Nothing hasn’t called time on transparent tech just yet – but the Phone 4a Pro is the firm’s first to swap glass and polycarbonate for an aluminium unibody. The new mid-range phone also packs a diluted version of the flagship Nothing Phone 3’s glyph matrix LED panel, while stepping up on specs from the more affordable Phone 4a.
The circular Glyph Matrix has fewer lights than Phone 3, but its 137 mini-LEDs are twice as bright and cover a 57% larger area, so you really can’t miss ’em. There might not be a dedicated glyph button, but Nothing says it’ll still play nicely with the widgets and glyph toys created for Phone 3.
The Glyph Matrix sits in a phone-spanning camera bump, with a few of the firm’s trademark transparent graphics sitting alongside the three rear cameras: a 50MP, 1/1.56in Sony LYT700C main snapper, 50MP periscope zoom good for 3.5x magnification, and an 8MP ultrawide. There’s also a 32MP punch-hole selfie cam up front. Main sensor aside, that’s not too dissimilar from the cheaper Phone 4a.
This is the slimmest Nothing Phone yet, with a metal unibody shell that’s only 7.95mm thick. The aluminium finish should resist fingerprint muck and brings IP65 resistance. You have the choice of silver, black or pink colours.
The 6.83in AMOLED screen is as good as it gets from a Phone wearing the Nothing logo: it’s packing a 1.5K resolution, 144Hz adaptive refresh rate and massive 5000 nits peak brightness. The bezels are a scant 1.85m thick and has Gorilla Glass 7i protection, while an optical fingerprint reader lurks underneath.
Power comes from a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, paired with either 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage or 12GB and 256GB. There’s also an India-only version with 8GB/256GB. Memory and storage speeds are both higher, which should give it a modest performance advantage over Phone 4a (which uses a Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip).
The 5080mAh battery and 50W wired charging speeds are then a match for the Phone 4a. Nothing says buyers can expect around 17 hours of typical use.
It’ll arrive running NothingOS 4.1, based on Android 16. Expect a bunch of minimalist widgets, an app drawer almost entirely free from bloat, and the AI-powered Essential Space for keeping track of screenshots, web links and voice notes. Nothing has also committed to three new Android generations and six years of security patches.
The Nothing Phone 4a Pro will be up for pre-order right on the Nothing website from March 13, with a full on-sale date set for March 27. Prices start from $499/£499.
I’m at Nothing’s UK launch event and will have some hands-on impressions of the new model very soon.
