- The Nothing Phone 3a Lite is officially launched
- It’s a cheaper alternative to the Nothing Phone 3a
- But it looks slightly worse than another phone the company currently sells for around the same price.
Following leaks and teases, the Nothing Phone 3a Lite has been officially revealed, giving Nothing fans a cheaper alternative to the Nothing Phone 3 and Nothing Phone 3a.
Costing £249 / AU$439 (around $330) for a 128GB model and £279 / AU$489 (around $370) for a 256GB version, but with no current US availability, the Nothing Phone 3a Lite features a 6.77-inch 1080 x 2392 AMOLED display with a 120 refresh rate. Hz, a fairly low-end MediaTek dimension. 7300 Pro chipset and 8 GB of RAM.
It also has a 50 MP main camera, an 8 MP ultra-wide, a 2 MP macro and a 16 MP front camera.
The 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 patches. It also has a microSD card slot, which is increasingly rare in phones – and which you won’t find in the non-Lite version of the Nothing Phone 3a.
Design-wise, you get a phone that largely matches 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 measures 164 x 78 x 8.3 mm and 199 g, it has a glass back and a plastic frame, and its IP54 rating protects it against splashes. As for colors, you can get it in black or white.
A lesser option
Now, in isolation this all sounds good, but in the UK and Australia Nothing still sells the CMF Phone 2 Pro and charges an almost identical price for it, although it has a 50 MP telephoto lens in place of the 2 MP macro of the 3a Lite, and it otherwise has almost identical specs. So it’s a very similar phone but probably slightly better, which makes the Nothing Phone 3a Lite a bit useless.
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 will be discontinued at some point. In that case, 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, as well as a 50 MP telephoto lens in place of the 3a Lite’s 2 MP macro sensor.
The Nothing Phone 3a also has a 50MP front camera and 50W faster charging, with the remaining specs being similar – but unlike the CMF Phone 2 Pro, it costs significantly more than the Nothing Phone 3a Lite.
So for now, we suggest buying the standard 3a if you want the extras it offers, or the CMF Phone 2 Pro if you like the look of the 3a Lite. However, 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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