Nothing has launched its Phone 4a Pro at £499, directly pricing itself against Google's Pixel 10a. The move is bold: Nothing has just launched its new Phone (4a) and Phone (4a) Pro with a slightly higher starting price, but some major upgrades across the board, according to 9to5Google. For the midrange smartphone market, this represents Nothing's most serious assault on Google's affordable offering yet.
The hardware story is compelling. The company says it's the thinnest full-metal phone on the market, measuring in at 7.95mm, and it looks notably different from the prior A-series phones. Where Nothing's previous midrange phones favoured bold transparency and playful design flourishes, the 4a Pro adopts an aluminium unibody approach that feels more premium and restrained. It features an aluminum unibody while retaining Nothing's retro-clear hardware design touches, with a clear, redesigned camera unit; the aggressively protruding circular camera unit of the Phone 3a Pro is gone, replaced with an oblong housing that houses the triple-camera array and a tweaked Glyph Matrix.
The display marks a genuine technical advantage. The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro pushes far past that mark, with Nothing lists peak brightness up to 5,000 nits and adds touch sampling up to 2,500 Hz during gaming, compared to the Pixel 10a's 3,000 nits. The 6.83-inch screen also offers a 144 Hz adaptive refresh rate. For outdoor readability and fast-paced gaming, this translates to tangible improvement over Google's midrange offering.
Where the 4a Pro distinguishes itself most is in the camera system. The Phone 4a Pro features a 50MP main camera, 8MP ultrawide, and a 50MP periscope telephoto lens that offers 3.5x optical zoom, and up to 140x zoom. The Pixel 10a, by contrast, relies on a single 48MP sensor and computational photography. By hardware metrics, Nothing delivers more versatility.
However, the software story creates meaningful complications. For its latest midranger, Google has promised seven major OS upgrades and seven years of security updates; the Nothing Phone 4a Pro, on the other hand, is set to receive only three major Android upgrades and six years of security patches. That difference matters. A device purchased today may still receive feature updates in 2029 from Google, but from Nothing, support ends in 2029 for major OS releases.
Engadget's hands-on review, while praising hardware refinement, identified practical irritations that money alone doesn't fix. The Glyph Matrix, Nothing's signature LED notification system, is composed of 137 mini-LEDs; that's fewer LEDs than the Nothing Phone 3, but they are 100 percent brighter at around 3000 nits. Yet accessing Glyph functions requires digging into settings menus rather than pressing a dedicated button as on previous models. Additionally, video recording shows weaknesses: there's a lot of feature parity with pricier phones; it can capture super-slow 120fps video at full HD, while Action Mode is built directly into the camera app to shoot up to 30 Ultra XDR images in a row; Codeveloped with Google, Ultra XDR images are high-dynamic-range images that capture 13 RAW frames at different exposures and combine them into a single image. Yet actual video quality remains problematic under zoom, with exposure handling described as unreliable.
The broader context is telling. The base Phone (4a) won't be sold in the US, but the Pro will be available; Nothing Phone (4a) pre-orders start today, March 5, at Nothing's website with open sales on March 13. The company is betting its US expansion entirely on the Pro model, skipping a lower-priced entry point where Google still dominates.
Nothing's philosophical difference with Google manifests in every choice. Nothing races toward hardware boldness: brighter screens, more cameras, thinner bodies. Google prioritises software maturity and reliability. At £499, both demand the same investment. The question then shifts from specs to values: do you want the phone with more zoom and brightness, or the one that stays updated longer and runs cleaner software? That answer depends less on hardware sheets and more on individual priorities.