Full metal 🤘
In the same usual pattern, Nothing has been teasing us in the lead up to their announcement of several new products, until finally we’ve been able to see what they’ve been cooking up. I was beginning to think I could predict what Nothing would give us, the Phone (4a), an incremental upgrade from Phone (3a) with maybe a slight change in design. Headphone (a), similar to Ear(a) a slightly playful version of Headphone (1). And then Phone (4a) Pro, again I expected an incremental jump from its predecessor but oh was I wrong.
Spec wise sure, the Phone (4a) Pro could be argued as a bump in specs with the Snapdragon 7 Gen4, an upgrade from the 7s Gen 3 or its exciting new 140x ultra zoom camera, if you’re into that kind of thing… But for me at least these spec bumps aren’t what is exciting. It’s the new all metal aluminium design. This new design allows for the camera module to really shine and become a centre piece of the phone. Plus the metal body will bring its own advantages.
Being all metal in design will improve the performance of the phone acting as a way to absorb heat for those long gaming sessions. But the most obvious one is durability, how many of you have dropped your phone only to have the glass front or back shatter? I know it’s happened to me on more than one occasion but with an all metal body the worst you’ll get is a chip or a dent. The elephant in the room however is that with an all metal body that does make wireless charging unfortunately impossible, sorry wireless charging fans. For me personally I don’t see this as an issue as you get a more premium feeling design. Wired charging is often much more efficient anyway plus for the price point it’s acceptable to miss out. The iPhone 17 Pro has recently introduced an all aluminum design and was able to overcome this by adding a glass cut out in the back of the phone. I'll let you be the judge on how that looks aesthetically but for me I think the Phone (4a) Pro takes the crown in the aesthetics department.
The all metal body gives the camera module its moment to shine. In previous Nothing Phones the camera module often has a very interesting design, alongside the rest of the phone. By having a simple metal body it really lets the camera module stick out. The module itself has 3 cameras: a main 50MP shooter, a 50MP periscope camera and an ultra wide camera (Nothing does not mention the MP count for this camera). Nothing seems pretty proud of their periscope camera with its 140x zoom, of which only 3.5x is optical by the way. Personally I think this feature might be a bit of a gimmick as we’ve seen on other phones, looking at you Samsung. But the camera module has some other genuinely valuable features, like the recording light. I think every phone should have a recording light as it’s a clear indicator to people around you that by the way this phone is recording video. And I have to talk about the glyph matrix, we’ve seen this on their flagship phone, Phone (3). It’s returned for this phone and is packed with useful features such as timers, notifications and even some mini games. Letting you have your phone face down to avoid other distractions.
Overall I’m a big fan of this phone and I think Nothing is as usual killing it in the design department. I haven’t touched on their software but this phone will run Nothing’s latest Nothing OS 4.1, which is a lightly skinned version of Android featuring some Nothing design elements. The design of the phone reminds me heavily of the Headphone (1) design, a product I use everyday which features aluminium heavily in its design. The same is true of the latest version of the Nothing Ear (3) which features an aluminum case for the buds.
It leaves me quite excited to see what the Phone (4) will look like and if this new metal based design style is what we’re going to see from Nothing for the next little while. For anyone looking for a phone that stands out from the crowd I’d highly recommend considering looking at what Nothing has been building.
