why i regret buying the Nothing Phone 3a - Very disappointing

Hello, welcome back to a new video. So

I've recently bought this brand new

Nothing Phone 3a, and I do really like the

design, but apart from that, there's not

much else to like about this phone. And I

think I kind of regret buying it, and I'm

leaning towards the refund side of things,

mainly because I kind of don't see the

point of this phone. So the whole point of

this phone is it's supposed to be a budget

phone And it is a budget phone, it's very

cheap. It's only about £360,

I think, something like that. And as you

can expect for a budget phone, the specs

are not that impressive. So for the

processor, you've got Snapdragon 7s Gen 3,

so not even Snapdragon 8. And compared to

older phones such as the phone I'm filming

this video on right now, which is an

iPhone 12 Mini, um, the specs are just not

quite up to standard. So I did some

benchmark tests earlier on And I got a

GPU score of 3307 on the Nothing Phone 3a,

and I got a GPU score of 16,000 on the

iPhone 12 Mini. And I got a single-core

score of 1160 on the Nothing Phone. I got

a single-core score of 1874 on the iPhone

12 Mini, and multi-core got 3256 versus

3898. So the iPhone 12 Mini, which is a

5-year-old phone, has better specs and has

better benchmark results than a 2025

Nothing Phone 3A phone. So it's, um, it's

a little bit shocking that phones 5 years

old outperform the Nothing Phone 3A. So

it's a budget phone, what do you expect?

Well, I'm expecting it to have better

performance than a 5-year-old phone. So

the whole point is if you want a cheap

phone, you buy the Nothing Phone 3A, but

Um, the whole idea of that gets defeated

because of one simple thing. Uh, why don't

you just get a flagship phone from a

couple years ago and get it refurbished?

Because you can get, for example, an S23

Plus for about £300,

I think, or an S22 for about £200

refurbished, and those have better chips.

They've got the Snapdragon 8. They got—

they had flagship performance back in

their day. And they still outperform this.

So let me show you. So yeah, look at this.

You can get S22 Plus with,

um, I think it has a Snapdragon 8, and it

only costs about £200 refurbished.

£200, that's £160 cheaper than the Nothing

Phone. And then if you look at these, you

can get the S23 Plus, which is newer than

S22, for only £337. And that's cheaper

than a Nothing Phone, and that's not even

refurbished. See, look, for refurbished

you get it for £296, and you get, um,

the S23 Plus 5G, which is still

a pretty good phone. I mean, it's 2

generations old because you've got S25s

now, but S23 only came out 2 years ago,

and it destroys the Nothing Phone 3A in

performance. It's got way better

performing performing CPU and GPU, and the

camera system is going to be flagship

grade. Now the camera system on the

Nothing Phone 3a is okay, and we'll do a

camera test in a minute. But yeah, I just—

I'm, I'm finding it hard to see the point

of the Nothing Phone because it's supposed

to be like a budget phone, isn't it? And

the specs aren't supposed to be amazing,

but the price £360 is a good price,

but still, I just, I don't know why you

would get this instead of just getting an

older flagship from a couple years ago,

or even 4 or 5 years ago. You can get a

flagship that's only going to be about

£200, £150. I mean, this iPhone 12 Mini

that I'm shooting the video on, that you

can probably get that for about £150 now,

and it actually does have better specs

than the Nothing Phone 3a, and it

outperforms it on Geekbench There's

certain things about the phone I don't

like, like the camera bump is sloped. You

see the way it's sloped? So what I do

sometimes is I put my phone on

things, like I've been putting it on top

of my cup like that, like this.

So it's kind of balanced like that, but

it's actually fallen off of the cup a few

times and I've nearly broken it already

since getting it a couple days ago because

the way the camera bump is sloped it kind

of makes the phone slide off things, and

then it ends up just becoming very

top-heavy, and then it just slides off

things. The phone is also very slippery.

It feels very slip— I don't know why. And

also this essential button thing on the

side is really annoying, so you keep

accidentally pressing it, especially if

you've got like a car phone holder where

you mount it, and the way the car phone

mount grips on the phone, it keeps

pressing the buttons on the side because

they put the buttons quite low down

because it's a big phone. Look how big

this phone is, it's like 6.7 inches. So

they put the buttons lower down so you can

access them more easily, which is good,

but when you put it in a holder, they get

pressed. And you press this, it will take

a screenshot, and you can add a note or

voice recording. So you can take

screenshots. It's good to have a

screenshot button, by the way, no problem

with that. The problem is It's a rubbish

screenshot. You can't do anything to the

screenshot. You can't edit it, you can't

crop it, you can't draw on it. All you can

do is add a note, like a text note,

and then save it, and then it'll go into

your Essentials folder. That is a rubbish

screenshot. If you just do a normal

screenshot by doing power button and

volume down like that, um, you can

now crop it, you can resize it.

You can even draw on it like that.

When I screenshot stuff, a lot of the

times I want to edit the screenshot

without having to go into a photo editor

and do it like that and do that. Why can't

the screenshot button actually take a

proper screenshot like that and not this

half-baked screenshot? I don't know why

this screenshot is rubbish. Look, you

can't do anything to it. It just

highlights it in yellow. And then if you

hold it down, Um, nothing happens.

Yeah, it will start recording a voice

memo. So you can record an easy

voice memo by holding it down. So, uh,

first of all, I never do voice memos. I

don't see the point of doing a voice memo.

