Nothing had a busy March 5th. In one go, the London-based startup announced three products — the Headphone (a), Phone (4a), and Phone (4a) Pro — and the move signals that the company is doubling down on exactly what’s been working for it: accessible pricing, distinctive design, and a software story that’s slowly becoming one of the more interesting ones in Android.

Related /

• Nothing Phone (4a) is here and it’s better than you expected
• Nothing Headphone (a) is here and it has the best battery in the lineup
• Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is here with a 5000-nit display and 140x zoom

Let’s start with the headphones, because in some ways they’re the most telling product of the three.

The Nothing Headphone (a) is priced at £149 / $199 / €159, making it $100 cheaper than the Headphone (1) that launched last year. On paper, that’s a meaningful cut — and first impressions from hands-on time with the hardware suggest that Nothing hasn’t compromised on the things people actually care about. The same 40mm titanium-coated driver from the Headphone (1) shows up here, meaning the warmth and precision that made the original a surprise hit in its price range carry over, at least according to early listening tests. Nothing also managed to bump battery life significantly — the Headphone (a) offers 75 hours with ANC active, and a borderline absurd 135 hours with ANC switched off. The original Headphone (1) tops out at around 35 hours with ANC on and 80 hours without, so this isn’t a minor upgrade — it’s a generational leap in endurance. A five-minute charge giving you five hours back doesn’t hurt either, though Nothing’s own community post pegs that at eight hours in some configurations.

Design-wise, Nothing is going four colours — Yellow, Pink, Black, and White — with the Limited Edition Yellow not hitting shelves until April 6th, presumably to create a little FOMO around launch weekend. The headphones weigh 310g, come with memory foam ear cushions, and carry an IP52 rating, so they can handle some light splashing and dust without complaint. The physical control layout — a Roller, Paddle, and Button integrated directly into the ear cups — is the same tactile setup Nothing introduced with the Headphone (1), which reviewers have generally praised for being intuitive to use without pulling out your phone.​

The new addition is something called Channel Hop, which lets you skip through apps and functions by pressing the Button, and a Camera Shutter mode that turns the same button into a remote trigger for your paired phone. Adaptive ANC arrives with three presets — low, mid, high — and the hybrid setup uses dual feedforward and feedback microphones paired with AI trained on 28 million noise scenarios for call clarity. An eight-band EQ in the Nothing X app, with the ability to create and share custom profiles with the community, rounds out the feature set.​

Where the Headphone (a) takes a hit is in material quality — early reviews note a noticeably cheaper feel in hand compared to the Headphone (1), and passive isolation isn’t as strong. The T3 review put it bluntly: “noticeably cheaper feel” is the main downside, and the fact that Headphone (1) units have gone on sale recently to close the price gap makes the value proposition slightly murkier. Still, for someone coming in fresh without a Nothing headphone, $199 for this spec sheet is a genuinely competitive offer.

Now for the phones.

The Phone (4a) is the more straightforward of the two new handsets. It starts at £349 / ₹31,999 / €349 for the 8+128GB configuration, with an 8+256GB option for ₹34,999 / €389, and a 12+256GB variant at £399 / ₹37,999 / €429. Pre-orders opened March 5th with open sales beginning March 13th, and it comes in black, white, blue, and pink.​

The camera is where Nothing has clearly put its energy. The Phone (4a) gets a 50MP main sensor with OIS, a 50MP 3.5x periscope telephoto also with OIS, an ultra-wide, and a 32MP front camera — a meaningful step up from previous (a) series hardware. The periscope lens enables a zoom range from 0.6x all the way to 70x, and it’s powered by what Nothing is calling TrueLens Engine 4, which brings AI-powered computational photography, including Ultra XDR Photos and Motion Photos. There’s also an AI Photo Eraser, and for the first time, Ultra XDR photos can be shared directly on Instagram, which is a smart and practical detail that the average buyer will actually notice.​

Under the hood, the Phone (4a) runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7s Gen 4, paired with LPDDR4x RAM and UFS 3.1 storage. Nothing claims 147% faster read speeds and 380% faster write speeds compared to UFS 2.2, and the practical result is supposedly snappier app launches and smoother multitasking. The 6.78-inch AMOLED display peaks at 4500 nits in HDR mode and 1600 nits under normal conditions, runs at a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i. Battery is a 5080mAh cell with 50W fast charging — 60% in 30 minutes by Nothing’s numbers.

The Glyph Interface gets a redesign here, too. The new Glyph Bar replaces the vertical strip from previous (a) series phones with 63 mini-LEDs spread across six square light zones, each individually controlled and capable of up to 3500 nits brightness — 40% brighter than the previous Glyph Interface. The design also addresses one of the most common complaints about Glyph: light leakage and yellow edges are apparently eliminated through new diffusion technology. Notifications now trigger progress-based cues for calls, messages, charging, and timers, and users can assign custom sequences to contacts.​

The transparent body is still there, still showing off the battery enclosure and internal components, and the phone carries IP64 protection with submersion support up to 25cm for 20 minutes. It’s not quite the IP68 you’d expect from a flagship, but for this price tier, it’s acceptable.​

The Phone (4a) Pro is the more ambitious product, and also the pricier one. It starts at £499 / ₹39,999 / $499 / €479 for 8+128GB, goes to ₹42,999 for 8+256GB, and £549 / ₹45,999 / $599 / €549 for 12+256GB. Pre-orders open March 13th, with open sales from March 27th in most markets.

