavier than the Phone 3, but not enough to worry about the weight. Interestingly, the phone comes with a clear case in the box. It’s fine enough, and a nice gesture, but after a few days, I ditched it in order to use it without it. Again, it feels solid and durable—a throwback to when you didn’t feel like you needed a case.

A mid-range phone has its drawbacks

Credit: Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

For its $499 starting price, the Nothing Phone 4a Pro is an attractive device. Not just its looks, but its specs are better than some of the other phones this would be directly competing against. It bests Google’s Pixel 10a in plenty of ways.

It has a 6.83-inch AMOLED screen with an adaptive 144 Hz refresh rate, a Qualcomm Kryo 8-core (up to 2.8 GHz) processor, 5,000 nits of peak brightness, an option for 12GB of RAM, and up to 50W for wired charging. The problem with the 4a Pro is not necessarily the raw specs that it has, but some that it doesn’t.

For example, its all-aluminum frame prevents it from having wireless Qi charging. That’s a minor difference on paper, but potentially a major consideration for normal, everyday use. The other thing I’m having a hard time getting over is the amount of storage.

It comes in 128GB or 256GB configurations. Is that really enough for most people? For the past few years, I’ve gone very easy on taking videos, and so 256GB has been sufficient. My wife, however, does not go easy on taking photos and videos. She needed a 512GB phone in 2025. I’ve also begun taking more videos recently, and my next phone will have more storage than 256GB.

These things are disappointments and will legitimately limit who can buy this phone, but it’s hard to be mad about the 4a Pro using average specs and cutting a few features to keep the costs down. The trade-offs are to be expected. But if you’re outside the US, you may want to look at the $350 Phone 4a. It lines up closer to this 4a Pro than you might expect. If you’re going to have trade-offs, then you might as well get some hefty money savings too.

Performance of daily and general use

One of the major differentiators of Nothing phones is its software. For people new to the phones, it runs Android, but a highly customized version. There are different wallpapers, fonts, apps, and all kinds of other details. Most recently, this includes Nothing’s Intelligent Toolkit, which is full of AI apps. That includes Wallpaper Studio for making your own art, an Essential News Widget for automated text-to-speech, and ChatGPT integration.

These are generally useful if you’re already a ChatGPT user, but they do require downloading the app first. The Essential Space is a place to collect screenshots, voice notes, and other reminders. There’s a dedicated button for it. This type of digital note-taking isn’t how I work, but I like how it works and the idea of it.

The best decision that Nothing made with the Phone 4a Pro—and 4a—was moving the power, volume, and Essential Buttons around. Now, the volume and power buttons are on the right, and the Essential Button is on the left. This is a huge upgrade in daily use over last year’s models.

One of the most curious thing about recent Nothing phones are the back lights and screens. The Phone 4a Pro’s circular Glyph display is bigger than the Phone 3’s, but less dense, so it has fewer pixels. That means that icons and words shown on screen can’t be as well defined. I think it still works, but just barely.

After some time with it, I found the clock, or time, when flipped over, and custom notifications to be highlights of this Glyph screen. I could get by without either of those, but they’re delightful. You can drill down and customize the Glyph, but that didn’t appeal to me after a little time. I found I mostly just liked it as a way to see the time. I’m sure this is how most people in the market for a mid-range phone will treat it, too.

Nothing advertises “all-day” battery life with a 5,080mAh battery under the hood. While my initial usage has been erratic, I’ve seen battery life at least as good as I was expecting, if not better. I’ve stressed it by taking and editing videos on the phone. I’ve kept the screen on high brightness and used it for extended durations, doing this with seemingly normal battery life reductions.

On some of my off days, testing other devices, I was able to leave the phone on, standing by with the glyph screen showing constantly for several days in a row. When I came back to it, the battery was only half depleted. These aren’t scientific tests, but compared to how some of the other phones I’ve used for similar tasks, the battery life feels very solid on the Phone 4a Pro.

Zooming in on the camera

Part of the aesthetic that makes up the 4a Pro’s unique design is the three-lens camera system. It has a 50MP Sony sensor with optical image stabilization, a 50MP telephoto lens with 3.5x optical zoom and 140x digital zoom, and an 8MP ultra-wide lens. On the whole, I found the camera system to be very solid. I don’t think it compares to the high-end iPhone 17 Pro, but that’s expected.

The 140x digital ultra zoom is interesting, but mostly a gimmick. It’s really hard to use it handheld and steady it on an object. That makes it less than ideal. But the actual picture you get from it is mostly pointless as well. The 70x digital zoom preset level could produce pictures that were worth using for reference, but still nothing you would want to display on a digital frame or print out.

Here are a few images from the main camera at 1x, unedited.

Here’s an example of all the preset zoom levels, 0.6, 1x, 2x, 3.5x, 7x, and 140x in order, unedited.

Here’s a comparison between the Nothing 4a Pro and iPhone 17 Pro.

Should you buy the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro?

Credit: Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

In some ways, the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is a solid device that can meet the needs of casual users, doing so in style. The problem is that the Pro moniker implies this is a phone for enthusiasts. It’s a tempting device for gadget lovers, and yet, it’s not really made for them in most ways.

Even with the upgrade to 12GB of RAM and 256GB, the storage might be tight. I missed wireless charging. There were times I experienced some sluggishness, like editing videos. Still, despite some of those concerns, I was mostly happy with the overall experience for the general-purpose stuff. For casual users, this is a great product.

7/10

SoC

Qualcomm Kryo, 8-core, up to 2.8 GHz

Display

flexible AMOLED

RAM

8GB; 12GB

Storage

128GB; 256GB