Nothing Phone 3a Lite Launches as New Budget Option with a Potential Cost The Nothing Phone universe has a new, more affordable member. The company has unveiled the Nothing Phone 3a Lite, positioning it as the cheapest model in its current lineup. This phone brings the brand’s distinctive transparent design language to a budget price point of 249 euros, but it may come with some new software compromises. Potential buyers in the United States should note that Nothing has confirmed the Phone 3a Lite will not be released there. American customers are limited to the existing third-generation models: the Nothing Phone 3, Phone 3a, and Phone 3a Pro. The Phone 3a Lite features a Panda Glass casing over an aluminum frame, maintaining the brand’s recognizable aesthetic. It includes the Essential Key, a multi-purpose physical button found on all Phone 3 series devices, and has an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance. To keep costs down while honoring its unique identity, Nothing has implemented a notification LED instead of the more complex Glyph Interface found on its premium models. This Glyph Light supports features like Flip to Glyph for light-only alerts and can be customized for calls and specific contacts. The phone is equipped with a large 5,000 mAh battery that Nothing says can provide up to 22 hours of YouTube playback. It supports 33W fast charging, capable of reaching a 50 percent charge in approximately 20 minutes. For photography, the handset sports a triple-camera system on the rear, headlined by a 50MP primary sensor. This is joined by an 8MP ultra-wide camera and a macro lens. Video recording goes up to 4K at 30 FPS. The display is a 6.77-inch flexible AMOLED panel with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate and a resolution of 1080 x 2392 pixels. Nothing claims it can achieve a peak HDR brightness of 3,000 nits. Powering the device is the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro 5G chipset. Nothing states this processor offers a 15 percent faster CPU and 100 percent better AI performance compared to the chip in last year’s Phone 2a. The phone comes with 8GB of RAM and a choice of 128GB or 256GB of storage. It runs on Nothing OS 3.5, based on Android 15, with an update to Nothing OS 4.0 promised for the first half of 2026. The trade-off for the lower price appears in Nothing’s new software strategy. The company confirmed it will begin including pre-installed apps on its non-flagship devices, though it says these will be removable. More notably, Nothing plans to introduce a feature called Lock Glimpse, which acts as a rotating lock-screen wallpaper with text links to external content hosted by a Chinese advertising company. This is widely seen as a form of lock-screen advertising. While Nothing pledges to give users full control over such features and notes that Lock Glimpse is off by default in the current beta software, these moves mark a shift from the brand’s original ethos of a clean, bloat-free software experience. The Nothing Phone 3a Lite is available now in Europe. The 128GB model costs 249 euros, while the 256GB version is priced at 279 euros.
