A smart move - Nothing Phone 4a Pro

0:00 When nothing's founder and chief executive left OnePlus

0:03 to found a new company, it seemed crazy.

0:07 I mean, who would leave the protective umbrella,

0:10 not to mention near unlimited resources of OPPO,

0:13 to do your own thing, much less to do nothing?

0:18 And yet, with the recent news that OnePlus is

0:21 rumored to be ceasing global operations in the imminent future,

0:25 it's starting to look like a pretty smart move.

0:27 And today I've got their latest not

0:30 flagship specifically that the Nothing Phone 4A Pro.

0:35 So it's part of their A- line, meaning it's more budget compared to the non A's.

0:39 But it isn't part of their CMF budget brand, but it's pro.

0:43 So it's like better budget.

0:46 Can we call it that?

0:47 It's for your better budget lifestyle, your BBL.

0:50 Let's go with the cute pink one.

0:52 This is my cute pink BBL.

0:53 How long have you been sitting on that joke?

0:58 Hello.

0:58 I love how many products come with a free IQ test these days.

1:01 There we are.

1:02 Probably the biggest benefit that nothing boasts

1:04 for the phone for a pro is its gaming prowess,

1:08 which doesn't make a ton of sense if you just look at the spec

1:12 sheet because it actually uses the same

1:15 processor as the Nothing Phone for a nonpro.

1:19 Is what you might think if you didn't look closely.

1:22 See, Qualcomm's branding for their processors

1:24 has gotten shockingly confusing lately.

1:26 See, I'd forgive you for seeing Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 and thinking,

1:31 "Well, what the heck?

1:32 Nothing.

1:32 Why did you downgrade from the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4?

1:36 Surely the S is for speed." Well, no.

1:38 It turns out the S is for slower.

1:40 The nonS is clocked higher and has a significantly better GPU,

1:45 which helps drive the up to 144 hertz 1080p plus

1:50 class display that can reach up to 5,000 nits peak brightness.

1:54 Where do you want to put the asterisk in the edit?

1:56 Should we put it here?

1:57 Here?

1:58 Here, or here?

1:59 No, the second spot looked nice.

2:00 Okay, we're going to put it here.

2:01 We'll get to that later, though.

2:03 First, let's have a look at the star of the show, which,

2:05 as you might expect from nothing,

2:06 is of course their latest take on their glyph interface.

2:10 This is the Glyph Matrix.

2:12 It has 137 mini LEDs,

2:14 and is designed to do everything from showing a custom icon when you

2:18 have a particular person calling to having a progress bar for your Uber pickup.

2:22 It can also be a clock, show battery status, or be used as a timer countdown.

2:25 Isn't that just another clock?

2:26 Also on the back we have a 50 megapixel main shooter,

2:29 50 megapixel three and a half times optical

2:32 tetroprism telephoto lens and a mystery meat ultrawide.

2:37 Seriously though, nothing doesn't give a spec for this.

2:39 We had to get the 8 megapixel spec from a third party.

2:42 Why also got a flash and actually a really pleasing construction.

2:47 Very, very extremely iPhoneike, but in a good way.

2:53 nicely rounded.

2:55 Wobbles on your table like you like like you like actually quite a bit

2:58 better than some of the recent iPhones thanks to the wider camera bump here.

3:02 It seems quite usable.

3:03 Dude, my Fold 7 has been driving me bananas.

3:07 Look at this.

3:08 Are you seeing this?

3:09 How could we not see it?

3:11 It's like I could practically do like a kick flip with this thing without even

3:14 Oh, that would be gnarly.

3:15 We'll look at it a little closer in a second.

3:16 First, let's have a look at what's included in the package.

3:18 Nothing knows that there is no accessory ecosystem for their products.

3:22 So, they give you a clear plastic case.

3:25 Thank you.

3:25 Nothing.

3:25 You also get a USBC toC 2.0 charging cable.

3:30 Um, that's to go with the USB 2.0 charging port, a SIM removal tool,

3:36 and that's it for the accessories is what I would say if I

3:39 didn't notice that there does in fact

3:41 appear to be a pre-applied screen protector.

3:43 You'll love to see it.

3:44 Outside of the phone,

3:44 we've got a noise cancelling mic up here, earpiece speaker here.

3:48 Ah, yes, the essential key.

3:50 This takes you straight to your essential space,

3:52 which is pretty much a quick way to annotate

3:55 voice memos on top of things like screenshots and photos.

3:58 It can also be used, seriously though, like old school voice recorder style,

4:03 where you flip the phone upside down, hold it, and record a memo to yourself.

4:07 Future line is here.

4:09 Holding the button to record works in any orientation.

