- Nothing Phone 3a Lite is officially launched
- This is a cheaper alternative to the Nothing Phone 3a
- But it seems a little worse than another phone the company currently sells for around the same price
After leaks and teases, the Nothing Phone 3a Lite has now been officially revealed, giving Nothing fans a cheaper alternative to both the Nothing Phone 3 and Nothing Phone 3a.
Priced at £249 / AU$439 (about $330) for a 128GB model and £279 / AU$489 (about $370) for a 256GB version, but with no current availability in the US, the Nothing Phone 3a Lite sports a 6.77-inch 1080 x 200 AMOLED display with a ref. fairly low-end MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro chipset and 8GB of RAM.
It also has a 50MP main camera, an 8MP ultra-wide camera, a 2MP macro and a 16MP front-facing camera.
Battery capacity is 5,000mAh and charges at 33W, there’s an under-display fingerprint sensor, and it runs Android 15, with the promise of three years of Android version upgrades and six years of security fixes. It also has a microSD card slot, which is increasingly a rarity in phones – and not something you’ll find in the non-Lite version of the Nothing Phone 3a.
In terms of design, you get a phone that largely follows the design language of other Nothing handsets, but with a much more limited Glyph lighting system than most, as there’s only a small light on the back.
The Nothing Phone 3a Lite comes in at 164 x 78 x 8.3mm and 199g, it has a glass back and a plastic frame, and its IP54 rating protects it from splashes. As for colors, you can get it in black or white.
A smaller option
Now, in isolation, that all sounds fine, but in both the UK and Australia, Nothing still sells the CMF Phone 2 Pro and charges an almost identical price for this, despite having a 50MP telephoto camera instead of the 3a Lite’s 2MP macro, and otherwise having almost identical specs. So it’s a very similar but probably slightly better phone, which makes the Nothing Phone 3a Lite a bit pointless.
However, Nothing has announced plans to spin off its CMF sub-brand, so it’s possible that the CMF Phone 2 Pro won’t be sold directly by the company for much longer, and it’s also possible that it could be discontinued at some point. If so, the Nothing Phone 3a Lite might then start to make more sense, but for now we don’t see much reason not to buy the CMF alternative instead.
As for how the Nothing Phone 3a Lite compares to the standard Nothing Phone 3a, you get a more powerful Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset in the 3a, along with a 50MP telephoto camera instead of the 3a Lite’s 2MP macro sensor.
The Nothing Phone 3a also has a 50MP front-facing camera and faster 50W charging, with the rest of the specs similar – but unlike the CMF Phone 2 Pro, this costs significantly more than the Nothing Phone 3a Lite.
So for now, we’d suggest buying the standard 3a if you want the extras it offers, or the CMF Phone 2 Pro if you otherwise like the look of the 3a Lite. Although it might be worth waiting for our full Nothing Phone 3a Lite review to see if it’s more than the sum of its parts.
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