Nothing has officially debuted the Nothing Phone 4a Pro and its new over-ear Nothing Headphone A in the US. While the $199 Headphone A, Nothing’s second go at over-ear cans, will mostly keep the transparent-ish look that has marked the company’s products until now, the $499 Phone 4a Pro is adopting a somewhat more traditional look – as long as you ignore whatever’s going on in that camera bump. Nothing also officially released the non-pro Nothing Phone 4a, but unfortunately hasn’t launched it in the US.
Nothing Phone 4a Pro
Despite having a mostly solid back and sides – colored silver, black, or pink – the Phone 4a Pro is still very unconventional, thanks to a wild camera bump that looks sort of like a cartoon face with one large eye made of a dotmatrix display – what The Verge notes is a lower resolution take on the “Glyph Matrix” found on the Nothing Phone 3 – and a smaller eye and mouth made up of the phone’s cameras. (The area around these features still hints at the former transparent back look of other Nothing products.)
The camera array is comprised of a 50MP main shooter, a periscope-style telephoto with 3.5x optical zoom and 140x digital zoom, and a 50MP ultrawide lens with an unknown megapixel count but a 120-degree field of view. On the other side, there’s a 32MP selfie camera embedded in the top of the display, which has a 6.8-inch, 144Hz AMOLED panel with a 1260 x 2800 resolution, 800-nit standard brightness, 1600-nit outdoor brightness, and 5,000-nit peak brightness.
Being aimed more at budget buyers, the Phone 4a Pro still has some decent specs, with some compromises. It’s driven by a midrange Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chip with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of storage, depending on how it’s configured. That wouldn’t put it up there with heavy-hitter flagships, but it could likely still compete with the likes of the Google Pixel 8, IGN’s favorite midrange handset. It has a 5,080mAh battery that recharges at up to 50W wired, which is solid, but the phone lacks the wireless charging found in the Nothing Phone 3. It’s also limited to Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 on the connectivity front. Pleasantly, the Phone 4a Pro still supports dual physical SIM cards. The Phone 4a Pro will be available later this month – preorders open March 13, with an official release on March 27.
Nothing Headphone A
The Nothing Headphone A will be available a little sooner, with preorders open today and official sales coming March 13. To start, the Headphone A will come in black, white, and pink, but the company will sell a limited edition yellow pair later, starting April 6.
The Headphone A looks similar to the geometric Headphone 1 that preceded them, but with slightly less emphasis on translucence. They don’t fold, but the headband does extend and the ear cups twist. Sound-wise, Nothing says the headphones are “engineered for clarity,” and will use the LDAC codec for lossless, wireless audio.
Inside the cups are 40mm drivers feature both active noise cancellation and transparency modes, as well as a hybrid noise cancellation mode that tries to balance the two, adjusting on the fly to noises around you. Apart from that, they also support Spatial Audio and have controls that include a power switch, Bluetooth pairing button, roller for volume, rocker buttons for switching tracks and such, and a button that can be used to switch modes, trigger a connected phone’s camera, summon ChatGPT, and more.
Nothing says its new wireless headphones will have the “longest battery life of any Nothing product to date,” offering up to five days on a charge. And recharging them for just five minutes will net you five hours of wireless listening, according to the company. The Headphone A also feature a 3.5mm audio jack for wired connectivity. The headphones may feel a touch heavy, though. They weigh 310 grams, putting them between the AirPods Max, which are often criticized for their weight and clock in at 386.2 grams, and the Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones, which weigh just 254 grams.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom’s Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