4:12 What this note was about was their flip to glyph,

4:14 which is putting it down, holding the button,

4:17 and then this cute little red recording light goes on, and it

4:21 does this, and then you can hold it again to turn it off,

4:24 maybe for like recording an interview or something.

4:26 It uses AI to record a transcript or summary,

4:28 and can be synced with your Google calendar to remind you later.

4:31 At the bottom, we've got our SIM tray, charging port, and speaker.

4:35 And then over on the right, we've got our volume rocker and lock button.

4:38 Wow, is it ever iPhone.

4:39 Like I mean, you know, phones all kind of look the same these days.

4:42 I get it.

4:42 I haven't talked about RAM.

4:43 It gets either 8 or 12 gigs of RAM with 128 or 256 gigs of storage,

4:48 which is pretty well aligned with its positioning as a budget flagship.

4:52 It's got Wi-Fi 6, which is not the latest and greatest,

4:55 but probably good enough for a phone, as well as Bluetooth 5.4.

4:58 As for NFC, it was a little confusing.

5:00 The 4A seems to have it, except not in India,

5:03 and then the 4a Pro seems to have it everywhere.

5:06 Nothing.

5:06 Can you just make this more clear?

5:08 That'd be great.

5:09 On the subject of things that are clear, let's talk about the front glass.

5:12 It's using Corning's Gorilla Glass 7i,

5:15 which is yet another product with a confusing name.

5:18 What is 7i?

5:19 I can find almost no independent analysis of it

5:22 with pretty much everyone just quoting Corning's press release,

5:24 which is to say that it is seventh generation glass,

5:27 but for an intermediate device,

5:30 so like a a mid-range device, which means what exactly?

5:34 How does it compare to Victus?

5:35 I understand that companies are afraid to tell me that, you know,

5:39 one of their products is worse than the other, but they also really,

5:42 really want me to believe that one of them is better than the other.

5:45 You see the problem here, right?

5:47 You got to tell me what's worse about

5:48 this one so that I understand what's better about Victus.

5:51 Anyhow, let's have a look at what's under

5:54 that glass after this quick message from our sponsor.

5:56 Look at your desk.

5:57 Look at your case.

5:58 Something is missing.

6:00 Whatever could it be?

6:01 I'm thinking it's a gorgeous 14 1/2

6:04 in 2560x 720p display like the Corsair Xenon Edge.

6:10 Just pop one of these bad boys into your case

6:12 or on your desk and when your dad pops his head in to ask,

6:15 "Are you winning son?" he'll already know yes, you are.

6:19 You can use it to show things like system metrics,

6:22 chat channels, weather apps, how much you owe on your finance burrito.

6:26 You name it, you can display it.

6:28 It's super easy to install either with the included

6:30 stand or screw it into your radiator mount.

6:33 No matter what, your new setup will be the bell of the ball.

6:36 Add another display to your setup with the Corsair Xenon Edge at the link below.

6:40 All right, I guess we'll get to using it in a sec,

6:42 but this gives me a perfect opportunity to talk about system updates.

6:45 Like other economically conscious devices,

6:48 nothing is not offering the longest of software support windows for this device.

6:52 It's not bad.

6:53 3 years of Android and 3 years of security.

6:56 But when you're in a similar price bracket

6:59 as something like a Pixel 10a, that is

7:02 a little tough when Google's offering what was

7:04 it 7 years I believe of full software updates.

7:07 So I'm really counting on Nothing OS

7:08 and the Essential Button to elevate the experience, which isn't impossible.

7:13 Pixel OS is not the clean stock Android that it once was.

7:18 This is taking a really long time, so hear me out.

7:20 We'll just show you the black one.

7:22 Oh, I like the black actually.

7:23 This is nice.

7:26 Wow.

7:27 Other than that, definitely with Marquez on this one,

7:30 the black one is a fingerprint magnet.

7:31 The pink is is quite serviceable as far as fingerprint rejection goes.

7:36 Guess my BPL stays pink after all.

7:38 Nothing OS.

7:39 It's been a while.

7:40 I love the look in theory.

7:42 It's so cool.

7:43 In practice, I kind of rely on the colors of my icons

7:46 as a visual cue for quickly finding them within folders,

7:49 but your muscle memory mileage may vary on that.

7:51 Let's fire up the display.

7:53 Let's talk about that.

7:55 Yep, that's HDR.

7:56 All right.

7:57 Unfortunately, what it isn't is 5,000 nits.

8:01 We were able to reach about the same as last generation.

8:04 So, in the 1500 nit range in regular content.

8:08 In order to achieve 5,000 nits,

8:10 we actually had to use a specific file that nothing

8:12 provided and we had to watch in portrait mode.

8:16 So, take it for what it is.

