Nothing Phone 4a Pro review: premium aluminium meets quirky design

Nothing’s latest quirky smartphone is a huge aluminium Android with three cameras and a big LED matrix screen on the back that challenges the notion mid-range phones can’t be just a bit more fun. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. The Phone 4a Pro is a bit of a departure from UK-based Nothing’s previous glass-clad transparent designs. It still has a touch of those elements but only in the camera island at the top, with the rest of the body now solid aluminium – a rare sight in the world of Android phones. It costs £499 (€479/$499/A$949), sitting above the regular Phone 4a at £349 and below the top-of-the-line Phone 3 costing £699. That puts the Phone 4a Pro in direct competition with some very good, if less interestingly designed, rivals such as the Google Pixel 10a. View image in fullscreen The screen is bright, colourful and crisp with a high 144Hz refresh rate that keeps your scrolling smooth. It’s great for watching video on the commute. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian The slim aluminium body feels great, but the 4a Pro is a very big phone with a huge 6.83in OLED screen on the front. Only a handful of phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra or iPhone 17 Pro Max are quite that big, making it a two-handed affair most of the time. The large camera island on the back contains a big, bright circular dot-matrix LED screen, which can display notification icons, the time, timers, volume and charge levels. But it can also be used as a rough selfie screen for the rear camera or to show fun little widgets such as a moon phase tracker or others downloaded from Nothing’s user community. View image in fullscreen The dot-matrix LED screen on the back of the phone can show timers, notifications and other tools. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian Similar to previous iterations of Nothing’s Glyph interface, much of it is a bit gimmicky, but having the time on the back of the phone or seeing icons for certain notifications is surprisingly useful. Specifications Screen: 6.83in 144Hz QHD+ OLED (450ppi) Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 RAM: 8 or 12GB Storage: 128 or 256GB Operating system: Nothing OS 4.1 (Android 16) Camera: 50MP main, 50MP 3.5x tele and 8MP ultrawide, 32MP selfie Connectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.4 and GNSS Water resistance: IP65 (25cm depths for 20 minutes) Dimensions: 163.6 x 76.6 x 7.9mm Weight: 210g Mid-range power with solid battery life View image in fullscreen The battery fully charges in 72 minutes, hitting 58% in 30 minutes, using a 50W or greater USB-C adaptor (not included). Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian The 4a Pro has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chip, which won’t win any raw processing awards but keeps up with daily tasks just fine. It handled games at medium settings but made the phone relatively warm during play. The battery lasts a solid two-plus days between charges with the screen in active use for more than seven hours across a mix of wifi and 5G for general messaging, browsing, watching video and using various apps. Playing games significantly reduces the battery life by about 30% an hour, but the 4a Pro outlasted even the heaviest general use days with a good 20% left in the tank. Most will only need to charge it every other day. Nothing OS 4.1 View image in fullscreen Nothing OS 4.1 offers multiple customisation options, Glyph and AI tools. Composite: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian The 4a Pro runs Nothing OS 4.1, which is one of the slickest and easily customised versions of Android 16. It can be used with standard app icons and widgets or dot-matri style designs that add a bit of retro cool to everyday tasks. If you thought other phones were a bit boring, this is the antidote. It supports live notifications from apps such as Uber or Google Maps on an improved lock screen. Plus it has Google’s Gemini built in with a collection of Nothing’s own AI tools. The Essential Space app introduced last year now syncs to Nothing’s cloud, so up to 2.15GB of your AI-analysed images, text, voice notes and call recordings are safely backed up, though you need a Nothing phone to access them which limits its usefulness. The phone has AI-powered search, which plugs into data from Essential Space. The new Essential Voice is an AI-powered dictation system that cleans up your umms, errs and other errors as you go, and recognises phrases such as “my phone number” to insert your number so you don’t have to look it up each time. It’s a nice idea, similar to Google’s new Rambler tool, but it is a bit slow and requires an internet connection to work. Nothing will only provide three years of Android version updates with a total of six years of security updates, which falls short of the best you can get for this kind of money. Also note that some apps such as Netflix do not support the kind of HDR content playback that makes the best of the screen on the 4a Pro because of certificatio