The Cellphone 3a Lite brings Nothing’s distinctive feel and appear to an entry-level value level

London, UK-based shopper know-how firm Nothing has formally launched its first-ever entry-level smartphone, the Cellphone 3a Lite. Externally, the gadget takes design cues from each the CMF Phone 2 Pro (a finances handset from Nothing’s spin-off model CMF), and from the higher-end Phone 3 (Nothing’s present flagship telephone providing). The mix of a plastic body, clear rear panel glass, and offset digital camera modules make for a singular aesthetic — one which definitely leans into Nothing’s signature design DNA.

Internally, the Cellphone 3a Lite ships with a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Professional processor, a 5,000 mAh battery, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, IP54 dust and water resistance, and a full HD 7.66-inch AMOLED show panel able to 3,000 nits of peak brightness and a most refresh charge of 120Hz. The triple rear digital camera setup consists of a 50-megapixel wide-angle shooter, a 50-megapixel telephoto lens, and an 8-megapixel ultra-wide sensor.

Software program clever, the Cellphone 3a Lite comes with Nothing OS 3.5 out of the field, which relies off of Android 15. Nothing guarantees three years of platform updates, along with six years of safety patches. An improve to Nothing OS 4 primarily based off of Android 16 is predicted to land someday early subsequent 12 months.

The bottom Nothing Cellphone 3a Lite is priced at £249 / €249 for the 8GB of RAM and 128G of ROM configuration, with a step-up 8GB + 256GB variant coming in at £279 / €279. Each variants can be found in a selection of white and black colorways, with gross sales in “choose markets” starting on October 29 by means of the corporate’s on-line storefront. Nothing has confirmed that the handset will not be making its method over to North America, which is a little bit of a disgrace: the handset seems to be to be a strong, budget-friendly Android telephone that does not sacrifice Nothing’s core identification.

The Cellphone 3a Lite is Nothing’s first entry-level smartphone

The handset is slick, but it surely does ship with lock display screen advertisements out of the field

As with different Nothing smartphones, the 3a Lite comes with an on-board Essential Key, which acts as a quick-access button for launching the corporate’s AI-powered Important Area function. In contrast to higher-end Nothing telephones, which embrace both Glyph Interface LED lights or a Glyph Matrix display on their rear panels, the 3a Lite presents a single Glyph Mild. This module, Nothing says, is “impressed by traditional notification lights,” and it presents customizable mild sequences, entry to Flip to Glyph for notification silencing, and different related perks.

It is price mentioning that to attain its £249 / €249 value level, Nothing has opted to ship the Cellphone 3a Lite with what can primarily be described as lock display screen ads. The function is named Lock Glimpse, and it feeds dynamic content material to the person with hyperlinks to the web to study extra. Fortunately, the function might be toggled off immediately through Settings.

Elsewhere, the gadget is pre-installed with a number of third-party purposes, together with Fb, Instagram, and TikTok. Whereas hardly egregious, I do discover this mixture of bloatware and Lock Glimpse to place a damper on the in any other case lean, imply, and clear Nothing OS software program pores and skin that makes different Nothing telephones such a pleasure to make use of. In fact, lock screen ads and preinstalled bloatware are nothing new within the cell area, and, general, the corporate pushing to make its handsets accessible to as many shoppers as doable is a web optimistic in my eyes.