8:17 A marketing bullet point that ultimately doesn't affect

8:20 the fact that this is a pretty nice viewing experience.

8:24 For most people, this will still probably be

8:26 one of the nicest displays in your house.

8:28 Let's check out the speakers.

8:29 Oh, I think it's got an amplified earpiece, too.

8:31 Yeah, it does.

8:32 Not always a given on non- flagships.

8:38 Really not bad.

8:39 Past about 70%, it gets kind of distortiony, but that's about 70%.

8:47 It's pretty freaking loud and pretty freaking good.

8:49 That's a really pleasant surprise.

8:51 Coming back to the visuals, as you'd expect from a high refresh rate display,

8:54 scrolling is nice and smooth and natural.

8:57 Although, it is worth noting that while nothing

9:00 does boast up to 144 hertz refresh rate,

9:03 you are not going to get that in all games.

9:05 We found that most games were capped at 120

9:08 Hz for a high refresh rate and some even

9:10 ran as low as 30s because even though it

9:12 does have a really strong GPU for a mid-range phone,

9:16 it is still a mid-range SOC.

9:18 To nothing's credit, though,

9:19 the cooling on this mid-range SOC seems to be extremely well managed.

9:23 They're using a vapor chamber,

9:25 and we found that from our first run of Wildlife Extreme all the way

9:28 to our what what did we do 20 runs or something like that, it never throttled.

9:32 So beware of, oh, this flagship phone is so fast compared to a mainstream phone.

9:38 As long as you don't play your game for longer than you 10 or 20 minutes,

9:42 at least you'll get consistent performance out of a device like this.

9:45 Biometric authentication is handled with an in-creen fingerprint sensor.

9:48 Remember when this was like space age technology

9:50 and now it's on quote unquote budget phones?

9:52 I'll never forget that showcase behind like the main

9:57 CES show floor in this little booth where they're like,

10:00 "Oh, you're not going to believe this." some

10:01 and and I didn't it was it was incredible.

10:04 Now we just take it for granted.

10:06 All right.

10:07 Yeah, it's it's quick.

10:08 Look at Look how quick it is.

10:09 Never lose the sense of wonder, guys.

10:11 Just because something is, you know,

10:12 mainstream now doesn't mean we should stop appreciating it.

10:15 Let's talk camera.

10:16 Need a new set.

10:17 Our new set is way better lit.

10:18 Oh, okay.

10:19 Yeah, that's good that that did a little bit of processing on that image.

10:22 Wow, it hates your sweater, Sean.

10:26 I mean, I'm zooming in a lot, though.

10:28 Skin tones are a little funky in some cases.

10:32 Also, you've got a little bit of kind of like wide

10:34 line of style distortion over towards the edge of the image here.

10:37 It's part for the course, guys.

10:38 Again, you know, let's never lose track of the miracle

10:41 that is these incredible highfidelity recording devices in our pockets.

10:45 It's not the best camera I've ever seen on a phone, but it's not bad.

10:48 As for the telephoto, yeah, that's pretty good.

10:52 Oh, actually, your skin tones are way better on the telephoto, too, Lucas.

10:58 He looks sickly in this one.

11:00 Do they claim OIS on the telephoto as well?

11:03 Cuz there is a fair bit of stabilization happening.

11:05 I just don't know if it's optical.

11:06 Yeah.

11:07 OS and DIS.

11:08 What I'm bound to be less impressed by is what is it they claim?

11:11 Up to 140x zoom.

11:13 It's so zoomed you actually need like a context viewfinder so you

11:17 can know exactly what the crap it is that you're looking at.

11:19 The electronic stabilization is pretty impress.

11:25 It actually looks like AI generated like text like

11:30 the older AI when it couldn't do real text.

11:32 Okay, but what if I just used the 3 and 1/2x telephoto and cropped it?

11:36 Yeah, I think this is more readable than what we had before.

11:40 Yep, I can read this.

11:41 I could not get the word Commodore out of that before.

11:44 Now that I know what it is, I can see it.

11:46 But here, I can actually read it.

11:49 It's such a simple test.

11:51 You'd think phone manufacturers would do it.

11:52 Hey, let's try out the take better selfies with glyph mirror.

11:57 Sure, I'll try it now.

11:59 I don't know if it'll do anything about like the crow's feet,

12:02 but uh hey, I'm willing to try anything at this point.

12:06 Oh, obviously we don't have a ton of resolution here.

12:11 If I wink an eye, is it changing a little bit?

12:15 Let's Let's try to take a picture.

12:16 I assume I use the volume key.

12:19 Oh, yeah.

12:21 They're right.

12:21 That is better.

12:22 In all seriousness though,

12:24 I think I'd rather have a full color viewfinder if I'm trying to take a selfie.

