Nothing, the startup behind distinctive transparent wireless earbuds and the polarizing Phone 3 phone, is swimming downstream to the budget market, and it’s not through its CMF subsidiary. As teased earlier this week, the company has just announced the Phone 3a Lite, a lower-priced Android phone with a 6.77-inch screen that starts at 249 euros (about $290 USD).
If you didn’t like the Phone 3’s oddball camera array, you may not like the Phone 3a Lite. The rear design is toned down, but the triple-lens camera system and all the exposed screws may still trigger your trypophobia (that’s fear of a cluster of holes). At least you’ll get an aluminum frame and an IP54 rating. There’s also an Essential Key that uses AI to surface all the screenshots, notes, and audio recordings you’ve saved in the Essential Space.
Specs-wise, the Phone 3a Lite looks decent on paper. It has a 6.77-inch AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate; the screen resolution is 2,392 x 1,080 and supports 10-bit color and 2,160Hz PWM (pulse width modulation) dimming, which reduces flickering at lower brightness levels.
For the cameras, there are three lenses: a 50-megapixel main camera on the rear, an 8-megapixel ultrawide, and a macro camera with an unspecified resolution. There’s a 16-megapixel selfie camera on the front.
Under the hood, the budget phone is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro chip with an 8-core CPU, 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of storage. And get this—there’s a microSD card slot for storage expansion up to 2TB. Huzzah! What we’ll need to test is how well the phone experience comes together with the Nothing OS 3.5 software experience. Nothing loves to tout fast and smooth performance, and I’m eager to see how far that goes on a phone with cut-back specs.
More concerning is how deep the “bloatware” that’s preinstalled on the Phone 3a Lite goes. 9to5Google reports that there are six preinstalled third-party apps/services, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Meta App Installer, Meta App Manager, and Meta Services. The first three can be uninstalled, but the latter three can only be disabled, not removed entirely from the phone.
While this has drawn consternation from Nothing fans, the practice is not new. Budget and midrange phone makers have been preinstalled third-party apps and services with varying degrees of removability and disabling options for over a decade. This is how the prices of these phones stay low; apps and services pay the brand to preinstall these apps so that the cost of the build of materials (BOM) is sort of subsidized and not passed directly to consumers in the retail price. It’s icky to many, but in regions where budget and midrange phones are more popular, it’s nothing surprising.
Nothing also says the 5,000mAh battery “comfortably lasts almost 2 days with mixed use” and supports 33W fast charging. Funnily enough, the Phone 3a Lite supports 5W reverse wireless charging for juicing up accessories, but not full Qi wireless charging for the phone itself.
Located near the bottom of the phone’s back panel is a “Glyph Light.” This round LED is not the same Glyph lighting first introduced on the Phone 1 and then later scrapped in the latest Phone 3 for the Glyph Matrix screen. It’s more like a return to the LED notification lights on early Android phones with a few new upgrades. Nothing says you can flip the phone over for silent notifications, have the Glyph Light glow for essential contact and app notifications, and flash when counting down for timer-based photos. The Glyph Light can also be customized for light sequences synced to Nothing’s own sounds.
The Phone 3a Lite is available starting today, Oct. 29, in white or black models. An 8GB RAM + 128GB storage model costs €249 in the EU and £249 in the U.K. A version with the same 8GB RAM and 256GB of storage is €279 in the EU and £279 in the U.K. That’s about $290 and $330 USD, respectively, based on the exchange rate from euros; pricing will be slightly higher converted from British pounds.
For us Americans, Nothing says the Phone 3a Lite “will not be available in North America.” Womp, womp.
