Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

The Phone (4a) Pro is Nothing finally putting on a proper suit. Gone is the see-through glass back that defined the brand's first few years; in its place is an aircraft-grade aluminium unibody with the transparency confined to the camera island, where a 137-LED dot-matrix Glyph Matrix now lives. At £499 it slots neatly into the gap Nothing left between the £349 Phone (4a) and the £699 Phone 3, and it earns that premium with a better build, a bigger and faster screen, a slightly quicker chip and improved ingress protection over the standard model.

What really marks it out at this price is the camera hardware: a 50MP OIS main sensor joined by a genuinely useful 50MP 80mm periscope with 3.5x optical reach, which is the kind of thing mid-rangers usually skip entirely. The 8MP ultrawide is clearly the budget line item. The 6.83-inch 144Hz AMOLED is large and bright on paper, but at 163.7mm tall and 210g this is a two-handed device in the same physical league as the biggest flagships — reviewers have compared it to the Galaxy S26 Ultra and iPhone 17 Pro Max for sheer size.

It's for the buyer who wants flagship-ish camera versatility and a distinctive, well-made object for around £500, and who doesn't mind a phone that dominates a pocket. Anyone after something compact, or anyone who buys on long-term software support, should look elsewhere — the Pixel 10a is the obvious alternative.

Judged on value, this is one of the more interesting £499 phones around. A periscope telephoto with OIS and a 50MP sensor is rare at this money, and pairing it with a large 5080mAh battery, 50W charging, stereo speakers and a 144Hz AMOLED makes the spec sheet look considerably more expensive than it is. The aluminium construction reads as a real upgrade in intent rather than a marketing tweak, and the Glyph Matrix is a clever, genuinely novel way to keep the screen off — if also, by most accounts, more fun than functional. Using it as a rear-camera selfie viewfinder is the one feature I'd actually miss.

The compromises are real, though. IP65 is adequate rather than reassuring at this price, with rivals routinely offering better water resistance; the 25cm/20-minute rating is not a swimming-pool promise. Three major OS updates is a modest commitment in 2026 and the weakest part of the package for anyone planning to keep a phone four or five years. Wi-Fi 6 rather than Wi-Fi 7, UFS 3.1 storage, no card slot and 1080p-only selfie video are all defensible at £499 but add up. And the "140x ultra zoom" headline is marketing arithmetic layered on 3.5x optics — treat it as such.

The bigger reservation is ergonomic. This is a very large, 210g phone, and that size buys you a lovely display but costs you one-handed usability entirely. Combined with an 8MP ultrawide that doesn't match its stablemates and Glyph features that lean gimmicky, the Phone (4a) Pro lands where the Guardian put it: just short of greatness. I'd still recommend it to the right buyer — it's distinctive, well built and unusually well equipped for the money — but the Pixel 10a's software support and smaller footprint will win more arguments than Nothing would like.