12:28 I'm going to actually try to take a good picture.

12:31 Did I take a picture?

12:33 Dude, I feel like a complete boomer right now.

12:37 Okay, that time I took a picture.

12:39 What the crap is going on here?

12:41 This picture is like crazy like softened

12:46 with what looks like a bunch of fake bokeh.

12:49 Is this their ultra XDR?

12:51 It can't be.

12:52 So ultra XDR is their kind of high dynamic range thing.

12:54 They take what was it like 12 exposures or something like that.

12:57 Oh, sorry.

12:58 13.

12:58 Okay, so high dynamic range pretty much.

13:01 I just I I wasn't in portrait mode.

13:03 I'm so confused why it went and it did portrait modey things.

13:06 More realistic look.

13:08 Okay, I'm gonna turn ultra XDR off and see

13:10 if I get a normal freaking looking picture of me.

13:13 This the bokeh actually looks real and somewhat natural.

13:17 Here it's obviously done in post.

13:19 And here it also looks done in post.

13:22 And I don't understand why that would be.

13:24 Huh.

13:24 Very confusing.

13:25 And I guess I can just avoid the whole thing by just using the selfie cam.

13:29 Yes, there's just a normal selfie.

13:32 Like seriously, does this look like AI Linus or what?

13:34 Well, guys, your mileage may vary with the camera.

13:37 To be clear, it's not like I can't get good results out of it.

13:39 There's some good-looking pictures here.

13:41 It's just you might need to play around with the settings

13:44 a little bit and find what works for you.

13:45 I just want to do a quick video recording

13:47 just to see if it has that classic Android jutdder.

13:49 This is not a useful amount of resolution.

13:52 Nothing.

13:53 So, have you guys seen those cool like

13:55 rear displays that you can get for some phones?

13:58 This is not that.

13:59 Okay.

14:00 Definitely some anomalies and a little bit of that classic Android hitching.

14:06 You can really see it doing weird sharpening stuff.

14:09 Actually, with uh with this, it doesn't know what it

14:11 is and it doesn't know what to do with it.

14:13 That light was like at this price,

14:15 it's not going to be an iPhone 17 Pro, though.

14:18 We've got to be realistic.

14:19 And that also applies to battery life.

14:20 We got just over 17 hours in our endurance video playback test.

14:24 And as for charging, nothing claims up to 50 watts.

14:27 We didn't see 50 watts for more than a very short period of time.

14:31 But it's worth noting that this is actually

14:33 pretty normal to have a charging curve like this.

14:35 Labs did a wonderful article on it and we did manage to see a full charge

14:38 of the 5,000 plus mAh battery in about

14:42 65 minutes which I think is like super reasonable.

14:45 No wireless charging though.

14:46 Pixel 10 has wireless charging and that's a big feature for some people.

14:50 I still plug my phone in every night but I think I'm the weird one.

14:52 Now let's try out the essential button.

14:55 I made a screenshot.

14:57 This is a screenshot of my desktop that I wanted to save

15:00 for posterity and that's in my essential space now which I believe is this.

15:04 Yeah.

15:04 You know what's funny is this is actually

15:06 really close to the photo app that I want.

15:09 I had this idea I talked about on WHO and apparently

15:11 there is some stuff that's kind of similar to this.

15:13 I haven't tried any of it yet,

15:14 but the idea was like I take a picture and then I go, you know,

15:18 blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and then that's stored

15:20 in the metadata for that picture so that when I'm looking at it again later,

15:25 I could like see the context of it.

15:28 Hey, this was that time the kids did that funny thing.

15:30 To be clear, this can take photos like that, but I would

15:32 want something that's baked right into the metadata of the photo file,

15:35 not some third party app that I mean,

15:38 hey, I'm wishing nothing nothing but the best.

15:41 I hope that they succeed and exist forever, but they might not.

15:44 So, I don't want to put all my metadata in that.

15:46 I made that mistake with Canon Zoom browser.

15:48 Ah, had a bunch of like detailed almost like a journal

15:52 attached to all these pictures in my Zoom browser.

15:54 Reformatted my computer and it was gone.

15:56 Note to self, the essential app actually seems kind of cool.

16:01 It's just really tough for me to um lock into a function like

16:05 this that is not necessarily going to be supported on my next phone.

16:09 That's something that Apple does a really

16:10 good job of having continuity in their ecosystem.

16:13 Maybe there's an opportunity for nothing

16:15 to make this app available, but you know,

16:17 as a paid app across the rest of the Android ecosystem, I don't know.

16:20 I can't tell them how to run their business.

16:22 But what I can tell you guys is to subscribe to Short Circuit.