2025’s been a pretty busy year for Nothing—the brand has so far launched a ton of new devices including its flagship Nothing Phone 3, its first-ever pair of headphones, and several other new products under its CMF sub-brand as well. This time though, Nothing unveiled a new budget-friendly device with the Nothing Phone 3a Lite, which starts at just £249 here in the United Kingdom. Given its affordable nature though, what can we expect from the phone?
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As you can probably tell from its naming scheme and its price bracket, the phone is meant to compete with the likes of Samsung’s entry-level A-series phones and a number of other budget-friendly devices from Redmi, for example. With that said though, it carries a lot of the same DNA which give Nothing phones their unique identity, such as the transparent rear glass design. Available in black and white, the Phone 3a Lite ditches Nothing’s usually-complex Glyph notification system in lieu of a more modest notification LED.
In front the phone comes with a 6.77-inch AMOLED display, which comes with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 1080×2392 pixel resolution. It gets bright at up to 1300 nits, maxing out with a peak brightness of 3000 nits. Under the hood, the phone is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 7300 Pro chip, which works alongside 8GB of RAM and 256GB of built-in storage. Interestingly, Nothing has decided to equip the phone with a micro SD slot, which means you can add a bit more storage.
For cameras, the Nothing Phone 3a Lite features a triple-camera system which consists of a 50MP main camera, an 8MP ultrawide lens, as well as a 2MP macro sensor, the latter of which is a frequent sight on most affordable Android phones.
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The phone runs on a 5,000mAh battery which can also charge at 33W—it’s not exactly the 120W speeds that we’ve gotten used to with a lot of silicon carbon-powered phones this year, but given its price it’s somewhat understandable. For software, you’re getting Nothing OS 3 with Android 15, and Nothing says that it will provide up to three years of major Android upgrades and six years of security updates.
