Nothing Phone 3a performance and speed tests - very disappointing

Hello, welcome back to a new video. So

today I'm going to be doing some

performance testing on the Nothing Phone

3a and also comparing it to the phone that

I'm filming on right now, which is iPhone

12 Mini, which is my old phone. So there's

a 5-year difference between these 2

phones. iPhone 12 Mini came out in 2020,

this phone came out a couple weeks ago

this month in 2025. And, um, yeah, we're

gonna see. So first of all Um, this

processor is not the best, to be honest.

That's why this phone is so damn cheap.

It's only £360, so don't expect an

A18 Bionic Apple chipset. It's got a

Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, which is,

um, it's okay, but to be honest, older

phones like the S22 and the S23 Plus have

faster chips. I think they've got

Snapdragon 8s. So this is the Snapdragon 7

series. It's got an ARMv8 CPU

with 4 cores at 1.8 GHz, 3 cores at

2.4 GHz, and 1 core at 2.5 GHz. We're

going to do a CPU benchmark. Let's go. So

we're gathering the computing information,

file compression. So this could take a

while. I'm not sure how long it's going to

take. I guess I'll pause the video. Oh

wait, I forgot how we're going to measure

this. So the time is— it says 12:41 and

we've done 6% so far. 9%. So I guess when

it's finished we'll see what time it is.

Probably be like 12:45. Okay, so we

finished. I think finished a minute ago,

I just didn't notice. It's now 12:48, so I

think it took about 6 minutes. But anyway,

I don't think it matters how quickly it

finishes. So we've got the results in. We

got a 116 single-core score,

a 3256 multi-core score.

Uh, other apps— I mean, what are the

stats? We've got the Volcano motherboard.

What's that? Hmm,

7.28 gigabytes of RAM. That's weird,

I thought I had 16 gigabytes of RAM. This

is memory information. I don't know if

that's RAM or not. And then for

the— oh, it compares

it to other devices. So my single-core

comparison is 1160. Compared to other

devices, it's like half the speed. I mean,

it's not great, is it? Like, the S24 Ultra

has 2136, but that phone's over £1,000,

so that's triple the price of this phone.

So obviously, um, S23 Plus is still

double the speed.

We are slower than the S21 Ultra,

so even an S21 Samsung would be faster

than this, and that came out— oh, when did

that come out? Like 6 years? No, probably

like 4 years ago, 3, 4 years ago.

Um, even the S21 FE is slightly faster,

but we are faster than the Xiaomi Poco the

Samsung Galaxy A54, and the Samsung Galaxy

S20. So I think the Nothing Phone 3a is

faster than the S20 series but slower than

the S21 series. So you could probably get

a refurbished Samsung S21 for cheaper than

this phone and it will have a faster

processor. So for multi-core,

we've got 3256. So again, we are half the

speed of S24. S24 Plus has double the

speed. S22 has

around— so we've got around the same speed

as the S21. So we're like in between S21,

S22. So in terms of speed,

yeah, we're kind of sitting in between the

S21 and S22 generation of Samsung phones,

which I think came out like 3 or 4 years

ago. So the speed of this CPU is not

great. The reason why this phone's so

cheap is because it's using such a slow

old CPU, I guess. If you have a faster

CPU, then— I mean, the S24 series is like

£800 to £1,000, so you're going to be

spending double, at least triple, uh,

than what you're spending on this phone.

So let's go to, um, GPU test and

see how fast GPU is and run the GPU

tests. Okay, so the GPU

benchmark results are in. We got a 3307

GPU score.

Which is pretty good,

or maybe not. Oh my God, look at this.

Jesus Christ, this GPU sucks. So we've got

the S24 Plus with a 15,000 GPU

score. We've got S24 with a 14,000.

The S24 Ultra with a 14,000

score. The Z Fold 5 with a 9,170

score. The S23 Plus with an 8,800 score.

Where are the iPhones, by the way?

There's no iPhones on this comparison

list. So we only got 3,307.

That's pretty poor. Look, even the Pixel 7

is better. God, even the Samsung Galaxy

A54, which is a budget phone, is basically

the same, almost. So we're better than

these last 3 phones. Which are probably

like 5 years old. We're slower than

basically everything. Oh God, look at the

S24 Ultra though, it's just blowing. Now

the S24 Plus,

15,000. I don't know how good this phone

is going to be for gaming. I'm going to do

some gaming, see if it's any good. But

look at these benchmark scores. I mean,

if you just need a phone, basically the

reason why I got this phone is because my

other phone broke, which was the S10 Plus,

which is even older. And I just need an

Android phone for work. I don't do

anything on my phone that's demanding like

gaming. I got a gaming laptop for gaming.