I never feel the need to do a voice memo,

and I would never use that screenshot

button over the normal screenshot because

it just doesn't have the cropping or the

drawing features on it. So yeah, this

button is annoying. Also, you can't map

the button to other functions because

nothing really wants you to use the

essential. Yeah, I saw the video. He said,

um, the reason why we won't let people map

the button to other functions is because

we really want to give the essential

function a chance and let people, or make

people, use it. I'm not going to use the

essential thing. I think it's rubbish and

pointless, and it'll be much better if I

could remap that button to something else.

You can remap the power button to

double-click and open an app, so I've got

it set to torch, which is pretty good.

Also, the Glyph system, I feel really

pointless. Like, you're supposed to put it

down on the surface and then it glyphs up.

So the idea is you're not staring at your

phone screen all the time, and then if you

do get notifications, you can tell because

you'll get the glyphs. Um, I don't really

see myself ever using the Glyph system.

It seems— I mean, it's kind of cool, the

lights, but I don't really see any reason

I'm going to use it. So the cameras seem

fine. You get a 1x, a 2x zoom

optical for the video, and a wide angle.

Uh, you don't get a beauty filter, so if

you want to do selfie shots— so if you

want to film your face and you don't have

the best skin, this phone is going to make

your skin look pretty bad. There's no

built-in skin filter like Samsung has,

which is kind of annoying because Um,

yeah, I really like the way I look on the

Samsung cameras, but I just, I don't

really like the way I look on this camera.

I mean, it's detailed and everything, but

sometimes you want less detail, not more

details. So yeah, you got a wide angle and

then photo mode. Uh, you get a 4x zoom on

photo mode, which is nice, but where's the

4x zoom on the camera mode? I mean, the

video mode. Look, 4x zoom on the

photo mode, it's quite nice. 2x and then

4x. I don't know if that's digital,

it might be digital, but yeah, no 4x on

the video mode, just get a 2x. Also, even

though the battery is really big, 5,000

milliamps, it doesn't seem to last very

long. It's like, okay, you've got a big

battery, but the phone's optimization

doesn't do a very good job at optimizing

the battery length, and I find myself

having to charge it multiple times a day

even though I'm not really using that

much. Like, I'm already at 42% and it's

only 3 PM. And okay, I did a bit of

gaming, did a bit of benchmarking, um,

but I feel like for a 5,000 milliamp

battery, it shouldn't be draining this

quickly. I don't think Nothing's battery

optimization software is as good as

Samsung or iPhone, although I do really

appreciate the 50-watt fast charging. I

can charge this from— I think I charged it

the other day from about 20 to 70%, and it

only took about 15 minutes. Which is

pretty damn quick to top this up. Also,

no wireless charging, no MagSafe, so if

you've got a magnetic phone car mount

holder thing, you're gonna have to get a

case for it. And no wireless charging, a

little bit annoying if you've got a

wireless charging MagSafe mount in your

car, which I do. Yeah, so I really wanted

to like this phone. I really do like the

design. The white design looks amazing. I

do like this transparent kind of look.

And I do like the camera bump being

horizontal like that, so you get more

stability when you place it on surfaces,

although it does seem to slide off things

because it's sloped. Also, I really like

how you have a dual SIM card slot, so I

got 2 SIM cards in there, which is really

useful. I don't really like the Nothing

Launcher icon— icons, app icons, like

these pixel things. Um, it's not really my

kind of aesthetic. I prefer to have the

default app icons like that. I do like

how you can enlarge an app like that so

it's easier to find and press when you're

outside. And the brightness of the screen

is pretty good, 3,000 nits I think. Yeah,

the screen is really bright, it's really

nice, especially when it's bright outside.

So 3,000 nits, pretty good. But I don't

know, um, it's just when you've got older

phones like old flagships like the S23

Plus, S22, for only a couple hundred

pounds, which is cheaper than this phone.

I don't see— and they have better

performance as well and better camera

setups because they were flagships back in

the day, and this is not a flagship. This

is a mid-range, mid-spec budget phone. So

yeah, I'm gonna have to give this phone a

6.2 out of 10. It's pretty neat. I think

they could have, or they should have, put

a better processor. A Snapdragon 7S is

just not going to cut it in 2025.

2025, come on, Give us Snapdragon 8 and

keep the same price, although they

probably can't because it's probably

expensive to get better processors. Um,

okay, I'll just end the video with the

camera test, the video test, and then

bye-bye. Okay, so I'm doing a

video test with the Nothing Phone 3a using

the built-in mics, built-in stabilization.

I'm just holding it with my hand and not

using anything else. So this is what the

stabilization is like when I walk up and

down. And it might be a bit echoey in my

conservatory, so I'll go back into the

living room. So I'm back in the living

room now, might be a bit less echoey, and

I'm just walking casually, doing my

laundry as well, walking casually

around my house,

see what the stabilization's like. And

then we've got a ONE X camera, which is

this one. So this is the ONE X camera. It

might be more stable, I don't know. I'm

doing my laundry by the way, if you want

to see my laundry it's out there. So here

we've got the 1x camera, and now

we're outside, and this is the 2x camera.

So that's the 2x optical zoom, and we've

got up to an 8x digital zoom,

which doesn't look great. Very grainy,

very grainy. 2x,

no 4x or 5x. So yeah,

this is what it looks like.

My laundry is falling over

everywhere. I need to get another laundry

rack so I can do more laundry at the same

time. Yeah, I mean,

it's probably fine.

It's probably fine, I guess, if you just

want a simple camera, nothing too special.

Zoom,

zoom. Yeah, so that is the Nothing Phone

camera tests.