Nothing Phone (4a) Pro review

Design, build quality, handling

Nothing is all about design experimentation, and that doesn't always have to entail unconventional and flashy looks. For the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, the company seems to have adopted the opposite philosophy - toning things down.

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is relying on the camera island as the design highlight here. The rest of the back is an aluminum unibody, which is quite rare to see these days.

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is available in a trio of color options: Black, Silver and Pink.

As expected from a unibody design, the middle frame is color-matched to the back side as both are made of aluminum.

It should come as no surprise that the Nothing Phone (4a) feels very solid, with practically no flex or hollowness. Nothing says it is 42% more bend-resistant than the Nothing Phone (3a). It has a manufacturer-issued ingress protection rating for up to 20 minutes in fresh water for up to 25 minutes. The more formal ingress protection rating is IP65, which is fine but a bit behind the now ubiquitous IP68.

The other really interesting bit about the back is arguably the Glyph Matrix. It looks a lot like the one on the Nothing Phone (3), but it actually has a lot fewer individual LED pixels - 137 instead of 489, while at the same time also being 57% bigger and twice as bright, with a peak of 3,000 nits.

The final effect is that you get much larger pixels now. There is a distinct charm in seeing big individual "pixels" light up. The LEDs are white, and you can adjust their brightness a bit (four brightness levels). And the 137 pixels are still plenty for some interesting animations and effects.

Glyph Matrix

You can use the Glyph Matrix as a notification "LED" of sorts, be it for calls or other notifications. It can also be used as an indicator for the "flip to silence" feature, a volume indicator and a visual timer, including for the camera timer, which is nifty. There is also the Glyph Progress feature, which offers integration with certain apps to keep track of progress on things like Uber. In a new development, Nothing has now made it possible for any app that uses the standard Android notification progress bar to show up on the Glyph Interface as well.

Glyph Interface

Underneath the Glyph Matrix, there is a red LED that lights up and blinks during video capture.

Circling back to materials for a bit, the camera island on the Phone (4a) Pro is actually covered by plastic, not glass. But, Nothing claims that the material is twice as scratch-resistant as the back of the Nothing Phone (2a), made with nano-level injection molding.

The front of the phone has a Corning Gorilla Glass 7i sheet. Nothing claims that at 8mm (7.95mm to be exact), the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is the thinnest unibody aluminum phone on the current market.

Another lofty claim is that the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro has the smallest carbon footprint out of any Nothing Phone, at just 50.5kg CO2e. A total of 46 of the phone's components use recycled materials, including plastic, steel and aluminum.

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro has Nothing's signature Essential Key. It is now positioned on the left-hand side of the phone, isolated from the other buttons. The main idea behind it is to offer a "richer" and AI-infused screenshotting experience as part of a daily organization tool.

The way Nothing envisions things is for the user to keep track of certain things throughout the day, either by pressing the Essential Key once to capture a screenshot or holding it down to also record a voice memo to go along with the screenshot. Then all of the images and audio are analyzed and grouped into the Essential Space. It's a bit like having a personal assistant to organize things like appointments and tasks for you.

Essential Space and Essential Key

The rest of the controls on the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro are fairly standard. On the right-hand side, you get separate volume buttons with the power key positioned just below them. All of the buttons are well-placed and offer satisfying tactile feedback. Down at the bottom, there's a grille for the main speaker, while the amplified earpiece up front handles the secondary channel. Also along the bottom edge are the SIM tray, USB Type-C port and the primary microphone.

Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

Nothing may be doing its own thing with the back design, but the rest of the phone follows modern trends closely. Up front, there are no visible sensors to speak of, with everything neatly tucked away beneath the display for a clean, uninterrupted look.

That includes the optical under-display fingerprint reader. It is fast and accurate. We have no complaints with it.