Nothing Phone (4a) marks an attractive new waypoint on the ascent to peak smartphone

Have we reached peak smartphone? Certainly, if you consider the hugely competent mid-range phones that have been released over the past few weeks – the Google Pixel 10a and Apple iPhone 17e, for example – a picture starts to emerge.

There’s a levelling going on between what we need a phone do and what we’re told it can achieve if we raise our aspirations. In short, do we really need flagship costing twice as much as these do-it-all devices that – increasingly – have very few compromises?

There will always be a culture of early adopters in search of the latest and greatest chipset or phone module, the biggest storage and brightest screen. But since the advent of AI, a lot of the physical technical prowess that goes into a phone has been overshadowed by the extent of AI’s integration and involvement. Sharp algorithms, not sleek aluminium finishes, seem to matter more.

If you’re not fully signed up to the idea of a phone as an all-singing, all-dancing AI-enabled device, then perhaps it’s a good thing to step back from the technological arms race at the top of the market and start to look at the state of the mid-range. Those options just got a lot more attractive with today’s release of the Nothing (4a).

The launch event, held at Central St Martins in London, where the brand could make an even bigger song and dance than Apple made out of the MacBook Neo, while also basking in the glow from the adjacent design school, made Nothing seem more youthful.

The brand certainly knows this and continues to leverage its upstart/outsider/challenger status as much as it can (Apple, however, probably wouldn't have Elton John and Victoria Beckham lookalikes stalking through the crowd).

Step aside from the hoopla, and the burgeoning cult of personality around founder Carl Pei, and you appreciate the effort that has gone into making the Nothing name. The company might claim to be ‘driven by rebellious creativity', but a standout design language is only one part of the story: there's a massive behind-the-scenes effort to build a supply chain and the necessary manufacturing and distribution set-ups to support a million-selling company. This has been an unqualified success: Nothing is the fastest-growing independent smartphone company over the past two years.

Still, the majority of the attendees here are mainly interested in how a phone looks and what it can offer that other brands can’t. Content is being created, terabytes of it, amid surroundings that have been dressed up to resemble a vast version of Nothing's self-consciously scattergun London studio, all quasi-industrial metal racking, grey plastic crates and quirky tech vignettes, old and new.

It's this embrace of the best retro style, with its mix of science fiction-esque trappings, nostalgia for the obsolete and the fetishisation of the apparently messy guts and multiple layers of tech aesthetics that ensures Nothing stands out.

There are signs that other makers are taking elements of its meticulously conceived yet apparently ad-hoc stylings to heart and starting to mimic the approach. For the time being, the company's status as a left-field challenger to the tech industry's entrenched economics and aesthetics is still paying dividends.

Is the Nothing Phone (4a) any good?

So is the new phone any good? Of course it is, even by the high standards the industry has currently set itself. It comfortably bests the benchmarks set by the previous Phone (3a) and nudges ever close to the Phone (3), which is where the peak phone issues start to appear: why bother going for the flagship?

With a design language that evolves Nothing’s transparent look, with Pink, White, Black and Blue casings, without stepping too far away from what currently defines the brand, the (3a) is still distinct from the majority of its competitors. On the back there are three cameras, offering a maximum of 3.5x optical zoom (the (3) goes to 6x) and a cut down Glyph interface now known as the Glyph Bar.

The latter isn’t nearly as flexible as the circular Glyph Matrix display but can still show notifications and recording lights and other ways of getting info from your phone without having to pick it up. According to Nothing's research, we check our phones on average 96 times a day, so any ways to manage this addiction are welcome. The new casing is stronger than its predecessor, with IP64 dust and water certification and a large Gorilla Glass 7i screen measuring 6.78 inches.

With the new Nothing OS 4.1, subtle enhancements like a magic eraser function in the photo gallery, joined the more obvious AI-powered suite of ‘Essential’ apps. Pei reckons the smartphone will remain the most important device in the AI era, 'although the intelligence will live across devices', from earbuds to watches. 'Software is going to turn personal,' he predicts, pointing to Nothing's vibe coding-style Essential Apps feature, which allows you to create widgets and apps with basic functionality via simple spoken commands.

To be fair, Nothing's AI application feels a little less intrusive than its rivals, less reliant on slop generation and dubious agentic interventions. There’s a genuine desire to push Nothing as a more culturally- and creative-minded endeavour, creating content and also co-creating (like the Community Editions) products with the incredibly rabid brand followers.

Also introduced at the event was the Headphone (a), a more accessible version of the Headphone (1), and the new (4a) Pro. The latter is an ‘almost flagship’, incorporating the same circular Glyph interface as the (3) but serving as a middle ground between the two.

Both Camera module and Glyph Matrix sit within what Nothing calls the 'window', essentially a reduced-transparency element sitting on a plainer aluminium back. The Pro is also the company’s thinnest phone to date and comes in the same pink as the (4a). Notably, this is explicitly not a replacement for Phone (3), which will remain the flagship device for the rest of the year.

As phones get better and better and pinched wallets and strangled supply chains make annual upgrades ever less practical, settling on an accomplished mid-range phone has never felt less like a compromise. After all, it’s boring and time-consuming changing phones every year. An upgrade is a choice, not a mandate, and with the Phone (4a), Nothing is inspiring loyalty and longevity like never before.

Nothing Phone (4a), available now from £349 (8GB + 256GB) to £399 (12GB and 256GB), available from Nothing.Tech, @Nothing