I don't really need a very good camera. I

think the cameras on it are fine. So the

reason why I got this phone is not because

I want the latest fastest phone ever. It

is fast if you do basic things, which is

what I do. I don't really do anything that

complicated on it. So that's the reason

why this phone's gonna look like it sucks.

When you do these benchmark tests. So

finally, I'm going to use the camera on

the Nothing Phone 3a to record this phone,

which is the iPhone 12 Mini, and I'm going

to be shocked if the iPhone 12 Mini does

better than these. So let me get a

notepaper. Right, so basically I'm just

going to write down what scores we got.

So for the GPU, we got

a 3307, and for the

CPU. Oh my God, I forgot what the CPU

result was. Can I still see it?

Oh damn it, maybe there's history. CPU,

we got a 1160 for

the CPU single and

multi-core.

Uh, for single-core, we got a 1160. For

the multi-core, we got a 3256, and for the

GPU, we've got 3307. So we're going to do

the tests on the iPhone 12 Mini and see if

it can beat these scores, which would be

fun if it did. Okay, so I'm on the Nothing

Phone 3A camera, and we're going to see if

these mics are any good. I don't know if

it's any good or not. And we've got the

Apple A14 Bionic chip, which is a 2.99 GHz

chip. I'm gonna do a CPU benchmark test,

run one of those, and then we can go and

compare it to the single core of the

Nothing Phone. So come back later. Oh my

God, I can't believe this!

My 5-year-old iPhone 12 Mini has

a better single-core score and multi-core

score Then my brand new Nothing phone.

That is actually kind of crazy.

That's insane. iPhone 12

Mini has an 1874

and a 3898 score.

Single, multi. That's actually crazy.

I can't believe that. Although when you

think about it, This phone, it cost £700

or £800 when I bought it back in 2020. So

this phone is still nearly triple

than the Nothing Phone. That is just kind

of shocking that— this is kind of shocking

that the A14 chip from 5 years ago

absolutely destroys the chip that's in the

Nothing Phone. So that's actually kind of

wild. I feel like you could I mean, you

can get an iPhone 12 Plus and that would

just be a couple hundred pounds and it's

probably going to be better than a Nothing

phone. So in comparison to the other ones,

iPhone 16 Pro Max has 8,400

multi-core score and a single-core,

the iPhone 16 Pro has a 3,400 one.

So the iPhone 12 Mini is no slouch even

though it's a 5-year-old phone. So why

don't I just use the iPhone 12 Mini as my

main phone instead of buying the Nothing

Phone 3a? It's because, uh, the battery

life is terrible on the iPhone 12 Mini

now. I know you could probably just

replace the battery, but I can't be

bothered. And also there's certain things

that I need that are only available on

Android, and I also need 2 phones because

just having one phone is too much of a

risk. For example, if you're out on the

road and you're working and somehow you

break or lose your main phone What are you

gonna do? You need a backup phone, don't

you? So you need 2 phones, and I feel like

you definitely need an Android and an iOS

at some point. Okay, so I'm gonna do the

GPU test next. Run GPU.

So I need a GPU test. So that was the CPU.

Next we'll do the GPU. I'm guessing it's

gonna be It's

probably gonna be like 5,000, isn't it?

I can't believe this. I thought for sure

the Nothing Phone 3A would be at least

better than a 5-year-old iPhone 12. Jesus

Christ. Oh my God,

what? We got a 16,500

GPU score! That's insane.

That, that can't be right.

How do I have 16,000?

A metal score? What does that mean?

The iPhone 16 Pro has a 32,000 score.

I mean, even the Samsungs, they had like a

15,000. I thought that was good. The 16—

iPhone 16s have 27,000. 15 But

even the, the 11s and the 12s have like

13,000. You'd have to go all the way back

down to like iPhone 7 to get down to the

GPU score of the Nothing Phone. So yeah,

quite disappointing that the Nothing Phone

gets destroyed in every single benchmark

test against the iPhone 12 Mini, which is

a 5-year-old phone. I know the Nothing

Phone is supposed to be a budget phone But

it is hard to justify buying it when you

could buy a refurbished 2 or 3-year-old,

4-year-old phone and it will be cheaper

and have better performance. I really

struggle to see why would you

get the Nothing Phone. Maybe I'm missing