Nothing Phone (4a) Pro and New Headphones Arrive in Glorious Pink

Nothing has taken the wraps off a trio of products including the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, the more affordable Phone (4a) and the over-ear Headphone (a). All three products come with Nothing's usual touches of stark, minimalist design with transparent materials, affordable prices and more punctuation than you'll find in the British Library. Better yet, they all come in pink. 

The Phone (4a) Pro will start at only $499 when it goes on sale in the US and UK later this month, while the Phone (4a) won't come to the US at all. 

The Nothing Phone (4a) and the Headphone (a). Both look good in pink.

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I've already got the base Nothing Phone (4a) and I've been using it as I explore Mobile World Congress in beautiful Barcelona, checking out the phones, wearables and cool tech that could be coming to our homes in the coming years (...or maybe not). I love the overall look -- it's definitely singing from the same hymn sheet as Nothing's previous phones but the pink hue gives it a fresh look that I really like. It's not in-your-face hot pink, but a more subtle tone that reminds me of candy floss or spring blossom. It's got a 50-megapixel main sensor and a 50-megapixel telephoto camera offering 3.5x optical zoom.

Nothing Phone (4a) main camera test, outdoors.

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Nothing Phone (4a) main camera test, indoors.

Tara Brown/CNET

We've taken it for a spin around Barcelona during MWC and the results are good, especially considering the affordable price of the phone. It runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7S Gen 4 processor, which feels nippy and responsive in everyday use. How it handles things like multitasking, video editing and demanding 3D gaming remains to be seen when we're able to give it the full review treatment. 

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro packs all of its fancy extra bits into the top section.

Nothing

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro takes things further with a more potent Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chip and a larger 6.83 inch display that slightly edges out the 6.78 inch display on the Phone (4a). Its camera setup has also been upped to include a larger Sony image sensor for the main camera, a 50-megapixel telephoto zoom camera and a 32-megapixel ultrawide camera. I'm looking forward to seeing how images from the Pro model compare to the base Phone (4a). 

But the bigger addition to the pro is on the back of the phone. While the Phone (4a) has a few classic Nothing LEDs (arranged in a small bar to alert to incoming notifications), the Pro takes it further with a Glyph Matrix display like the one seen on last year's Phone (3). Arranged in a circle, the Glyph Matrix can serve actual functions like showing a timer, the battery level or even act as a Magic 8 ball to help predict your future with what I'm sure is 0% accuracy. 

The Nothing Phone (4a) has a lot of pink in its interface, too.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

I'll be honest and say that I wasn't especially enamored with the Glyph Matrix on the previous model -- it felt like a gimmick that didn't need to be there. Whether its new evolution makes it more useful as part of everyday life remains to be seen. 

The pink is a nice touch on the headphones.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

Finally we have the Nothing Headphone (a) which is a more affordable version of the Nothing Headphone (1) launched last year. Like their predecessors, the Headphone (a) features transparent materials, active noice cancellation and can even work with 3.5mm cables, if you wanted to plug it directly into your Hi-Fi system instead of using Bluetooth. I've tested them briefly and I was impressed at the sound quality, especially considering their low $199 (£149) price tag which significantly undercuts the $299 (£299) of the first model.