The step up from Phone (4a) to Phone (4a) Pro is substantial this time. The chip moves from the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, which Nothing says delivers 27% faster CPU performance, 30% better graphics, and 65% stronger AI capabilities. Memory jumps to flagship LPDDR5X, and the 7th-generation Qualcomm AI Engine brings on-device generative AI performance close to the Snapdragon 8 series. Nothing specifically calls out BGMI at 120Hz and PUBG at 90Hz under heavy gaming loads, which is the kind of real-world benchmark that actually resonates with Indian buyers in particular.​

The camera story on the Pro is where things get interesting. Nothing has fitted it with a Sony main sensor — the spec sheet doesn’t name it, but Sony OIS sensors in this segment tend to punch above their weight — alongside the same 50MP 3.5x periscope telephoto as the standard model, an ultra-wide also sourced from Sony, and a 32MP front camera. The big headline number is 140x zoom, which Nothing calls the longest zoom ever on a Nothing phone and claims is “industry-leading in its class.” TrueLens Engine 4 on the Pro unlocks 4K Ultra XDR video with HDR effects similar to Dolby Vision, and the whole camera system supports professional presets, adjustable settings, and the AI Photo Eraser.​

The design language shifts, too. While the Phone (4a) uses a transparent glass back, the Phone (4a) Pro goes full-metal aluminium — a precision-crafted body with flat surfaces and a profile of 7.95mm, making it the slimmest full-metal Nothing phone to date. It comes in Silver, Black, and Metallic Pink, and cooling is handled by a 5,300mm² vapour chamber system. IP65 water and dust resistance is a step above the standard model’s IP64.​

The display on the Pro is also a notch better: 6.83 inches of AMOLED at 1.5K resolution, 460 PPI, 144Hz adaptive refresh rate, and a peak HDR brightness of 5000 nits — Nothing’s brightest screen yet. A 2160Hz PWM dimming rate is included for eye comfort in low light, and gamers get 2500Hz touch sampling for minimal latency.

Instead of the Phone (4a)’s Glyph Bar, the Pro brings back the Glyph Matrix — 137 mini-LEDs covering a 57% larger area than the previous iteration and running around 3000 nits of peak brightness, about 100% brighter than before. Glyph Toys, including Battery, Timer, Digital Clock, Solar Path, and Glyph Mirror, are all supported, along with Glyph Matrix integration in the always-on display experience. Notably, the Pro doesn’t have a dedicated Glyph Button — the interface is accessible through the software instead.​

Both phones launch with Nothing OS 4.1 out of the box, and the software update is arguably one of the more compelling parts of the whole announcement. The first major NOS 4.1 feature is a customisable lock screen with new relaxation-focused widgets and upgraded Live Notifications across both the display and Glyph Interface. A new Voice-to-Text AI tool that can transcribe and reformat voice into emails, articles, or other tones is built in, and the Essential Key — Nothing’s hardware shortcut button — can now trigger photos, screen recordings, or voice captures that land in Essential Space, the AI-powered personal library.​

For the first time on the (4a) series, Essential Space supports cloud access, meaning your notes and captures sync across phones, desktops, laptops, and watches. Essential Search, Essential Memory, and the Playground-based Essential Apps builder all come along for the ride, extending the AI-driven software ecosystem Nothing has been building across its higher-end devices down to the mid-range. The Essential Apps feature — which lets users build home screen apps via plain language prompts, no coding required — was previously exclusive to the Phone (3) during beta, and its arrival on the (4a) series gives buyers at ₹31,999 access to tools that were only available on phones costing significantly more.

Both phones and the headphones went up for pre-order on March 5th, with a physical event at Nothing’s Soho store in London and its Bengaluru store on March 7th, where fans could try the hardware before open sales begin. That India-specific event detail is worth noting: Nothing has made India a central market rather than an afterthought, and the pricing — especially the ₹31,999 starting point for the Phone (4a) — reflects that clearly.​

The broader question hanging over all three announcements is whether Nothing has found its lane. The Headphone (a) undercuts the Headphone (1) without gutting the feature set, which is exactly what the (a) series has always been meant to do. The Phone (4a) and Phone (4a) Pro are more complex — the periscope camera at this price point is genuinely notable, the software ambitions are real, and the design differentiation is still doing work that most competitors in the segment simply aren’t attempting. Whether the Snapdragon 7-series chips can carry the Pro’s price tag in a market where Snapdragon 8 Elite devices are becoming more accessible is a legitimate concern. But if Nothing can deliver on the camera and software promises, the value proposition holds. That’s always been the bet with this company, and so far, enough buyers have taken it to keep things interesting.