I’ve been testing the new Nothing Phone 4a for a week, and just like I said with 2025’s Nothing Phone 3a, I think it is the best budget phone you can buy in the UK – as long as you agree that we can deem £349 as ‘budget’.

Maybe we should call it mid-range. But compared to phones like the £1,279 Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra or the £1,299 Xiaomi 17 Ultra, the Nothing Phone 4a certainly feels like a bargain.

It has inferior performance and camera chops compared to those pricier devices, but unless you want to live on the very cutting edge of Android phone technology, the Phone 4a has more than enough going for it.

This includes a great design, stellar two-day battery life, solid triple cameras, and incredibly thoughtful, minimal Android software.

UK-based Nothing leads with design, and in a sea of boring-looking smartphones (here’s looking at you, Samsung Galaxy S26) the Phone 4a stands out as a colourful, delightful breath of fresh air, both in its hardware and software.

I’ve been testing the phone for a week prior to its launch in white, but it also comes in black, blue and pink, the latter two colours tastefully tinted in hue.

You might not like the look, but I applaud Nothing for doing, well, something. iPhones, Galaxies and Pixels are mostly interchangeable matte glass, pastel coloured slabs. The Phone 4a is large with a big 6.780inch OLED screen but like the firm’s other phones, the transparent glass back reveals a modern aesthetic that somehow also feels retro, like the see-through Game Boys and Tamagotchis of the late 90s, but more grownup.

I’ve been thoroughly impressed with what £349 gets you, although I have been testing the £399 version with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. £349 gets you 8GB RAM and 128GB storage.

Maybe the best way of describing how impressed I am with the Nothing Phone 4a is that although I am privileged enough to use many of the most premium smartphones on the market, I would happily keep using the Phone 4a after the review period is over. Usually I would want to gravitate back to something pricier, but the Phone 4a ticks most boxes.

Just like previous Nothing phones, I still find the camera a little underwhelming. Photos are over-processed, with quite a lot of HDR (that’s high dynamic range) applied when viewing on the phone that makes photos appear … crunchy, for want of a better word. The £499 Pixel 10a produces more pleasing images, but it also costs more.

You can click on these links to see some of my favourite shots I took on the Phone 4a in full resolution (images open in new window).

Nothing has managed to squeeze a 3.5x optical telephoto lens into the 4a though, which is great to see. The Pixel 10a has no telephoto lens at all.

Smartphones have generally become boring and expensive because they are a commodity, maybe even a utility at this stage. When industrial design plays it safe for a truly mass market, phones are pale, unimaginative blocks of glass. You can’t say the Nothing Phone 4a is that.

People also hold onto them for longer, so Apple and Samsung keep churning out £800 to £1,000 flagships every year to convince people to upgrade. The reality is you can spend less than £400 and get everything you need. Not once when testing the Phone 4a did I think it was too slow. And never too boring.

I’m no big fan of AI, so thankfully I could ignore the Essential Space app Nothing ships on the phone. It’s a quasi-screenshot app that can summarise screenshots or voice recordings and even send notifications about them if you add a ‘to do’ when capturing them. The phone has an AI button but because it’s high up on the left hand edge, I forgot it was there and never pressed it accidentally.

Nothing is also pushing into letting its customers design their own apps and widgets with the Nothing Playground project. You can make your own online or download other people’s to use on the phone. It’s a clever idea with great potential.

The battery on the 4a lasted for two and half days even with extensive screen time, photography, calls and more. That’s thanks to a large cell and the mid-tier Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chipset. So unless you want to play Genshin Impact all day long, you’re absolutely fine here.

You only get three years of Android updates (to Android 19 in 2029), but six years of security updates to take you to 2032. That’s only one year less than the best Samsung and Google phones.

Despite the cool design, you do compromise on build quality at this price. The sides are plastic, and the haptics – the vibration motor that sends out buzzes when you use the keyboard and do other things in Android – feels loose and a bit cheap compared to other dearer phones. It’s also only IP64 rated, so might not survive an accidental dunking in the pool.

But these are small nitpicks on what is otherwise an affordable Android phone with bags more personality than the latest Galaxy or Pixel alternative.